3dsMax on a Mac

[Wetzel]

I looked, and the last postings I found were from 2006.

My team is a mac school, and has two gorgeous labs of Macs. They have boot camp, and installed 3dsmax. However, when they reboot into OSX and then back into Windows, the software looses its authentication. I only got a fuzzy brief today from the lead teacher, not the animation teacher, but thought I would see if anyone else has had success or troubles when running with bootcamp.

Thanks!

Wetzel

[BiTurboS4]

Boot Camp should handle that well, or pick up a copy of VMWare Fusion. It works just as good as Parallels but handles video hardware acceleration better.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Word of warning, if you try to use both Boot Camp AND Parallels 3ds max (and windows) may throw a fit.

I ran into the same problem with my mac about a year ago, if I recall correctly I just re validated 3ds and it worked from then on.

I can also attest to the power of Parallels, I rendered 3/4 of the 397 animation on my mac via Parallels and it was reasonably quick.

[artdutra04]

Better question: Autodesk owns Maya in addition to 3D Studio Max. Maya is cross platform between Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux.

Why not allow either 3DS Max and/or Maya for the Autodesk-sponsored competition?

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by artdutra04

Better question: Autodesk owns Maya in addition to 3D Studio Max. Maya is cross platform between Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux.

Why not allow either 3DS Max and/or Maya for the Autodesk-sponsored competition?

THat would be nice, I almost prefer Maya over 3ds Max. It has always seemed a little more featured.

[Schnabel]

My school has a new mac lab just installed this year that is for nothing but Maya, and one thing that I have found from it is that it is extremely powerful compared to 3Ds Max. Also it's very very complicated to learn according to the teacher.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Schnabel

My school has a new mac lab just installed this year that is for nothing but Maya, and one thing that I have found from it is that it is extremely powerful compared to 3Ds Max. Also it's very very complicated to learn according to the teacher.

Ive found that it is very different. The thing I like about it over 3ds Max, the student/personal edition is free. And while it does put an ugly watermark on that is quite a small price to pay to learn such a powerful software (http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet...112&id=7639525)

Back to the topic at hand, a quick google search revealed several threads on Apple and Autodesk forums saying that this is an issue.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread....2968&tstart=60

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet...linkID=9240818 is the hot fix that is suggested in the thread. I cannot recall if this is what I originally set up 3ds with (This was close to a year ago) My suggestion, try that. If it doesnt help run a couple google searches (3ds max and boot camp licensing issues) There are dozens of forums with potential solutions. Hope this helps.

EDIT: Reasoning, Mac's have Sata controllers in them if I recall, (Least my MBP does) the hot fix I linked to is due to a problem with Autodesk's licensing and the Sata controllers, this does not appear to be a boot camp issue.

[Michael Hill]

I've used Maya before, and...well...it's an experience. Just trying to navigate through the hundreds of menus available at the click of a button is pretty darn confusing. I much prefer the 3DSMAX layout.

There are, however, some things Maya does better than Max.

[Kevin Thorp]

When Autodesk bought Maya we thought they might allow it to be used in the Autodesk Visualization Award.

But so far, no; only 3ds Max. We'll see what happens when they post the 2009 rules.

However if you already know one 3d program you can learn another pretty quickly... IF you keep an open mind.

[Mr. Van]

Has anyone dealt with using Inventor on a Mac? Do you have the same authentication issues? Are there other problems?

[keen101]

That would be cool if they allowed using Blender too. http://www.blender.org/ It has a steep learning curve (at least for me), but the people who can use it, use it well.

as for the mac question:

I have no idea why it does that. Theoretically it should be fine and not complain. But, you could try Virtualbox instead. http://www.virtualbox.org/