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Max for OS X

post #1 of 10
1/29/02 at 4:45pm
Thread Starter 
Does anyone think it might be a good idea to set up a petition to persuade discreet to port MAX to OS X?

I spoke to a couple of execs from Avid at the Digital Media Show in London last Year and they said that they were into porting to SoftImage Linux but that now that Maya had come out for X they would monitor the situation and see what demand there was for an X port.

We use Max on 15 PCs and would switch to Mac tomorrow it became available
Greatly Insane
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post #2 of 10
1/29/02 at 9:29pm
You're not talking about Max from Cycling 74 software, are you? I imagine not, since Avid & Softimage & Maya don't have anything to do with the Max I'm thinking of.
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post #3 of 10
2/4/02 at 9:12am
He's talking about 3DStudioMAX... an over-rated mid level 3D animation program totally reliant on 3rd party plug-ins for production quality functionality (but then I wouldn't be biased would I? )

I honestly don't see it coming to OSX anytime soon (5 years). It's just too closely tied to windows that it would require a major re-write from the ground up.

It has the largest user base in the world, so I dont think there's any incentive to port to the "other 5%".

Having said all that... I'd love to see it ported to OSX so PC drones have one less "there's no software for the mac".
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post #4 of 10
2/4/02 at 10:48am
  • Leonis
  • AI Community Dictator
3D Max does rely a lot on third party plug ins

The cost of the applicaton is cheaper than Soft and Maya but after adding the plug ins the cost will get really close.

3D Max is kind of unstable in my experience.
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post #5 of 10
2/22/02 at 9:10pm
I think he gave you a company line. Believe me, the question of a Mac port comes up frequently, they know the Mac community wants this program. And graphic design is one of the core user groups of the Mac, of course there's a market here.

The questions they are probably weighing are: 1) Can they sell enough copies of the Mac version to justify porting it, 2) Do they want to maintain two separate code bases (3DSM isn't even available for general Unix, is it?), and 3) Considering the added value their third-party develops give to 3DSM, are those third-party developers also going to embrace the Mac?

My take on the company is that there will never be a Mac version of 3DSM. They seem quite happy just in their current market niche.
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post #6 of 10
2/23/02 at 4:25am
Thread Starter 
we're using Max 3.1 on NT 4 at the mo. This is due to the fact that years ago the college purchased 3d studio for DOS and has upgraded ever since. Thus we now pickup Max upgrades for a ridiculously low price. I and many other lecturers who currently run MAX would switch to a Mac OS X version if it were available. Max has a massive user base and if steve is committed to increasing market share then pulling out the stops to get MAX ported would be a good move. The kudos alone would be worth it.

The number of PC based designers who use MAX that I know of is increasing. The worst thing is that because MAX won't run on Mac they immediately believe that most software won't run on Mac and thus don't even entertain the idea of looking at the mac for any task opting instead for PC based video and DVd solutions.

I thought steve's big push was for increasing market share? You can't do this while attitudes and misconceptions like this exist.

MAX for OS X - let's have it
Greatly Insane
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post #7 of 10
2/23/02 at 10:04am
  • Leonis
  • AI Community Dictator
The problem is that Discreet engineers have no knowledge on the Mac platform. The R&D for a platform they don't know is going to be too huge and risky.

Also, MAX code is so tie to Windows.......I would guess even the Mac version is here it's going to be a poorly ported app
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Mac Pro 2.66, 5GB RAM, 250+120 HD, 23" Cinema Display
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post #8 of 10
2/25/02 at 3:43pm
I use 3D Studio Max in school everyday and have for 2.5 years...I can say that it "Gorges" Ram and is highly unstable when doing anything that requires massive segments. I really dislike Max because of its limitations and the fact that it is a DOG on a Pentium 3 1.2 Ghz Dell...simply a nasty gorger of an app that isnt all that usefull...its like the impractical version of autocad..oh, wait, thats another story...I WANT MAYA...
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post #9 of 10
2/25/02 at 4:11pm
Discreet is very anti-Mac. At least that is the impression we got when they visited our company to demo some of their software. 3DSMax's architeccture is also very tied towards Windows. They re-wrote Max from the ground up for version 3 or 4 (can't remember), and rumors are that they have reached the limit of how far they can expand the package. Just shows how much they know. Even if they wanted to, they couldn't port Max to Linux. And they really want to, but can't because of the way Max was written.

There have been some whispers that they are thinking of rewriting Max again. Since Discreet is aware that many people were asking for Linux and Mac versions, there might be slight chance that it will come over to the Mac. But I wouldn't hold my breath. There are a lot of better packages out there. Max only really dominates the Gaming industry. And that is starting to shrink due to pressure from Maya, Softimage XSI, and even Lightwave.

Now Softimage XSI being ported to MacOSX is a whole different ballgame

I remember someone starting a petition for XSI on OSX. Whatever happened to that?

- trowa
.: trowa
.: "To see with eyes unclouded by hate"
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.: trowa
.: "To see with eyes unclouded by hate"
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post #10 of 10
2/26/02 at 2:48am
runs fine on my TiBook <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> you just have to know how to get around the fact that there is no perlelell port for a dongle

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