Video Drivers are the cause? WHY NOT...?

[Wegg]

I'm 99% sure its the use of the MFC dlls they use for development.

Even Microsoft gave up on them after only a couple horrible unstable versions of Mac Word.

It has made the mac port happen within hours of the PC version but at a pretty high cost.

Man. . . what a major kick in the pants for the Hash programmers. You buy into a development tool thinking "Its Microsoft! they are gunna support this thing forever!" and then a couple years later. . . yer on your own.

A lot of programs create their own interface. Messiah's is all OpenGL. No hooks to the OS beyond basic file access. That will make it quite easy to port.

Electric Image is the same way.

They spent some crazy amount of time developing their own cross platform development environment which took YEARS to create and cost them dearly. . . but its now done. And works.

Maybe Hash Inc. can slowly replace its windowing system with its own "bug free" version?

[Dearmad]

I wonder how much of AM's sales are for use on an Apple.

I mean... they could that market loose.:shrug:

[Wegg]

Hell no dude. Its over 40%!

That'd kill em.

[JTalbotski]

The last I heard was 30%. They better not cut out the Mac crowd.

Jim

[hoochoochoochoo]

if there's an MS issue why cut Macs away? Macs don't rely on Microsoft for OS's...

Anyway, Cinema4D, ElectricImage and others all support PCs AND Macs.

I think Dearmad is being humourous - or he's been trying out weggs mountain juice and hasn't gotten used to the strength of it

[PJC]

Like Wegg said, Hash's Dev Env is based on Microsoft Libraries. The Mac port is basically running a Microsoft Windows based application with hooks to the Mac. At least that's what I've gathered.

I could be wrong.

- pjc

[Wegg]

I did a google and found a TON of cross platform development environments. Most of them free!

http://www.wxwindows.org/

http://www.crystalfiresw.com/products/cropl.html

http://www.fltk.org/

Magpie Pro used to be all MFCs and they are using this fltk thing now. . .

http://glow.sourceforge.net/

http://www.nigels.com/glt/glui/

http://www.gtk.org/

http://ngl.sourceforge.net/about.php

http://picogui.org/

http://www.widestudio.org/EE/index.html

http://zoolib.sourceforge.net/

Is there a catch?

[Obnomauk]

well yeah there's always a catch.

from what I understand (not that that's worth much here) to get into a different windowing system they'd have to re-write the app from the ground up... again....

that's a pretty big catch.

There is a long dev time for creating their own windowing system look at the osX alpha Randy's been slaving on that and it's still got a ways to go. Just in terms of basic usability... one of those things.

i mean in 3d not releasing a new version every year is like a death sentence.... A lot of pressure in that market... makes me glad I'm a slacker by trade.

-David

[Wegg]

But. . .

Magpie Pro 2.0 is being coded/ported by one guy. You really think he is starting from the ground up?!?

I don't get it. . .

The next time someone goes to a trade show and sees Randy or Bob or even Ken. . . ask em why they are trying to port the MFCs to OSX instead of switching to a more established development environment. . .

There has to be a reasonable explination.

[PJC]

Hmmm,

I think the OSX version has a "translator" that Hash built that takes the MFC data and turns it into OSX specific code...

once again, I could be wrong.

And honestly, I would rather have a pure OSX code. I would jump the PC ship in a second if it was that way, but the "translator" could be doing JUST as good a job.

...But then how does GFX work on the Mac? Is it more stable since it's just OpenGL and there are fewer cards/settings?

- pjc

[binder3d]

I think there not using any stuff from MS with OSX. Its all Codewarrior. Thats why I think AM for OSX is going to be fantastic! Might even buy a new Mac! Cant they use Codewarrior for the PC to and get rid of all that crap from MS? And I think Iread that MS almost bought Hash at v4 or something. MS fianlly bought Softimage then sold it again-got 3d on windows though! :>

[phil3d]

ATI has a reporting wizard and system checking tool at.

http://www.ati.com/support/problem/win9x.html

They ask for information from this tool (system, driver card et) combined with what is happening in a particuler program (and who makes it) - I assume Nvidia has a process for reporting also.

Seems to me that if these GPU makers were to start recieving the information they need from the people having the problems with their cards, (us) we would see the patches or specialized drivers for AM that we all want.

[JTalbotski]

Here's some info from Ken Baer about the OSX version:

"A:M for OS X is a true Mach-O application that requires Jaguar. We are
using the latest HIView APIs, so windowing should be very nice on
modern Macs."

You can read the whole message here:

http://venice.killernuts.org/animaster/viewEntry.php3?idnum=62084

Edit>I hope this means that if there are windowing problems that are causing many of the crashes, the OSX version will have less of those problems. I know NVidia has only one driver for all their Mac cards. It would make sense (to me, I have an NVidia card) to gear A:M to matching that driver.
<Edit
Jim

[Dearmad]

Mountain Juice aside, I was just curious how Hash's market broke down. Since they don't seem to be in the mode to grow larger and hire more programmers (the company size doens't seemt o have increased much if ta all over ten years), I was wondering if "more focused" might help them.

That's a large Apple customer base they have if it's 30%.

[tOd]

Where's the link for the OSX alpha download?

[JTalbotski]

http://www.hash.com/osx/install.htm

It has a strange download system working there, but there is also a link to just download it normally.

Jim

[tOd]

Thanks Jim! I looked all over thier site. Nada :shrug:

[PJC]

so, those with the osx version installed, see any microsoft .dlls in your AM folder?

- pjc

[Obnomauk]

There aren't any MS DLL's for osX to the best of my knowledge.

What the OSX version installs is pretty sparse in the appliction folder (now if we can just get them to use Packages instead) but there are 13 DLL files in the Application support folder of the library one of which is MFC.dll but nothing attributed to Microsoft. The MFC.dll is probably the "translator" for the windowing calls.

-David Rogers

[JTalbotski]

Originally posted by PJC
so, those with the osx version installed, see any microsoft .dlls in your AM folder?

- pjc

Oh yeah. From what I remember Ken stating on the AM list, they rewrote all the MFC dll's to work in OSX since none of them existed already.

Here's what I have:

http://home.comcast.net/~talbotj/OSX.jpg

Jim

[phil3d]

For Mac users with ATI based graphics here's some hopefully useful info on OpenGL support from ATI

http://www.ati.com/support/faq/macos/macos3d.html

[phil3d]

As a followup to the above, I did a search of both ATI and NVIDIA support. As far as I can tell they don't even know we (Animation Master - and it's users) exist.

[Hookflash]

Originally posted by JTalbotski
Oh yeah. From what I remember Ken stating on the AM list, they rewrote all the MFC dll's to work in OSX...

Jim

Now if only they'd rewrite all the MFC dlls to work in Windows...;)

[Wegg]

Exactly. Why bother porting something that is already flawed?!? It would be one thing if the Windows version were rock solid and the Mac version were unstable. . . but . . .

Gah. . .

/me throws up his hands.

[My Fault]

Has anyone here that is running AM with one of the higher end ATI cards tried this?
http://www.nvworld.ru/docs/sfgl_e.html

Folks on the Maya board were mentioning greater stability, curious if this would also improve with AM....

[eboy]

from what i've gleaned, Hash have created the first MFC based app (AM) to run (not well yet) on OSX. So you have this uneasy marriage of out dated MS rubbish with state of the art Unix technology, all for the sake of quick conversions from the latest Windows build. The potential for bugs has probably increased two fold as they now have to iron out all the glitches in the MFC translation code as well the usual Windows stuff.

[Wegg]

Thats what I was thinking.

I wouldn't put it past Randy and those guys comming up with a solution that is rock solid etc. . . but it seems like a really round about way of doing things.

[Obnomauk]

It is quite a long way to go around to be certain, but they seem to pride themselves on getting the mac version out the same day as the PC version. And we mac users certainly appreciate not having to wait a couple months for an update. It should also minimize platform specific bugs (once the libraries are a little more mature) and should allow anyone with codewarrior on the mac to create a plugin for A:M (assuming they release a Mac version of the SDK) so I can see how they would see the benefits of such a thing.

-David

[eboy]

I guess the amount of work in starting from the ground up with codewarrior must have appeared too daunting - but then it does appear that the OSX version is down to just one guy, putting it on a par with the development resources of something like Wings3d. Therein lies the source of AM's woes - not enough hands on deck to get the job done while we're still young. I'll wait and see how OSX shapes up (hell been waiting since MH3D) but with MFC in the works, the odds dont look so good. Speaking of Wings, how long till some wizz decides to do for AM what its done for Nendo?

[Wegg]

http://jpatch.sourceforge.net/

LOOOoong way to go yet though.

[eboy]

Thats so cool! - and with renderman on osx as a renderer it could have a promising future. I noticed the greyed out muscle and bone modes too, so this guy is definately coming from an AM direction - the icon is even similar. Why Hash dont adopt 3rd party renderers is beyond me - Martin could then spend his time improving other areas of the program instead of re-inventing the wheel.

[Wegg]

/me bites his tongue.

[modernhorse]

so now the inevitable question .... will this program have 'creasing' issues too?

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.