By (Zarathustra) (68.85.110.4) on Friday, January 17, 2003 - 09:32 am:

Have you seen the winning tutorial in this month's challenge? It's on how to use Ska. What's Ska, other than a genre of music? It's a plugin that handles sub-surface scattering. Great, right? Well, it would be IF you had a PC.

- Ska is a Shader and PixelFilter plugin for lightwave 6.0/6.5/7.0 INTEL. -

So, Newtek has decided that the best tutorial is for an explaination on how to use a 3rd-party plug-in that not all it's users have access to.

Well, there's always G2. Who needs a free plug-in, anyway?

By David Michael McClain (Miguel446) (208.193.202.115) on Friday, January 17, 2003 - 10:09 am:

I do that's who! I have the same gripe... I thought this was a Newtek contest. I was really looking forward to seeing some top notch tutorials on APP SPECIFIC methodology.

Oh, well.. at least I can benefit from some of the RUNNERS UP!

~~~~~fuming and feeling just a little left out~~~~~

(:-(

m

By (Zarathustra) (68.85.110.4) on Friday, January 17, 2003 - 11:16 am:

Here's Shawn's initial posting for his winning tutorial. Scroll down and you'll see Chuck Baker's reponse to this issue:

http://forums.newtek.com/discus/messages/2/36997.html?1042822901

By Darthmole (Darthmole) (212.113.199.253) on Friday, January 17, 2003 - 12:01 pm:

Ah, so THAT'S where Mr Baker has got to. I notice he hasn't deigned to berate or appease any Mac users on this forum for some time...

(I love the phrase used on the other thread, about Mac users being the adopted redheaded kid at the family picnic. That's JUST how I feel at the moment.)

By (Zarathustra) (68.85.110.4) on Friday, January 17, 2003 - 04:30 pm:

I could use a little help, guys:

http://forums.newtek.com/discus/messages/2/36997.html?1042822901

By John A. Johnson (Johnny) (199.4.18.2) on Friday, January 17, 2003 - 04:44 pm:

My feeling on this is that we'd probably do ourselves a big favor by systematically and carefully documenting bugs and broken tools, supplying NT with relevant files where possible.

This way, the Mac issues aren't tied to anything other than the fact that there are Mac LW issues which need to be addressed.

J

By Beam Tracer (Beamtracer) (203.109.241.109) on Friday, January 17, 2003 - 05:14 pm:

Yeah, my first reaction to the tutorial was similar. "Hey, what a fantastic tutorial" followed by a feeling of disappointment that I can't be involved.

It's mostly a symbolic thing. Whether or not we can participate in one tutorial isn't going to have a major practical impact on our careers or our lives.

What it does impact on is the Mac community's feelings of participation in the group. Newtek is celebrating something that Mac Lightwaver's can't use.

I get the impression that Newtek is essentially a Windows company. I get the impression that the company headquarters in Texas is decked out in Windows machines. I get the impression that most of the people working for Newtek give little or no thought to the Mac as they go about their everyday work duties. Maybe if there were more Macintosh computers in Newtek offices it would encourage the staff to think about cross platform issues.

The Mac platform holds a lot untapped potential for Newtek. Away from 3D, a large proportion of people using computers for creative content are doing it on the Mac. In music and audio the Mac reigns supreme. In video the Mac has always been dominant. Desktop publishing also. This is a large group of creative people who could potentially come to the world of 3D. It's in Newtek's interests to encourage the Mac community.

Newtek hasn't set out to be anti-Mac, but there has been neglect of the Mac Lightwavers. If you think that fostering Lightwave "evangelism" is important, why not encourage some of this evangelism for Mac Lightwavers, as there hasn't been any so far.

By John A. Johnson (Johnny) (67.28.37.13) on Friday, January 17, 2003 - 06:10 pm:

what about the idea of a Mac-only Gallery?

the idea wouldn't be to deepen the rift between Mac and Windows users, but to demonstrate the creative chops of Mac LW users as a separate group of creatives, valid on our own, and not as a subset of the greater, Windows-based crowd.

creative chops as opposed to techno-chops. It's one thing to really know your stuff on the keyboard; another to create art. This may be one way of establishing a voice independant from the windows group..to show that we aren't the 'oh yeah...THOSE guys,' but people who create solid art who incidentally use a different box to do it.

J

By David Michael McClain (Miguel446) (208.193.202.115) on Friday, January 17, 2003 - 06:18 pm:

I thought it sucked at first too (not the tut, the intel plug)...

BUT SHAWN DID AN AWESOME JOB!

Don't miss this fact.

Let's collect all of this frustrated energy and visit

http://web.infinito.it/utenti/k/killjoy/home.htm

and then ask

adkjoy@yahoo.com

very politely if he wouldn't mind porting to the mac. We all know about the generous support of our programming Mac-ers who port this stuff pro bono (well for the most part).

I know I did.

Thanks Shawn. I'm archiving your tutorial until Ska releases for my Mac! Enjoy the reward you earned.

M

By Larry Shultz "SplineGod" (Larrys) (216.244.33.89) on Friday, January 17, 2003 - 07:15 pm:

David and John,
I think you have have excellent ideas. It simply doesnt pay to get overly emotional about this.
Carefully document problems and supply them to Newtek. If you see plugins that you think should be on the Mac, email the programmer. Keep in mind that he wrote it for free. With commercial developers you should also do the same but make sure you ask because you really wish to purchase the product as opposed to just not wanting to feel excluded.

By John A. Johnson (Johnny) (67.28.37.13) on Friday, January 17, 2003 - 07:52 pm:

=Carefully document problems and supply them to Newtek.=

Larry;

do you have an e-mail address which you feel is best for this?

thanks!

Johnny

By Chuck Baker (Cbaker) (66.69.70.123) on Friday, January 17, 2003 - 08:58 pm:

The email address for bug reports is lwbugs@newtek.com, and it's also a good idea to send the tech@newtek.com so that Tech support can test and cofirm, and pass their results along to the product team. Feature requests should go to lwfeatures@newtek.com. Both can (and really should) also be discussed here.

David, thanks for taking the moment to think about the matter another way, and find the constructive opportunity.

My wife says she needs her computer, and mine's in the shop so I'm at her mercy for access for a few days. Back as soon as I can!

By Larry Shultz "SplineGod" (Larrys) (216.244.33.89) on Saturday, January 18, 2003 - 03:25 am:

The email address for bug reports is...umm..uhh..never mind.

By John A. Johnson (Johnny) (65.56.128.162) on Saturday, January 18, 2003 - 06:29 am:

doesn't it work?

J

By Chuck Baker (Cbaker) (66.69.70.123) on Saturday, January 18, 2003 - 08:32 am:

Yes, it does! I think Larry is just disappointed I got it posted ahead of him!

By policarpo (Policarpo) (66.25.138.182) on Saturday, January 18, 2003 - 09:16 am:

hey guys...why don't you contact these third party developers who creat INTEL plug-ins to see if they have time to port it to the MAC...I've done so in the past and they love to hear excitement about their work!

or better yet...why don't one of you MAC users take up the task of doing the conversion of INTEL plug-ins to the MAC using Code Warrior...i know there's documentation out there on it.

Stop griping and do something about it. it's impossible for a company to control what third party developers do with their time when they want to implement solutions in the form of plug-ins.

with the amount of energy you guys spend griping you could have figured out how to take the source file and compile it for the MAC.

Be a HERO instead of a BURDEN!

By policarpo (Policarpo) (66.25.138.182) on Saturday, January 18, 2003 - 09:17 am:

hey guys...why don't you contact these third party developers who create INTEL plug-ins to see if they have time to port it to the MAC...I've done so in the past and they love to hear excitement about their work!

or better yet...why don't one of you MAC users take up the task of doing the conversion of INTEL plug-ins to the MAC using Code Warrior...i know there's documentation out there on it.

Stop griping and do something about it. it's impossible for a company to control what third party developers do with their time when they want to implement solutions in the form of plug-ins.

with the amount of energy you guys spend griping you could have figured out how to take the source file and compiled it for the MAC 10 times already.

Be a HERO instead of a FLAMER!

By Chuck Baker (Cbaker) (66.69.70.123) on Saturday, January 18, 2003 - 09:37 am:

Hi, Beam!

General LightWave evangelism has been successful at increasing market share for the product on both platforms. We also do specifically evangelize the Mac community by encouraging Mac print and web publications to review LightWave, and by regularly providing press releases to these outlets.

One thing that I would like to add to the efforts we've made over the last few months would be to be able to bring more Mac-specific user case studies to the attention of these publications and general publications. There are some interesting companies using LW on the Mac - see our profile of Luminetik, for example. Luminetik has received coverage in a number of online sites, including Mac-specific Architosh.com, and in general-coverage Post Magazine.

We weren't allowed to promote it to the media ourselves, but were very gratified when ILM allowed mention of the use of LightWave on the Mac by the team that handled creating and animating the CG R2D2 in Episode II in several publications.

NewTek's history with platforms is a little different than your picture. NewTek originally developed products for the Amiga, which is as much the source of desktop video as the Mac is the source of desktop publishing. Our business systems were Macs, and every desktop had a Mac on it, and Tech Support and development also had Amiga systems.

MIPS machines were added for the development of ScreamerNet in 1993/1994, SGIs, PCs and DEC Alphas in 1994 for multi-platform LightWave 4.0, and Macs were added to LightWave Multi-platform development for the 5.0 cycle. Changeover to PCs for business purposes on most desktops (please note, not all) didn't occur until 1997 and the move to SA. The documentation department remains Mac-based, and the only departments that have no Macs in use are accounting and sales.

So that's the platform history of the company, and you can draw conclusions from there. I can tell you that we agree with you that we'd like more Macs than we currently have, and are working on that. I spent some time exchanging emails with my liaison at Apple on that topic this past week, as well as checking on some machines we have in repair there, which we are missing sorely.

By Beam Tracer (Beamtracer) (203.109.241.109) on Saturday, January 18, 2003 - 05:25 pm:

Hi Chuck,

I have noticed that Mac publictions like MacCentral and CreativeMac are covering Lightwave more than they used to. A year or 2 ago these sites didn't even mention when a new version of Lightwave was released.

I'm glad to hear that Newtek intends to expand on the number of Macs in the company headquarters. Even executives in their offices should have Macs. Tim Jenison should have a Titanium Powerbook on his desk! It gets everyone thinking cross-platform.

By kenneth woodruff (Kenneth) (12.236.254.153) on Tuesday, January 21, 2003 - 07:11 pm:

Everyone in the SF (LW development) office had at least one Mac.

You can take that as an endorsement of the ground gained or a reminder of the ground lost. =)

By kenneth woodruff (Kenneth) (12.236.254.153) on Tuesday, January 21, 2003 - 07:16 pm:

Everyone in the SF (LW development) office had at least one Mac.

You can take that as an endorsement of the ground gained or a reminder of the ground lost. =)

By Beam Tracer (Beamtracer) (203.109.241.109) on Tuesday, January 21, 2003 - 07:45 pm:

I think I see what you mean, Kenneth. Past tense.

By riki (Suture) (203.109.249.131) on Thursday, January 23, 2003 - 05:13 pm:

Hey John I did a list off Bugs for Mac but no one took any noticed, new releases came out with the same bugs. It was a waste of time.

http://forums.newtek.com/discus/messages/2/9098.html?1006732690

By riki (Suture) (203.109.249.131) on Thursday, January 23, 2003 - 05:19 pm:

See also http://forums.newtek.com/discus/messages/2/14238.html?1014629208

By Chuck Baker (Cbaker) (207.235.86.2) on Friday, January 24, 2003 - 01:49 pm:

Thanks for the reminder, Riki. I've sent the links along to the new bug wrangler and some of our Mac beta folks for review. I'll have to cut and paste those threads over to the new forum for further follow-up there.

Please rest assured that the fact that any issues you reported hadn't been addressed as of 7.5 does not mean that your time and effort was wasted or that such issues won't be addressed.

By Beam Tracer (Beamtracer) (203.109.241.109) on Friday, January 24, 2003 - 03:05 pm:

Can I add to that list:

*BRDF bug
*Quicktime variable framerate bug
*Modeler color picker crash bug

By riki (Suture) (203.109.249.131) on Friday, January 24, 2003 - 04:11 pm:

Hi Chuck thanks for the reply and follow up it's much appreciated.

By riki (Suture) (203.109.249.131) on Friday, January 24, 2003 - 04:45 pm:

I think this list was the most recently revised one http://forums.newtek.com/discus/messages/2/14238.html?1014629208 I think you can ignore the other list

Some entries are wrong or overly petty, but there is some useful stuff in there.