does a snowball have a better chance in hell than houdini being ported to osX?

–adam

As a former Electric Image user and Electric Image employee, I feel your pain. It would be interesting to see if Houdini would use Aqua. But to tell the truth I like its SGI like GUI under Windows. Its very refreshing from blandness of MAX and Maya's Windows standard GUI's, and yucky Amiga like GUI of Lightwave.

But on the more serious side. There is no Mental Ray or Renderman on OSX. Isn't it odd that Steve Jobs got Shake and MAya ported to OSX, but not Renderman. I am not on the ‘inside’ but I suspect that as soon Jobs forces PIXAR to release PRMAN for OSX, and/or gets MentalImages to port MR3 to OSX, all major players will release for OSX. There is MentalRay for Maya on OSX but its locked to Maya OSX. So at least we know that its possible to have MR3 under OSX.

I am not a techie, but I suspect that SESI could do it. If they could port to Linux, and AW could port to OSX, so can SESI port Houdini to OSX. But I guess it comes down to demand. There isn't that much demand for Maya on OSX, relatevely few use Lightwave on OSX. discreet* is not going to port 3DS MAX to OSX soon if ever, Avid has all but ignored it. The future are probably 64bit Linux and 64bit Windows OSes. From economics point of view, G4s, as they are right now, make the worst 3d workstations. They are great for After Effects, compositing, DTP, but not for hardcore 3d work. They are underpowered and expensive compared to Wintel/Linux platforms, and have inferior OpenGL compared to SGI Fuel. A recent review in CGW or 3D World compared Dell's P4 3.06ghz to G4 1.25 ghz dual, using Lightwave and Shake tests. Dell was cheaper and twice as fast in all major tasks. So Apple has to turn the situation around by providing machines that in same class or faster then Intel/AMD powered boxes, at similar price ranges. Heck, they could charge premium but the machines have to be worth it, i.e. faster then Intel/AMD.

Dave Rindner

mental ray is on osx

http://www.mentalimages.com/p203.html [mentalimages.com]

Then its just a question of demand. Of which I think there is not enough. Why would anyone want to do 3d on Apple in the 1st place anyway?

Dave Rindner