By Chris (Riprod2) (216.242.142.235) on Friday, January 03, 2003 - 08:24 pm:| By Chris (Riprod2) (216.242.142.235) on Friday, January 03, 2003 - 08:24 pm: |
I don't get this. I have an animation that is faily basic but does have particles in motion in it. I have a G4 dual 1ghz and a dual 877mhz.
It takes 2h20m to render just one .tga frame, with ray trace shadows and refraction and low anti-aliasing.
At 30fps that would take a long time.
So I setup Lightwave on my PC and I tried rendering it on my Windows 2000, P4 1.8Ghz... 9m30s!
That's 15 times the speed!
I checked the files in photoshop and compaired every aspect. Exactly the same!
How is it possible that the PC is so much faster on rendering ? Or is something setup wrong on both my other machines.
| By js33 (Js33) (12.237.176.146) on Friday, January 03, 2003 - 10:22 pm: |
Well sell your Macs and get some more PCs :>)
You think a P4 1.8 is fast wait till you a try a 2.53 Ghz or even 3 Ghz...smokin'.
You could just do your modeling and scene setups on the Mac and render on the PC(s).
You could buy about 4 2.5Ghz P4 machines for the price of one dual Mac and have a cheap render farm.
Of course there are those on this list that will say how LW is not optimized for AltiVec which I think is still alot of blowhard excuses for why the Mac doesn't render any faster. Blah, Blah, Blah...
Then they will say to wait until the middle or end of this year until the Macs come out with the IBM processor. They may have something good with that processor but at this time it is still vaporware.
The P4s are already at over 3Ghz with Hyperthreading now and will only get faster.
Cheers,
JS
| By antonius pius (Antonym) (203.213.83.128) on Saturday, January 04, 2003 - 12:47 am: |
Intel hardware may be well impressive, but the operating system blows.
If you base your computer purchase solely on speed, then you'll always be playing catch-up as all the manufacturers leap frog each other continuously. Macs totally smoked Intels 2 years ago and now Intel smokes Macs but like you said yourself, the IBM 64 will make Intel 3Ghz chips look like rusting hulks in 12 months time, and then AMD will do the same to IBM and so on, and so on...
So what do you do? Buy an AMD and then sell it and buy an Intel when they come out with a faster chip 6 months later? That's ridiculous.
And three months later, if LW8 IS optimized for Altivec? On an IBM 64 dual Mac? Will you switch to a Mac or stick with your old tried and trusted slowmobile Pentium?
I'd wager good money that rather than switching operating systems, you'll stick with your Windows P4 and patiently wait for the P5 just like Mac users are waiting for the IBM 64.
It's just human nature for people to stick with what they know and build familiarity with.
Anyway, Chris, to answer your question in a sensible way (and less expensive way than buying a new computer) have you tried switching multithreading from 1 to 2 in the Render Options panel? Made a big difference to me with my dual 1.25 G4. The manual says you may get even faster results setting it to 3 or even 4 even though you may only have 2 CPUs.
How that works is beyond me, but they say it does.
| By Larry Shultz "SplineGod" (Larrys) (216.244.21.249) on Saturday, January 04, 2003 - 01:23 am: |
I dont think whether the OS blows or not is the point. Who spends that much time fiddling around in the OS? If I were to spend hours JUST in the operating system I would agree. All I want to do is fire up the computer and find the Lightwave Icon. I would agree that the MacOS is probably better but as I said, who spends hours messing with the OS? I just look at it from a cost standpoint. When you do that it all makes sense. 
| By antonius pius (Antonym) (203.213.83.128) on Saturday, January 04, 2003 - 01:55 am: |
Sorry, I just got on my defensive high horse there which as a Macophile one tends to do quite often in a PC dominated world looking down on you as a 'poor cousin' which we don't believe we are.
I don't actually mean messing with the OS, Larry (as I have absolutely no idea how they work anyway), but rather general use and intuitive feel which makes life and work easier and more pleasant, rather than a constant struggle and battle of wits.
For pure 100% LW and render farms, by all means get a P4 or a dozen, which I admit I myself have been tempted to do (if only LW worked on Linux, heh heh).
But most of us computer users use more than just Lightwave on our machines for work or play, eg After Effects, Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, InDesign, Illustrator, Flash, music apps etc etc the list goes on, and with other hardware considerations than just clock speed eg peripherals, cameras, networking, Firewire straight out of the box without having to be a tech-head etc and I personally would pull my hair out in frustration if I was forced to use all those apps plus more seamlessly and easily and, most important of all, enjoyably, on Windows.
I enjoy using LW. I enjoy using a Mac. I didn't enjoy using Windows and that's really what it's all about isn't it? :-)
PS After thinking about it, that 2 hour time differential Chris is experiencing between his two machines is probably far greater than my simple answer would probably account for. It's gotta be something else, some other setting. Rendering particles in motion shouldn't be THAT slow and that much different to his P4 speed.
| By John A. Johnson (Johnny) (67.248.139.152) on Saturday, January 04, 2003 - 04:27 am: |
I wonder if the answer isn't as simple as whether the LW code has just not been optimized for PPC...are we Mac users churning through an awful lot of code leftover from the porting from Windoze...
If that's the case...Newtek???? whassup?? Maybe things will improve with increased Mac market share..
J
| By js33 (Js33) (12.237.176.146) on Saturday, January 04, 2003 - 05:29 am: |
Antonius,
I don't know what could be causing his slowdown either but just changing the number of threads won't make that much difference and in some cases can slow it down with more threads.
Also I own an iMac and it sits in the corner unused most of the time. I personally am alot more productive on Windoze. Oh and I also use alot of programs other than LW such as After effects, Photoshop, Director, Flash, CuBase, GigaStudio, SoundForge, Vegas Video, GoLive, Illustrator, etc...
I like OSX but maybe its just that I'm more used to Windows. Doing things in windows is second nature to me where I have to work harder to do the same things in OSX.
Oh and that 15" screen on the iMac kind of blows compared to using the 19" monitors on my windows machines. About all I use the iMac for is to feed my iPod with tunes.
I have used LW on the iMac but I like LW on windows better.
Cheers,
JS
| By Chris (Riprod2) (216.242.142.235) on Saturday, January 04, 2003 - 06:19 am: |
Sorry, I didn't intend this to be a PC vs Mac discussion. I love my Macs but everything is a tool to me. My PC is a webserver, and I simply tried the rendering on it as a test.
Now if it were 50% or even twice as fast that would be understandable and acceptable. But 15 times the speed is just outragous. I have messed with the threads and every setting I could find. Nothing there. As far as I can tell the PC application is just optimized to rendering better than the Mac version.
I am considering buying a few bare bones PCs just to render. Why even waste the Macs time ?
My point is, how is it possible to be this much slower. This is version 7.5 on OS X 10.2.3 with dual 1Ghz and 1.5Gb of Ram.
Personally I think Newtek needs to put a lot more work into the Mac version and fix things like network rendering. (Yes and Mac needs to catch up on the processors too!)
| By Darthmole (Darthmole) (81.86.131.124) on Saturday, January 04, 2003 - 09:36 am: |
This is ridiculous. There must be some major difference in the way the systems or LW is set up - I don't believe I could go out and buy some crappy PC for a few hundred dollars and get a 15x speed increase in rendering. Most of the benchmarks online do not back this up at all. Yes PCs are currently faster, but not by that amount, and not on a single 1.8Ghz PC.
I've head that PCs are better at raytracing, and if you have a complex scene full of particles, maybe that's the culprit. Does the scene really need raytracing? Is it using any 3rd party plug-ins? If not, I'd be happy to try it on my system, see what kind of speeds I get.
| By Mike King (Kingds) (66.183.18.237) on Saturday, January 04, 2003 - 12:00 pm: |
It's because the PowerPC chip sucks that's why. Apple overrates them and says they are faster than Intel's. But I don't give a crap if the PowerPC chip is faster at processing a Photoshop filter. We switched to all PC as the macs are too damn slow no. Even the dual 1Ghz machines.
| By Chris (Riprod2) (216.242.142.235) on Saturday, January 04, 2003 - 03:31 pm: |
Hi Darthole,
That is exactly what I was trying to say (15x in unacceptable!). I would love to send you the file to test. It does have ray tracing shadows, reflection and optimizing. It is also on low anti-aliasing and has about 20 particle motions. So it is quite invloved... but the point is a 1.8Ghz PC does it in under 10 minutes.
| By John A. Johnson (Johnny) (67.248.139.152) on Saturday, January 04, 2003 - 03:54 pm: |
could we keep the discussion at least somewhat above the 3rd-grade booger-flicking level?
I'm interested to hear cogent, well-formed assessments of hardware limitations, but when I read comments whose substance is 'it sucks,' I come away with the impression that the author of those comments is having a grump-fit, and perhaps is in need of some nap time.
peace!
J
| By Beam Tracer (Beamtracer) (203.109.241.109) on Saturday, January 04, 2003 - 04:15 pm: |
What a ridiculous discussion. A 15x speed difference is not a result of the processors.
If the original scene and objects are not posted on the net, then nobody can verify such a claim.
OK, the newest Windows-based machines are faster than the current G4s, however the difference is not 15x. No proper benchmarks have revealed this much difference.
It's interesting how the Windows devotees get carried away with a discussion like this.
| By Mike King (Kingds) (66.183.18.237) on Saturday, January 04, 2003 - 05:08 pm: |
can't say more than it "sucks" johnny, because it does. I've been in the mac world for over 10 year man. using lightwave was a chore to say the least. Under OS9 and even OSX (even though it was a little faster than in OS9. Took the same file home and put it on my PC and bang!!! Easier to work with, faster renders, the hole bit. I give macs two years before they get to a level that is acceptable in a professional field. Right now the transisioin bites (a good one though), but for hard core work, PC's ar the way to go now.
Sorry buddy, at least try to be open minded and not so closed in on the Mac world.
| By arthur argote (Archiea) (66.32.149.54) on Sunday, January 05, 2003 - 01:00 am: |
Chris, how many threads were you using on the mac side... often you should set it at 2X the number of CPU's. So if you have dual CPU's, you should use 4 threads. Also, is the amount of memory the same for the PC as it is for the mac?
I really don't care too much about what I already know: PC are faster than macs. I'm just concerned that chris may not have his machine (PC or mac) set up properly as I have learned myself in the past...
| By Ed Mag (Ed_M) (152.163.189.134) on Sunday, January 05, 2003 - 11:17 am: |
[[[If the original scene and objects are not posted on the net, then nobody can verify such a claim. ]]]
Exactly right. 15x's is absolutely absurd and it's definitely not the hardware. I could bring all my friends back to the discussion, but you guys don't like when I do that. I've brought Chris Cox from Adobe to these discussions several times. The guy is a MAJOR solderhead and master code junkie (and not *just* 2D stuff). He knows the Mac hardware inside and out. He also knows the PC rigs. I wonder what he'd have to say about a 15x speed difference... Actually I know exactly what he'd say... He'd say: "Bulls^hit".
[[[It's interesting how the Windows devotees get carried away with a discussion like this. ]]]
Carried away? Hell, they had to change their diapers after hearing stuff like this...
[[[Took the same file home and put it on my PC and bang!!! Easier to work with, faster renders, the hole bit. ]]]
And that could have absolutely nothing to do with the code-base. Is that correct?
How about the setup of the machine? The only thing to do to verify such an outrageous claim is to post the file to the net and let other Mac users have at it. And besides, what's Newtek's explanation for this?? Hello, NewTek?
--
Ed M.
| By Chris (Riprod2) (216.242.142.235) on Monday, January 06, 2003 - 12:01 pm: |
My appologies, I did not post the the file because it's a work in progress. I can assure you that I am not lying about the speeds.
Please drop me a mail to mousepad@mac.com and I will email you the scene so you can conduct the tests for yourself.
| By Chris W. (Chriswork) (24.123.214.36) on Monday, January 06, 2003 - 01:34 pm: |
Some things to look for before you go out and buy a smokin' new P4.
- Hard Disk Sleep. Is it turned on or off in the Energy Saver Control Panel? Needs to be off.
- Same goes for system sleep.
- Are you using Hypervoxels? If so they're not multi-threaded on the mac...but that shouldn't hose your render times like that.
- Hard drive/System problems. Have you checked your hard drive and system over with Drive 10, Norton, or some other utility? It could be that there are problems moving files back and forth.
- Are you rendering to Quicktime? If you are then stop. It takes extra time to cache each frame until the renders done.
That's all the stuff I can think of. In general I wouldn't expect yor Mac to be more than 30% slower in the WORST case scenario, than the PC.
| By ted devlin (Eblue) (12.149.3.2) on Monday, January 06, 2003 - 01:53 pm: |
I've noticed rendering times leaping way up with raytracing transparency and refraction, on a mac. this could easily get your 15x speed diff. Its a problem, and not one that we can blame on the processor. Something broke in raytracing around LW 7.0.
| By Christian Avalos (Cavalos) (64.213.56.192) on Tuesday, January 07, 2003 - 03:02 pm: |
My experience is different but not so unexpected as 15 times faster, jeez! that is too much man.
In my case I have a PC and a Mac both with 256 Mb of ram and with a G4 at 733 Mhz and a Duron at 1.2 Ghz. I´ve noticed faster rendertimes on my Duron (about 20% faster) but that´s only me
Best
Christian
| By Martin Munthe (Munthe) (217.208.174.77) on Wednesday, January 08, 2003 - 09:43 am: |
Hi. The Mac vs. PC debate is just rediculous. I'm currently producing a feature film using LW on Mac and PC. We have been working for three month trying to solve different problems. Our dual 1GHz G4 chews raydiosity scenes at twice the speed of our single 2GHz P4's. BUT rendering raydiosity maps for baking sends the Mac on it's knees. I'd say the PC is anything from ten to a hundred times faster depending on the complexity of the scene. This is all floating point operations - something the G4 altivec is usually very good at. The 0.7x Mpeg2 compression is only one example of raw processing power using well written code. I would say both the G4 and the AMD K7 processors would outbeat the P4 in chewing floating point calculations. This is clearly a software issue. The Mac is not priority one at NewTek.
| By Pär Mostad (Meshbuilder) (62.108.194.34) on Wednesday, January 08, 2003 - 10:30 am: |
I agree with you Martin.. I did some rendertest when I was working on a project this sommer.. And we had a Dual 1 Ghz G4 and a Athlon 1.6+..
In a radiosity scenes the Mac did render the scene 3 times faster than the PC.. But in another scene with skytracer and hypervoxels.. The PC was almost two times faster than the mac..
| By John A. Johnson (Johnny) (67.28.29.23) on Wednesday, January 08, 2003 - 07:41 pm: |
==This is clearly a software issue. The Mac is not priority one at NewTek. ==
if this is true, why the heck bother to write a mac version? obviously, the goal is to make money, but if people feel they're being sold an inferior version (at the same price) it could backfire on a vendor..once customer trust is lost, it's almost impossible to win it back..
J
| By Ed Mag (Ed_M) (205.188.208.43) on Wednesday, January 08, 2003 - 07:44 pm: |
So, I'm glad that people are FINALLY starting to agree that the Mac is not on NewTek's list of priorities. Some of us have been saying that for the longest time now. On another issue... People were complaining about web-surfing being slower on the Mac and blaming in on hardware.. how much do you want to bet that Apple's browser will be blazing fast showing people what a little time, care and dedication will do when coding rather than "porting". What it boils down to is that something is broken within the common codebase that NewTek is using. I wonder if Chris ever sat down with the NewTek guys to try and figure out what it was they were doing wrong...
--
Ed
| By Chris (Riprod2) (216.242.142.235) on Wednesday, January 08, 2003 - 08:42 pm: |
MARTIN, thanks for the input. That is exactly what I felt. There is something wrong with the the LW render engine on the Mac. It cannot handle floating point operations properly.
I have emailed my scene out to a number of people now, for them to test. I would appreciate their test results or input on this.
Sorry Ed, I havn't spoken to Newtek about it... I posted my question to see if it was something I was doing wrong or if others also have the same problem. It seams lots of others are complaining and I've heard that 15 or 20x the speed difference is not unreasonable for certain render tasks.
I guess we just have to wait for LW 8.0 ?
| By John A. Johnson (Johnny) (67.28.29.23) on Wednesday, January 08, 2003 - 08:48 pm: |
Apple's new web browser IS blazingly fast..it's also a nice clean interface, and for a beta, pretty nice w/respect to handling CSS.
So...how can we encourage NewTek to look into the Mac situation?
Johnny
| By ~@~ (Phong) (63.93.101.55) on Wednesday, January 08, 2003 - 09:26 pm: |
You can lead a tek to water but ya can't make'em new ...or something like that ;)
I have to admire you folks; especially Beam & Ed., for hanging in here so long, trying to make it right, when so many other Mac users have left. Kudos to you all.
Now a little O.T. if you have DirecTV, they are running a FREE 2/3D animation film festival and information is available at http://level13.net .
After they show an animation, they have an interview with the animator and it (imo) is interesting (ymmv).
| By Ed Mag (Ed_M) (205.188.208.43) on Thursday, January 09, 2003 - 09:09 am: |
Well, I've spoken to Chris Cox about this just to see if he had any ideas as to whether this ridiculous speed difference is due to hardware or the underlying codebase used by NewTek. In short, Chris believes that the root of the problem lies in the code. Period. What's even more discouraging is the fact that he says NewTek has shown no interest in improving/modifying the code or improving the optimizations to bring them in line with current Wintelon boxes -- Probably because it would severely *cripple* something on the Wintelon side or maybe even break it outright. And that just will not do, would it? Yet I find it odd that it's seem OK if it breaks or cripples something on the Mac side... What's more, Chris says that NewTek has shown no interest in talking to him to try and finally put these issues to bed once and for all.
Remember, people... Chris isn't just familiar with 2D stuff (as he mentioned himself on these very boards). The guy said he'd be glad to help NewTek finally iron out this speed difference issue and bring the Mac more inline with the competition. The guy REALLY knows the platforms and is well respected for his expertise in code-optimization (just ask the AltiVec engineers over at Motorola or any other developer worth a damn in the industry). He has intimate knowledge of the hardware and knows how to produce the most efficient code for it, but.... haven't we been down this road once before on other issues (read: ScreamerNet) ?
It would appear that some developers don't want to be bothered with trying to produce the best code possible for a given platform. They'd rather wait for the improvements in hardware to speed the apps up enough so as to give the *appearence* of better code, when in fact it's only being masked by the hardware. If you look at the apps coming from Apple, that should show you what is possible if developers actually sat down and produced a Mac OS X application.
--
Ed M.
| By longchin (Thekeeper) (24.163.28.122) on Thursday, January 09, 2003 - 09:16 am: |
so phong, share the path to enlightenment, what other 3dchoices are there for
people who choose to remain with the mac? for now.... i have not found much else in my search. newtek has strange habits no doubt,(no updates,broken stuff languishes for months unaddressed,etc, etc,) and obviously their focus is elsewhere, as is shown by the difference in functionality between LW onthe mac and on the PC. but show me something that works better thanLW7.5 under osx, please.
I took a strong look at maya a couple of months ago and found the same, way different than
the pc version. i have been told that has changed to some. degree but there are still major differences if you look closely. C4d is just plain weak, maybe Zbrush? or perhaps Pixel 3d(snore)?
where else does one go? what else is there to choose from?
share with us what you have found!
| By John A. Johnson (Johnny) (199.4.18.2) on Thursday, January 09, 2003 - 09:25 am: |
when you say that the PC version has more functioinality than the Mac version does, are you referring to plug-in availability, or to core application features?
J
| By Arnie Cachelin (Arnie) (65.184.20.249) on Thursday, January 09, 2003 - 10:25 am: |
Always refreshing to see Ed back in his paranoid rants. One would think that if there really was some code difference that would account for this bizarre situation, that more than one user would experience it, or that it would be revealed in benchmark sites. I'm sure Chris' opinion is based on what he knows about LW and this user's scene and setup, which is almost nothing. It is certainly easier to adopt the familiar victim role rather than looking at the logical factors, like the guy's machine setup, thread and segment settings, etc.
| By Darthmole (Darthmole) (212.113.199.253) on Thursday, January 09, 2003 - 10:38 am: |
I don't fully subscribe to the argument that Newtek is purposefully ignoring the Mac platform - after all, they were the first company to make an OSX vesion of any 3D app, and it's not as if the PC vesion has been getting loads of updates, either.
I've heard that they're very, very hard at work on a next generation version of LightWave (which may not even be called LightWave - who knows?). This is probably a 64-bit app, ready for the next generation of chipsets, but they've been working on it for ages - arguably to the detriment of LW.
Whether we will all benefit from this effort I have no idea. Will it be LW 8, or New3DApp 1.0? Will there even BE a Mac version? I don't know - and when the company is as tight-lipped as NewTek/Luxology, it's difficult to form any real opinion.
But certainly in the face of Maya 4.5, Cinema 4D R8, 3ds max 5.0, Houdini 5.5, XSI 3.01 - all of which have appeared in the last two or three months, development on LW - to the outsider - seems to have stalled completely (thank heavens for Steve Worley!)
I have a huge investment in LW plug-ins, and want the host app to succeed and keep going. But am I the only one here starting to feel slighlty nervous...?
| By loebek (Loebek) (217.20.192.13) on Thursday, January 09, 2003 - 10:42 am: |
I think LW is highly optimised for Intel CPUs. Motorola is left out...not good Newtek.
Why dont we post the rendertimes from the benchmark directory. PC and MAC
my PC 1x2GHz 512MB ram
DOF.lws = 10.2s
Nebulae.lws = 180s
Radiosity_ReflectiveThings.lws = 74.6s
Radiosity_Things.lws = 6.5s
Raytrace.lws = 154s
Sunset.lws = 203.6s
Textures.lws = 5.7s
Tracer-No-Radiosity.lws = 606.7s
Tracer-Radiosity.lws = 717.6s
variations.lws = 232.4s
variationsSmoothness.lws = 243.1s
variationsThickness.lws = 82.5s
ZBuffersort = 8.9s
| By Christian Avalos (Cavalos) (64.213.56.192) on Thursday, January 09, 2003 - 11:20 am: |
One thing I love in Mac systems is the integration of the Hard Drive. I mean it seems to be faster and powefull than the same on PC´s
Best
Christian
| By Wizlon (Wizlon) (194.176.153.162) on Thursday, January 09, 2003 - 11:50 am: |
Maybe this situation will improve with the next version of Lightwave, here's a snippet from the Lux website:
Luxology, LLC currently has strategic technology relationships with Apple Computer, Inc., Intel, AMD, and nVidia. Luxology also has relationships with animation facilities such as Industrial Light + Magic, Digital Domain, ....etc.
http://www.luxology.net/company/
| By John A. Johnson (Johnny) (199.4.18.2) on Thursday, January 09, 2003 - 12:41 pm: |
how could luxology help the situation?
J
| By ~@~ (Phong) (66.52.180.32) on Thursday, January 09, 2003 - 02:23 pm: |
Longchin:
;) My reference was not about choice, it was about lack of Mac Lightwave user participation on this forum due to past frustration.
I and ;) some of the silent Mac users I know, use Lightwave daily; as well as some of the programs you mentioned; which I do not feel comfortable discussing in this forum because they run on SGI and PC machines and are not Lightwave.
As mentioned in a previous post, each machine, here, is able to do something the other machines can't do and most animators, I know, are not limited to one program or one workstation.
(fwiw) I still feel 'Steve' will pull a 'rabbit out of the other company hat', one of these days, when it is realized how much production money can be saved by switching from talent to animation.
| By Beam Tracer (Beamtracer) (203.109.241.109) on Thursday, January 09, 2003 - 03:05 pm: |
Luxology may be developing something for Lightwave, but with no announcements we can only speculate on their plans. I'll leave it at that.
PowerPC processors really rely on Altivec to get their speed up, and with most Mac applications there is more Altivec optimization that could be done.
With raw processor speed, the Mac has a decent roadmap ahead with IBM 64-bit processors. It's a wait of 5 or 6 months before they're out, and then the first ones will be real expensive.
| By Ed Mag (Ed_M) (152.163.189.134) on Friday, January 10, 2003 - 08:27 pm: |
[[[(fwiw) I still feel 'Steve' will pull a 'rabbit out of the other company hat', one of these days, when it is realized how much production money can be saved by switching from talent to animation. ]]]
Hmmmm... Could Phong be implying that when Pixar introduces PR RenderMan for OS X thins will start to get more interesting?
Oh, and Arnie, say what you want, I've spoken to Chris and he said that NewTek has shown absolutely no interest in ironing out their code. Nothing on his e-mail or phone. They guy made you an offer. Why not take him up on it? Hell, those beers might be just what you guys need.The same goes for contacting John C. Welch and Dean Dauger. These are people that can only help Lightwave for OS X.
--
Ed M.
| By Beam Tracer (Beamtracer) (203.109.241.109) on Saturday, January 11, 2003 - 08:17 pm: |
Steve Jobs has previously said that 2003 will be the most significant milestone in Apple's history. A comment like that makes me wonder what he's up to. Even the use of IBM processors doesn't warrant a comment like this. Separation of the software and hardware business would, but that's probably just my wishful thinking!
| By John A. Johnson (Johnny) (67.73.169.153) on Sunday, January 12, 2003 - 08:54 am: |
Wonder, indeed! They've already made significant activity in all the areas: new hardware, inroads into enterprise, several hot consumer products, new OS...
only area they haven't tried is food! Maybe cola??
J
| By Wizlon (Wizlon) (194.176.153.162) on Monday, January 13, 2003 - 12:04 pm: |
I spoke with one of the head Renderman programmers at Digital Media World/LEAF Festival in London, when I asked when will we see Renderman on OSX he said "the OSX version is on a backburner at the moment, because all there efforts have been focused on PRMan 11"
So maybe later this year?
Who knows?
| By Dan Everson (Theosmekhanes) (66.126.123.6) on Monday, January 13, 2003 - 02:15 pm: |
Hello fellow Mac LW users.
I've been a Mac user since 95 and a LW user since 98 (LW 5.5)
I was once an active member in these forums, until I stopped posting out of frustration. This discussion has been ongoing since LW 5.5 and NewTek has not learned it's lesson.
I would like to be able to say that I could pack up and move to another piece of software, but there really is no option in terms price and "advertised" features. It has turned into a sick co-dependancy. I need LW for my work but I am in a state perpetual limbo holding out for the next update to LW that will work as advertised and render in a humane time frame... to no avail.
It is painfully clear, despite what anyone from NT says, the Mac is a second class citizen at NewTek.
I don't want to get into Mac vrs PC but I have to say that I am a professional working in the film industry (NDA). I have earned a BFA and an MFA from 2 of the top ten Art schools in the world. The Mac rules all aspects of production! mostly in prepress,script writing, web design, video/film editing etc.
3d has been a weak area on the Mac for some time. mostly because developers keep chasing that elusive PC market share and ignore the Mac.
Now OS X is two years into its life and there are no more technical excuses for programers to not have their act together on the Mac. Unless they just lacked foresight and motivation.
I come from a Mac-centric world to this little island of LW. It seems to be a little sub culture that thinks that they represent the whole digital video-film-Animation community. I sure don't know anyone who uses the Toaster or Aura, they don't hold a candle to FCP, Shake, or AE. Maybe if I didn't have to worry about sharing my work in the real world I could cobble together a PC jalopy and hide in my basement rendering cheesy lifeless logos and mech-suits to post as divx clips for all the other 3D wannabes out there in PC land.
I don't care about bench marks, or the BS that there are more PC users (look at per market, not all users), or the myth that PC are cheaper. My Mac works great for everything I need it to do except LightWave.
where are the bug fixes Newtek? Every other Professional software maker in the Mac universe puts out several free bug fixes between paid up grades. Where is 7.6 or 7.5b?
Sure, Macs are lagging in performance but not for long and not enough to justify the serious problems with performance that Mac users are reporting again and again in these forums.
Missing plug ins, incompetent Screemernet, serious lack of optimization, Poor QT support, No official response from a relevant source at Newtek. This is disrespectful to paying costumers.
I feel so insulted by Newtek's negligence that I would sign a class action law suit if it was presented to me.
P.S.
Drop the stinking Dongle you paranoid jerks. I paid for LW and it only gets in my way. Its easier to work with the cracked version on the web than to deal with that little plastic piece of crap! the Dongle is only hurting LW in the education market, and it isnt helping in the Pro market either
Thanks for reading and Flame all you want. I wont cry.
| By Beam Tracer (Beamtracer) (203.109.241.109) on Monday, January 13, 2003 - 02:36 pm: |
Dongle has some advantages, where one person can legally install Lightwave on two machines.
Newtek has enough legal worries without dealing with any more!
| By Beam Tracer (Beamtracer) (203.109.241.109) on Monday, January 13, 2003 - 06:42 pm: |
Photoshop benchmarks tell a different story, with Apple G4s beating Intel P4s.
http://www.powerpage.org/story.lasso?newsID=10439
It just goes to show that it is possible, if the software developers spend the time on it.
| By arthur argote (Archiea) (68.164.66.82) on Monday, January 13, 2003 - 08:33 pm: |
Dan,
No Flame here. A little harsh, but it needed to be said. Your perspective regarding the professional market VS garage editor is something I've been pounding into NT since last Siggraph. The company in which Lightwave should be seen with is Shake, Maya and Combustion. Aura is great, but its not an industry standard. My fear with Brad Peebler's departure is the decline of high profile exposure that NT/LW enjoyed during his years. This is needed even moreso now that there is near pricing parity between LW and Maya.
Something very similar is happening with After Effects.. The Adobe community has long been inbreed with adobe only artist who only know how to do things the adobe way. When approach with Shake or Combustion, they were very resistant, if not rude, convinced that AE was better through sheeer ignorance Now Combustion is actually cheaper than AE production bundle, it offers more functionality, and has a high profile status.. This can esaily obliterate the AE market, if not do substantial damage.
The same may not happen to LW, but something similar. Maya's functionality peaks when used in the studio environment. As a personal animation system, LW is a stronger product. However, maya's foundation as a tool building environment is something that attracts more and more smaller studios as more and more MEL scripters fill the market. This will definitly affect LW considering Maya's new pricepoint. Also consider Maya's development.. version 5 is in beta in almost so many years. Lightwave is in version 7.5 since '91.
There's alot more for NT to concern itself than Feature parity between platforms. its what direction it wants to take. While I urged NT for stradegies with Apple shake and Combustion, they have persued the garage editor route with promotions and stradegies around the video toaster. Understanable, they want to sell hardware to bring in revenue. However, the trade off is selling LW short by not showing what strengths it has with products like Shake and combustion. Instead, we just get another Aura tutorial or contest. While the community thinks this is all so cool (contest, etc) we are dangerously approaching that inbreed community of HASH. I really think NT should make the effort in solidifying outside deals, especially with Apple shake, to strenghen LW appearence in the marketplace that goes beyond market share. Sure AE had more installed seats, but in the meantime Combustion was getting high profile work and Shake was making people win oscars.
So Dan, I share your pain...
| By Larry Shultz "SplineGod" (Larrys) (209.178.140.213) on Tuesday, January 14, 2003 - 01:17 am: |
Arthur I agree with the general idea. Newtek has been making alliances with other high profile software and companies. What about the Fusion bundle? What about the toaster supporting Max and Maya? I dont think they should stop there either. I dont agree that Brad leaving is decreasing Newteks exposure at all. Lightwaves price was on a continuing upward spiral. After he left the decision was made to lower Lightwaves price. In terms of marketing, Newtek lowering its price made it appear (whether true or not) that Maya had to lower theirs as well. How would it have looked if LW was up around the price of Max while Maya was hundreds of dollars less? I think Combustion is great as well as Fusion. I think that there has probably been as many Oscars won by movies that used AE and many other tools as much as Shake or Combustion. I think it would be very difficult to find a movie that didnt have some work done in AE, Fusion, Combustion or whatever. Aura is a great piece of software but needs, like anything else, to be marketed properly. It sits in a strange position because I think its not evident to Newtek outsiders what its place is. I think Newtek should just bundle Aura with Lightwave. Newtek should continue to to form good strategic alliances that, if nothing else, just makes them APPEAR stronger then they are.
| By Beam Tracer (Beamtracer) (203.109.241.109) on Tuesday, January 14, 2003 - 04:59 am: |
I agree that Lightwave + Shake make a much better synergy than Lightwave + Toaster + Aura. There's really no point having a fabulous HDR renderer like Lightwave, and then destroy most of that quality in 8-bit applications. Really, is there? Let those high-dynamic-range images live!
| By ted devlin (Eblue) (12.149.3.2) on Tuesday, January 14, 2003 - 08:55 am: |
riprod,
OnTopic:
what is the ray recursion limit setting you are using?
you can find it in the render options panel, in the rendering tab.
it defaults to 16, but you should defnetly test it at lower settings.
i did a test with two transparent objects over 1 semi-complex object. With all aspects of raytracing enabled, and RRL at 16 it took 5101.5 seconds
RRL at 8 : 249.4 seconds
RRL at 4 : 63.4 seconds
personally I think that this is your problem, and while lowering the Ray Recursion Limit will lower some detail in reflections, it generally is not noticable past 4-6.
however, I do not believe that this gets newtek off the hook, 5101.5 seconds is a ludicrios increase in render times, and I am suggesting that a PC would make mince meat out of that same render (anybody with a mac and a similar PC should try it). Which means somebody at newtek should really be pouring over the rendering code, searching for whatever is dragging its heels. And while They are at it, fix the Transparency/Refraction Bug, and The obvious Memory Leaks during rendering. (not to mention dumping screamernet completely ;))
jeez,
i like to think i'm not paranoid, but I "mostly" agree with ed mag here *. I admit it, I know next to zip about the actual LW code, but i do know a great deal of general information about the performance of a g3/g4 OS X mac, especially compared with Any Pentium based PC, and Mac os 9 machine, And LW just ain't performing to spec, or even in the ball park. Don't confuse my frustration and acceptance, with my happiness as a customer. I use LW at work, but i am using the maya PLE at home, and LOVING it. Give me more reasons to stick with LW, I've given you a wish list as long as my arm, and Have yet to see any of the things i need.
gentlemen, good day
eblue
* I reserve the right to deny ever saying this in any way
| By arthur argote (Archiea) (68.164.66.82) on Tuesday, January 14, 2003 - 10:52 am: |
Larry,
The recent price wars is definitely used as a tool for marketing. I do find it unlikely, however, that LW's price reduction influenced Maya's. In fact, I'm willing to bet, that knowledge of A/W restructuring was available in certain circles and NT found it prudent to be the firsts. Consdiering Houdini's attempt to broaden their market, I believe this was long in the plan for Maya. I do believe, with the way commercials and television FX have become so sophisticated, that Maya was/is more of a threat to LW than vice versa.
Fact is, maya offers a level of flexibility that many studios crave. Also consider the availability of expericenced maya artist and TD's, the talent pool is larger and cheaper. Consider also the drive for content creation studios are desiring. ILM used to be the choice for character animation. Now you have framestore, Sony imageworks, WB and Weta as well as others. This shift has introduced a competition where custom code for dynamics, muscle and skin, even rigging is highly in demand. LW can't touch this. And studios will pay for this. maya's lowering of their price is to expand their user base to ensure they become the industry standard, not just because LW is $1500.
As far as the claim for AE's high profile work... Examples are Dungeons and dragons, Snow dogs, Driven, etc. For the most part, alot of oscar related compositing (LOTR, SW, Stuart Little) is done usually by custom systems (Cineon, Saber, nuke) or with Shake and discreet products. Often a combination is used. I've done identical composites in Shake and AE a couple of years back. while the mac was choking and crashing layers (OS9), shake was piping along (SGI). The issue with alot of these movies is that AE is still 16 bit, and the clipping of data in the above systems is a big no-no. Sure there have been times that we used AE for some specific filter. that has changed now with filters available for shake.
Aura makes a great paintbox, and I'm really impressed with its integration in the toaster. However, in the arena of high end visual FX, like in commercials and film, there are different needs. Integration into an existing pipeline is neccessary. Ability to share work, shake is great with that, cost per seat, AE is great for that.. and free render nodes too. So in that respect, its very complicated to determine which package or combination of packages is best.
I haven't played with digital fusion, but from what i've heard, it can easily replace shake for PC users who were left out to dry by Apple.
As far as LW's presence and marketing, for starters, NT should get apple to update their profile on LW, as it still points to 6.5 if its even there anymore. All I see is maya. I sent away for the free LW demo disk last summer after Siggraph to give it to a semi high profile friend. It never came. I had to pay $20 for maya's but it came with a training DVD, and it was prompt. So of course, my friend is using maya because she's convinced that LW is incapable of character animation.
There is nothing that emphasis's LW's unique output beyond NT's webpage, and thats not enough. LW should have its own section at the apple site demonstrating how it compliments shake's modular funtionality. This is bad, real bad. Bundles with training tapes are great as is online tutorials and contest. Kudos to NT. However, all of this appeases both current user of LW and people who have already made their decision to buy LW. I'm talking about people who are on the fence, or on the opposite side of the fence all together... As far as anybody visiting the apple page knows, they lookup 3D and ALL they see is maya... thats inexcusable.
These times are really tough, and credit should be given to NT for just staying in business and not selling LW to Discreet or something... Max Lite.. Shudder! however, very little has been done to expose LW to the mac community. How about putting the LW demo app in macworld or mac addict? Talk about grabbing attention, when all a user has to do is put the CD in the computer and install, you have your best commercial. this is long over due...
anyway, i could go on forever!!!
| By Arnie Cachelin (Arnie) (65.184.20.249) on Tuesday, January 14, 2003 - 11:55 am: |
All this smoke, but no fire..
Looking quickly at Blanos.com for LW benchmarks,
I can see a dual 1ghz OSX G4 running the raytrace scene at 127s, while a 2ghz p4 takes 100s, and a dual 2ghz p4-xeon takes 79s. That makes the mac pretty respectable, as cycle-for-cycle it does more than the p4. (it also shows that that scene does not benefit that much from dual procs).
Plenty of other numbers there to look at too.
| By Dan Everson (Theosmekhanes) (66.126.123.6) on Tuesday, January 14, 2003 - 04:33 pm: |
Thanks for the keen insight Arthur,
Yes, LW should be more "aware" of Shake and AE. To do this LW would need competent QT support. I have heard a few arguements against Qt in favor of a # seq. You guys can round up thousands of files with no thumbnails if you want. I'm going to take adavantage of lossless 64bit qt codecs (microcosm) and save alot of space.
As far as Aura and the Toaster go; I don't want to slam what I'm sure is a fine pair of products, but they are completly irrelavent to me and most of the "real" pro industry. I think LWs market share/perception is suffering because of its product nepitism.
IMHO LW would be better served by spliting away from the umbrella of the other NT products.
As a customer I have been very frustrated with the way Newtek has ignored me. I think mabey some of or programmer freinds (you know who) were several steps ahead of me and tried to break away from the NT mother ship... but thats another thread : )
sure hope LW shapes up or another company comes out with something comparable without the NT politics included
| By Beam Tracer (Beamtracer) (203.109.241.109) on Tuesday, January 14, 2003 - 06:03 pm: |
In any case, Toaster and Aura are irrelevant to both the Mac and Linux community.
Dan, I'm glad to hear that you're using the Microcosm codec for Quicktime. I don't want to side track this thread, so I'll post another one regarding Microcosm.
| By Robert Wilson (Robewil) (64.60.59.6) on Wednesday, January 15, 2003 - 11:17 am: |
"In any case, Toaster and Aura are irrelevant to both the Mac and Linux community."
I don't know about you, but I feel as I belong to the "video/animation community". In this world, those products are not "irrelevant". This is why I pay attention to as many products as I can because to me, the computer/OS is what is irrevelant.
| By arthur argote (Archiea) (68.164.66.82) on Wednesday, January 15, 2003 - 11:27 am: |
Well, irrelevant in that there is no mac version, which is what beam is suggestion I believe, and in that case the computer platform ISN'T irrelevant since I'd need a PC to run it.
| By ted devlin (Eblue) (12.149.3.2) on Wednesday, January 15, 2003 - 11:33 am: |
arnie,
thanks for bringing it up
my tests with the raytrace benchmark scene suggest that it is now irrellevant. it does not test raytracing transparency, and it makes little difference how high the Ray Recursion limit is set (maybe 2-4 second difference when set above 4). Even Raytracing transparency has very little effect.
so basically, this Benchmark scene is not a realistic test of raytracing in a current production environment, and its quite apparent by looking at the scene stats. 25015 polygons, no subD models, no bones at all. Its been YEARS since that scene was a realistic representation of the kind of work coming from LW. And as such, it is worthless in any meaningful discussion about render times. I do not find any of the LW benchmarks realistic at this stage in the game, and i am not comforted by the fact that you seem to rely on them to illustrate your point. DO some re-search (by actually laying a hand on LW not some website). you'll find a gaping hole in render times when raytracing (using something slightly more complex than low poly count spheres) comparing pcs to macs, and this hole is evidence of a bug in the rendering pipeline.
Listen man, I'm trying to help you here, so don't alienate me further. if nothing else, by listening to me instead of blowing me off, you will giving me, a customer, a reason to trust Newtek. And Newtek should really be interested in its customers being trusting, and possibly making them the happiest 3d people in the world. all it takes is : " ok we'll look into it", doesn't seem too painfull to me.
i say it again.
there IS a problem with Mac LW's rendering pipeline, I honestly looked at the benchmark scene, and it does not have any bearing on this issue. the benchmarks are now irrelevant afaik, and i for one will treat them that way.
| By Arnie Cachelin (Arnie) (65.184.20.249) on Wednesday, January 15, 2003 - 12:56 pm: |
I am willing to accept your claim that the venerable RayTrace scene is not relevant to many situations, but which of the other benchmarks on that site DOES illustrate the problem? If none of them do, it would be most helpful to find a scene that the mac did actually render in 15x the time of a comparable PC. Then one could profile it, and pinpoint where the time was spent. If noone can provide such a scene, then the problem can't exist.
Sure benchmarks are generally irrelevant, but if your machine performance doesn't match that posted by other users with similar rigs, at least you can see whether your machine is going to sleep, or IE is re-uploading your registry, or that screen blanker is burning 90% of the CPU.
Vague Photoshop benchmarks are cited as a standard performance comparison, though they barely test the floating-point performance of the systems, and may include different levels of custom-instruction optimization on the platforms (i.e. SSE2, Altivec, SSE/MMX, 3DNOW). They must be even more irrelevant.
Also, the new "Extra ray trace optimization" option can cause rendering times to actually increase, if the overhead of its pre-computation is greater than the savings it gains.
| By Minus Macintosh (Minus23) (198.178.8.81) on Wednesday, January 15, 2003 - 02:35 pm: |
http://www.robgalbraith.com/diginews/2003-01/2003_01_07_macpc.html Here is a very recent comparison between PC's and Mac's running a number of image processing benchmarks. -- A lot of mac people quote Macs as faster running "unspecified photoshop actions" but this is nice because real - world work is being benchmarked here. -- The verdict? - Better buying 4 PC's each much faster then one Mac... then buying one Mac.
| By ted devlin (Eblue) (12.149.3.2) on Wednesday, January 15, 2003 - 03:20 pm: |
"it would be most helpful to find a scene that the mac did actually render in 15x the time of a comparable PC. "
riprod I think you have someone interested in looking into your specific issues. Could you email your scene and objects to arnie?
Arnie, 15xs is a very high degree of difference, but I have seen 10xs slower, and from my experience, the things to watch out for seem to be a combination of raytracing, and transparency, as well as possibly sudD or high poly count models. if you have access to a mac and a pc it shouldn't take more than 20 minutes to build or kitbash together something that causes innordinate levels of "wasted time" during renders. try using particle storm to generate 100 particles, and replace them with some subD object that has reflections and transparency. build the object so that it has an inside surface so that refraction can come into play.
for the interested:
all the stuff i did left "Extra ray trace optimization" unchecked.
| By Ed Mag (Ed_M) (152.163.189.134) on Wednesday, January 15, 2003 - 03:59 pm: |
Well, I'm not sure what we're trying to iron out here anymore... Are we discussing Photoshop benchmarks now? I'm wondering if Chris Cox is lurking... Anyway, Chris has made the offer to help NewTek with their optimizations, What harm could be done? Chris is no thief, it's not in his nature, so I doubt that he'd be interested in knowing the ingredients of the "secret sauce". --- plus he has a reputation to uphold. Furthermore, there's laws protecting stuff like that. If I were NewTek I would leap at the opportunity to have someone more familiar with Mac hardware and code-optimization fill-in the gaping holes in performance that exist between the two platforms. You guys might even learn a thing or two. What, is it a *pride* thing?? I think you guys are *assuming* too much with regard to what setting up such a collaboration would take.. Perhaps it's $$, who really knows? One thing is for sure, you'll never find out what it will take to get the ball rolling if you don't take the first step in contacting him. Here is his e-mail address:
ccox@Adobe.COM
Remember, he came to the forum and openly made you guys an offer (as did a couple of others). Sometimes it's better to have someone completely independent take a look at your work because they might see a flaw that you might not even be aware of.
--
Ed M
| By Darthmole (Darthmole) (81.86.131.124) on Wednesday, January 15, 2003 - 04:43 pm: |
Does anyone from NewTek even LOOK at this board any more...?
| By Darthmole (Darthmole) (81.86.131.124) on Wednesday, January 15, 2003 - 04:45 pm: |
Er, apart from Arnie I mean. (oops)
| By Ed Mag (Ed_M) (152.163.189.134) on Wednesday, January 15, 2003 - 04:48 pm: |
Darthmole...
Good point. Makes you wonder doesn't it?
--
Ed M.
| By Beam Tracer (Beamtracer) (203.109.241.109) on Wednesday, January 15, 2003 - 05:20 pm: |
I'm sure Chris Cox has lots of valuable knowledge and experience in regard to Mac optimization. However valuable his suggestions might be, surely he would be under contract to Adobe and not legally allowed to work on other companies' software without Adobe's permission. Obviously Adobe's After Effects division hasn't yet allowed Chris to optimize their code!!!
I appreciate the fact that Arnie Cachelin contributes to this forum. As probably the highest ranking Lightwave programmer within Newtek, I am glad he has offered to analyze this slow rendering scene to see what the problem is.
| By Daryl Cornutt (Dfc) (24.90.251.91) on Wednesday, January 15, 2003 - 05:56 pm: |
Yes..me too..thanks Arnie.
| By Ed Mag (Ed_M) (152.163.189.134) on Wednesday, January 15, 2003 - 06:17 pm: |
I don't know Beam.... Chris made the offer, He's been at Adobe for a while now, so I'm sure he's aware of what he is and isn't allowed to do. I still believe that NewTek should give it a shot... Nothing ventured, nothing gained.. and in this case it can only help.
--
Ed
| By Brian Warren (Brianwarren) (64.185.27.219) on Wednesday, January 15, 2003 - 08:13 pm: |
This is my first time posting here though I have been watching in the background for a while now and I just have to jump in and give my two cents worth, if it is worth that much! I have recently talked to represetative of 3D Max because I feel like NewTek has totaly ignored me as a Mac user and has pushed me away. But, after talking to the rep, I felt disapointed once again when I was told that they(3D max) was dropping support for the mac. The reason I was told was because of the PPC's 2 meg cache was the problem they were having!? Every one has a different excuse why they are not supporting Mac. But, as far as why PC's are beating Macs right now is because NewTek is not addressing the code, flat out! I have four dual proccessor Mac's and all of them rock when it comes to 2D apps, but they are really lagging when it comes to 3D apps. But I also noticed that on all of my machines(all run OS 9 and OS X) that the same scenes rendered in OS 9 beat the hell out of OS X. I am not real impressed with OS X as far my 3D apps go. I am like others out there, I swithed from a PC to a Mac 4 years ago. The reason for the switch was 1, Macs delt with graphics better(I work in pre-press) and 2, Mac OS is just a whole lot more simple than Windows. I am going to stand on some nuetral ground here for a sec, niether platform give me what I need.
Yes, it really blows that NewTek chose to drop ScreamerNet from the Mac. I invested thousands into Macs running OS 9 and too many seats of LightWave to just drop it because NewTek decided to drop ScreamerNet from OS X. This is not right nor is it fair to us as customers, not just Mac users. I depend on nework rendering and I am still stuck using OS 9 becuase NewTek dosen't want to support it in OS X! We may use Macs, but we are customers too like PC users. I paid the same price for LightWave that PC users paid, but I didn't get the same product as the PC user does. I get a some what stripped down version. I mean, what it is up with dropping the Reduce Poly and Reduce Points plug-ins, put leaving the button for them in the interface making you think you have them when you don't. This is for your ears too NewTek! I am glad NewTek still has LightWave for the Mac(what other choice is there), but if you are going to do it, do it right! I will never buy an upgrade to any future releases of LightWave for Mac util NewTek addresses the problems!
Brian Warren
| By js33 (Js33) (12.237.176.146) on Wednesday, January 15, 2003 - 08:59 pm: |
Brain,
3D Studio MAX has always been a PC only app. Were you talking about some other Discreet app?
Also Newtek did not drop screamernet for the Mac unless you know something I don't. I agree it does not seem to work as well on the MAC as it does on the PC. Also there are alternative network rendering solution available now.
Cheers,
JS
| By Beam Tracer (Beamtracer) (203.109.241.109) on Wednesday, January 15, 2003 - 09:43 pm: |
No, Newtek didn't drop Screamernet, though sometimes I wish they would, and make a better alternative. Screamernet wouldn't work with Mac OSX 10.2 (Jaguar) and Newtek did nothing to resolve the issue. It was Jonathan Baker who made a patch to get Screamernet going again in OSX 10.2 (you can search earlier threads if you're interested).
3D Studio Max is not all it's cracked out to be. It is so entwined in old C++ code that Discreet is unable to port it to any other platform. There are stories that Discreet once tried to do it but gave up for technical reasons. Many years ago I thought Max would be a good choice due to the huge user base, but now I'm glad I didn't go down that route.
| By js33 (Js33) (12.237.176.146) on Wednesday, January 15, 2003 - 11:41 pm: |
Beam,
The port was tried long before 3DMAX was under the Discreet name. Actually Discreet was bought by Autodesk and Max was put under the Discreet name to go with all the other Discreet apps.
The main reason I think anyone would be interested in using Max these days is if you are involved in game development as they have alot of tools designed for producing game models and animation that are compatiable with DirectX.
Say what you will about PC games but it is a very big business now, actually bigger than the movie industry in income, and I wish Newtek had more support for this area of 3D.
Cheers,
JS
| By Sergio Varela (Satchie) (148.233.71.74) on Wednesday, January 15, 2003 - 11:45 pm: |
C«mon, another discussion about "my firing PC, yadda, yadda...", the right point is this, don't blame Apple for the non-optimized, non-Cocoa version of Lightwave for the Mac, you know who's in charge of this.
Satchie
| By (Zarathustra) (68.85.110.4) on Thursday, January 16, 2003 - 08:43 am: |
Obviously, there are a lot of us who are tired of being the red-headed stepchild at the Lightwave family picnic. I wish someone would offer a suggestion of how we could all ban together to push our grievances to Newtek. Until then, rants like this thread are all there is.
Couple of issues with Mac Lightwave:
1) I have 3 Macs. Screamernet was SUCH a hassle with Jaguar that I simply grabbed a cracked copy off the internet and solved my render problems in less then an hour. That's sad that piracy would be the easier, if not the only answer at the time (Luckily I had no Saquatch scenes)
2) I hear the talk of PCs for $500, but I dare someone to show me where you can get a usable workstation for $500 (ie - 1+gb ram, scsi hd, pro video card, DP, etc.)
| By ted devlin (Eblue) (12.149.3.2) on Thursday, January 16, 2003 - 09:25 am: |
satchie,
its a niggling little digression, but I gotta defend the decision to not go cocoa. It would not benefit LW at this point. But, what i will say is that Many developers, nobody is safe from this comment, are lazy. They don't think so, bc they are doing things the way things have been done for years. And now Apple has made a great deal of work for them, and nobody wants to spend the time to craft their software.
here are some highlights of what apple has done to make things easier for developers:
classic
carbon
more integrated carbon
applescript across the divide
more functional classic
interoperability between, all of the various dev environs for mac os X (amazing feat that)
complete i/o documentation and examples
overhaul of i/o for ease of development (firewire, usb, etc...)
iphoto to address the concerns of poor support for usb digital camera interface
idvd
leveraging OpenGL accelleration to address 2 major concerns: 2d graphics acceleration, and one of the best/most robust implementations of 3d acceleration availible outside of SGI
new Web dev tools to make network development easier
SAFARI, to show developers what quality can be in software
the code base for SAFARI for examples and usage by developers.
and thats just highlights.
I'm not saying the situation is perfect, but its apparent that Alot more can be done, than is being don Inside LW.
| By John A. Johnson (Johnny) (199.4.18.2) on Thursday, January 16, 2003 - 09:27 am: |
= I wish someone would offer a suggestion of how we could all ban together to push our grievances to Newtek. Until then, rants like this thread are all there is.=
Maybe the most productive 'banding together' would be an organized compilation of bugs and busted tools, accompanied by descriptions, and files which demonstrated the problems?
*that* there are problems has been defined. Now let's work on solving them?
j
| By ted devlin (Eblue) (12.149.3.2) on Thursday, January 16, 2003 - 10:49 am: |
isn't that what this thread (and forum) is all about?
| By ~@~ (Phong) (63.93.101.42) on Thursday, January 16, 2003 - 12:45 pm: |
This will be my Final Post to this Forum; that is, ;-) unless I am inclined to reply to any comments.
My experinece with NewTek has been one of the most frustrating events I can recall.
Steve Worley's plugins (mentioned on Flay.com years ago) attracted me to LightWave and when I read NewTek's offering of Mac LightWave 6.5, was excited, and ordered my copy.
I was surprised and confused when I received LightWave 6.0 and the link to download 6.5. This was not mentioned in the advertisement.
Using another alias, I asked a question on comp.graphics.apps.lightwave about the dongle; causing the Hooligans (1) to raise their ugly "you must be a pirate" head.
This was quite insulting because I have been programming since 1966 and was one of the folks from ARPA who instigated what would be later known as the internet.
I let the lame words roll off me, like 'water off a duck's back' and did not attempt to 'feed the trolls', reply, or defend myself.
It was about this time that NewTek reinstated the forums and as a customer, using another alias, I asked a few questions and made a few statements (nothing negative and still located in the archives).
One morning, I started receiving extremely negative email from one of my more famous sites; to the effect of killing me, and when I logged into the forum, saw similar comments, saw red (got angry) and posted without thinking or waiting until I calmed down (in archives). Later I apologized to the community for 'flying off the handle'.
The rest is easy to figure out, because (imo) 'things don't change people do'; (in archives) so I will not waste bandwidth by rehashing it.
Eventually, I shut-up on the forum, beat the parts of LightWave I needed to use into submission, (in order to get my work done), and have finished (that part of the movie which required using LightWave); however, I am using G2 for some quick modifications to some of the scenes.
As far as getting NewTek's attention, several things have come to mind over the past few years and the first was legal.
I saved 'hardcopy' of the 6.5 offering, showed it to several friends, who are lawyers and judges, and was told there was enough there for false advertising; however, having spent 18 years in various courts, defending work that was 'ripped off' and winning, plus a stroke, 14 years ago, decided I would not go this route (I'm to old and have too many things I need to finish, to waste more time and money going this route.).
Another alternative was to show 'my graphic pen was stronger than the NewTek sword' using parody and (imo) what I created, even though it is not on the net, yet, and may never show up, is really funny and does a real smack at the things that upset me.
Another alternative was to call on old friends, and most, except those who know me personally, would not believe 'who I know', and the subtle influence I have within some of the largest corporations; however, I tend not to use friends in this fashion... and (imo) why bother or as I learned during military service, "it don't mean nothing".
So what am I going to do? Nothing, because this post is allowing me, once again, to vent. Will I continue to use LightWave on the Mac? Yes! Will I give NewTek any more money for upgrades I should have received for free; fixing 6.5? No, NEVER!
However, ;-) some of my 'brothers/buds' and I will be in El Paso in May ( http://www.borderrun.com ), then travel on to Myrtle Beach ( http://www.myrtlebeachbikeweek.com ), and are considering a short detour in-between (-;
(1) Hooligans - Please see the LightWave 6 Manual (Introduction and Tutorials) pg 1.1, "COMMUNITY", lines one and two for where I got this word... and ;-) Please try to keep the "he's leaving, good riddance" comments to yourselves (-;
Phong
| By John A. Johnson (Johnny) (199.4.18.2) on Thursday, January 16, 2003 - 01:06 pm: |
=isn't that what this thread (and forum) is all about?=
ostensibly, yes, Ted..my idea would be to actively keep track of and submit relevant files in the case of bugs and busted tools.
that would take things further than discussion, as it would provide actual files for LW engineers to look at.
J
| By Jim Aboltin Sr. (Jjat1st) (209.86.200.62) on Thursday, January 16, 2003 - 01:08 pm: |
Phong...
Just got through reading your epistle on Newtek, and Lightwave in particular. I'm one of those that believe strongly in free speech so will not comment on your comments. Reading between the line though, I got the impression that you may have been with AFRTS in the military. Was such the case? If so, we are commrades in arms...I having been with AFRTS from 1950-1969. Let me know! - jim
| By ted devlin (Eblue) (12.149.3.2) on Thursday, January 16, 2003 - 01:35 pm: |
hey phong,
i think you and i are cut from the same cloth.
I am probably a little Less frustrated than you, but i think its a matter of perspective. I hail from an even worse situation, one involving a certain software maker whose name is "smokable", and whose product doesn't even try to get close to the advertized list of features. it plain "doesn't work" not even a little. Worst product ever released period.
I have had blowups with them, and I too have seen the coronary at the end of the tunnel. I try to stick to nagging encouragement here, bc i know of at least one programmer who regularly visits and takes this forum seriously. I know i am arrogant and i take myself with a grain of salt, so everybody else will have to accept that i do the same to them.
I like the promise of LW, and want to see fantastic product, but right now a good 40% of the features are compromised, either by poor ui, poor implementation, or simple BUGS. if some of my words are harsh, deal with it, they are only Beneficial to newtek. I want to Love LW, and swear off any other package, but Newtek must deliver, and frankly, a lot of mac users agree with me, and as soon as you look into it without a PC/Mac/newtek bias you'll realize that alot of others Users will benefit from my suggestions.
guys at newtek: don't take what i say as a personal attack, i see an opening i say whats on my mind, use it as a challenge
| By Ed Mag (Ed_M) (205.188.208.43) on Thursday, January 16, 2003 - 04:52 pm: |
Ted, you can bet that there are more than a *few* programmers lurking on these particular boards... The competition is probably keeping a watchful eye on the NewTek/Mac community. It's likely that they will attempt to capitalize on each instance when NewTek drops the ball or fails to deliver. We can probably add some folks from Apple to that list of lurkers as well. Anyway, the heat is on, we'll just have to wait and see how it all pans out.
--
Ed M.
| By js33 (Js33) (12.237.176.146) on Thursday, January 16, 2003 - 10:53 pm: |
How about compiling a comprehensive list of all the things that are non functuntional or semi-functional. Then we can compare those items to the PC version and see how it stacks up.
Cheers,
JS
| By arthur argote (Archiea) (68.164.235.107) on Friday, January 17, 2003 - 12:02 am: |
Phong,
One thing I wanted to understand... You said they shipped you 6.0 with a URL to DL 6.5. I'm assuming this 6.5 upgrade was free? I don;t understand why you would consider suing NT for that. its not too uncommon that one has to Dl the latest version of a software since the published disk can easily lag the release of an update. Not the best circumstance, but not worth suing for unless I missunderstood your fact...
| By loebek (Loebek) (217.20.199.60) on Friday, January 17, 2003 - 07:59 am: |
newtek should open a bug database. not that kind of pseudo bug database that microsoft has on their site.
something like this:
http://www.debian.org/Bugs/
http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/
simple and usefull!
It will help Newtek A LOT for makeing their software stable and fast.
| By ted devlin (Eblue) (12.149.3.2) on Friday, January 17, 2003 - 09:15 am: |
LoeBek,
that by itself will have little effect on anything. bc without the developers on board with it, its just another layer of crap between us and them.
the following link is intended for NT developers only, its something i came across in my travels, that has been very helpfull, and is for developers ONLY. If you are not a developer please do not follow this link, If you do follow this link, pls do not read the content or make comments on it. Its only good use is in self reflection, and any criticism would only undermine its possible effectiveness. if you do feel compelled to comment on this, Please Do not say anything that might put anybody in a defensive position.
sorry for doing this publicly arnie, heres a link:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html
its written by one of the arctitects of the original MS Word, he is very well respected in programming, and the link is very good for anybody who wants to get better at programming (individuals, teams, or companies). he addresses many sources of problems during development, in a clear, concise, manner. And he has links to some heavy-duty resources. I offer this up, for enjoyment.
eblue
| By loebek (Loebek) (217.20.199.60) on Friday, January 17, 2003 - 10:35 am: |
ted:
your link is very intresting.
What Im talking about is point 4:
"4. Do you have a bug database?
I don't care what you say. If you are developing code, even on a team of one, without an organized database listing all known bugs in the code, you are going to ship low quality code....."
If users can post bugs, workarounds etc. that will help newtek develope better code.
| By ted devlin (Eblue) (12.149.3.2) on Friday, January 17, 2003 - 10:52 am: |
just the kind of comment i asked you guys to hold back.
| By John A. Johnson (Johnny) (199.4.18.2) on Friday, January 17, 2003 - 11:04 am: |
maybe only links which we *ought* to use should be posted?
I had some success directly e-mailing Gildardo Triana..he's a stellar help on the phone, and seems to be too busy for e-mail much of the time, but perhaps if he receives enough of the same bug reports, he can take it to the engineers?
Johnny
| By Michael Wolf (Lightwolf) (217.230.9.249) on Friday, January 17, 2003 - 11:12 am: |
About the bug database:
I'm quite sure that they have an internal one, any company that produces the amount of code NT produces has one.
On the other side, how many companies do you know that have an "open" bug database?
Cheers,
Mike
| By loebek (Loebek) (217.20.199.60) on Friday, January 17, 2003 - 11:34 am: |
It needs a great amount of curage to have a open bugdatabase. Because everyone can see the bugs and maybe thinking:"oh, this software has so many bugs, i go for an other one." The only problem is, that software companys who dont have an open bugdatabase kind of lie to us.
Open bugdatabases are a BIG gain for developers, Users AND the company.
I will look forward into open bugdatabases on commercial products. This is a real, honest feature for everyone.
Please read this and you will understand:
In the Beginning...Was the Command Line
by Neal Stephenson
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0380815931/qid=1042824228/sr=1-6/ref=sr_1_6/102-4181113-4914537?v=glance&s=books
| By arthur argote (Archiea) (68.164.65.7) on Saturday, January 18, 2003 - 10:31 am: |
Interesting benchmarks at this page...
http://www.robgalbraith.com/diginews/2003-01/2003_01_07_macpc.html
http://www.macintouch.com/g4performance02.html
| By arthur argote (Archiea) (68.164.65.7) on Saturday, January 18, 2003 - 10:46 am: |
On that page was an interesting chart showing the increments in proceessor changes in the pas few years.. ish!
______________G4__________P4__
11/14/02_________________3.06
9/18/02_____1.25
5/06/02__________________2.53
1/28/02______1.0
8/27/01__________________2.0
7/18/01_____867
2/19/01_____733
11/20/00__________________1.5
7/19/00 ____500x2
3/08/00 __________________1.0 P3
2/16/00_____500x1
12/20/99__________________800 P3
11/13/99_____450
8/31/99______400 - announced 500, failed to ship
8/02/99 __________________600 P3