Mac Book Pro and 3ds max, Part 3; The Reconciliation.
Well, its been 3 months. We’re back together again, my Mac Book Pro and me. After she left she lost 2 inches off her monitor and is now a svelte 15″. She’s gained some power and doubled her RAM and showed up on my doorstep. She was willing to do anything I wanted; Parallels or Bootcamp whatever it took. So I caved and gave her a second chance. But this time, I was much wiser and made sure we were using Bootcamp 1.3 before any hanky-panky ensued.
You know how they say absence makes the heart grow fonder? Well. Its true. We’ve been back together, actually working together now for about 3 months and I have to admit it. Its been great.
Remember the heat problem? Gone. The funky boot up order? Fixed. The occasional crash? Not anymore (ok, ok… that may have actually been my fault.)
But what I can tell you is that 3DS Max 9 on Mac Book Pro 15″ with a 2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2 GB ram is sweet charity.
But we are still in therapy on a couple of issues.
- The keyboard layout for keyboard shortcuts is still a little off. The inability to delete anything in Max is solved but you must add the function key to delete key… Not perfect, but I can live with it.
- The DVI port doesn’t mirror the desktop, only extends it. This is not fun for demos or training gigs.
There may be a couple of other nit-picky things here and there but overall, the reasons for the original breakup have longs since faded.
The MBP is a viable 3dsMax-worthy machine for light to medium duty work.
On the upside, I have really enjoyed using some of the OSX based production apps. Especially Motion. Thats a fairly decent little compositor. it also seems pretty well integrated into FinalCut HD, which I’m slowly picking up.
So for now, this Mac bachelor is in a one-laptop relationship again. But where is this relationship going? We’ve been talking about adding a little one, and it looks as though there might be a Mac Mini in the offing. More later (wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more…)
Editor’s note: Here are the links to the 1st three parts of the MBP + 3dsMax experience.
mm youll love FCS2, and i have worked with max a lot in my MBP, althought im working in maya on osx right now… i found this system much more reliable than my Dell… about the delete problem i use option/alt+delete… the licensing problem dosnt stop with the laptop, even than in my MacPro just works great… :S
I dont get it. How where the extreme heat and often crashes (which you wrote about in previus post) your fault?! How did you fixed it? I`m really intrested in, because I`m going to buy a MBP if it runs MAX with no performance or crash issues.
Hey Meti he is referring to the older MBP with intel core duo 1’s it had major heat issues…(posta be much better with the core 2 duos
I just bought my macbook pro and love it.. I got the best one you
could buy 17″ HighRez Screen, 170gig 7000rpm Harddrive, 2.4ghz and 4 gigs of ram.
and wouldn’t you know it ….3 days later apple releases a mbp with 2.6ghz …Damn! thats how it goes with computers tho!
I installed VMware Fusion and it works great with anything Photoshop and below… I installed max 9 and Vray with no problems its just laggy working in your viewports.. not extreme but you notice it. and as far as rendering times geez!…
My buying pattern is to buy the best computer I can and use it at least 3 years before I upgrade…
I have one scene in max that took my old computer
(Dell XPS Laptop Gen 1.. 3.0 Pentium 4/1 gig or ram/)
1hour and 20mins to render one frame.. and the same render on my macbook pro running VMware fusion…. 8 minutes!! HOLY SPIT!
Im sure it will be much better and faster when I get my copy of Leopard with the New and improved Bootcamp…from what I under stand when running bootcamp windows has the whole compter to itself and it dosen’t have to share resources with osX…
But I still say fusion is a great option for anything short of video editing and real time 3d.. Cant get my CounterStrike Source to run in it….Hope this helps for those people on the fence..like I was for 3 months!
[...] Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 [...]
3ds Max 2008 on a Mac Book Pro « said this on November 16, 2007 at 10:03 am |
[...] Editor’s note: Here are the links to the 1st three parts of the MBP + 3dsMax experience. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 [...]
Mac Book Pro and 3ds Max: The baby-daddy needs lovin’ « said this on December 4, 2007 at 2:36 pm |
i have a 17″ macbook pro 2,4ghz 2gig mem
i installed bootcamp, xp, 3ds max, vray and i start a benchmark render and its fucking slooooow when other macbook pro’s time is 5min my is hours…. whats the problem???? sorry for my english… here i the benchmark http://www.vrayelite.com/benchmarks.php
The latest version of Bootcamp is 2.0. Is there a reason to use version 1.3 instead?
Not that I’m aware of. Its seems to be working OK, though I have had one report of spontaneous crashing in 3ds Max with BC 2.0. Though I’ve never seen it, nor been able have it occur at all on my system.
I am new to this Forum but thaks for the information you have shared out…. I find it very helpful since I am in the mnarket trying to decide whether to buy me a MAC Pro Desktop with these specs:(Two 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Harpertown” processors
2GB memory (800MHz DDR2 fully-buffered DIMM ECC)
ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT graphics with 256MB memory
320GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s 7200-rpm hard drive1
16x double-layer SuperDrive) I would be very interested to know you opinion and see if I will be able to Run MAX9 successfully vs. a PC.
thanks
Hey all, I have the same problem. I want to install 3ds max on a mac (bootcamp)
I follow this discussion, and I tried every suggestion given in this forum. The software run only 2 weeks and after that, the license file break. I dont know what else I can do. If someone have the final solution to this problem, please tell me what I should do.
thank you
hey! Thanks for the tips
I haven’t had any problems with 3d max in my mac at all, the only thing that is making me crazy is that i CANT select multiple polygons by holding the Ctrl key down, because it brings me up a menu as if I was right clicking… Has anyone had this issue? Does someone know how to solve it?
Thanks!!
Hello, how can i download 3dsmax with vray in my mac using windows? please reply! thanks.
I love your site!
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“… all, the only thing that is making me crazy is that i CANT select multiple polygons by holding the Ctrl key down, because it brings me up a menu as if I was right clicking… Has anyone had this issue? Does someone know how to solve it?”
VERY GOOD QUESTION!!! i also really need to know, before i start. Multiple selections are essential.
This is the only place I can find with mention to the multiple selection question. I’m absolutely dying for a solution to this problem; 3ds Max is near unusable for me when I don’t have access so such functionality.
i haven’t seen it with my own eyes, but i think u can do a Multiple Selection simply with the command key. If not i suppose the author would have mentioned it (i picked the issue from a comment). But final clarification would be appreciated. So please anyone just say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’!
thanx in advance