The all Mac game art workflow
admin
Hey guys,
Looking for some advice/suggestions on the possibility of making the Mac switch for game art.
I work in Arch-Vis and use Macs for work, I've been a Mac user at home for a few years now too. Currently, I use VectorWorks and Cinema4D for work, both of which are Mac native, but all my game art is done in BootCamp using Maya +ZBrush and UDK (amongst other little tools).
I just picked up a new MacBook Pro, the i7 with the 6750M GPU and it's an awesome little machine, and I'm finding myself really wanting to make the Mac switch for my game art too. I'm just not sure if it's completely possible, or whether I'm going to lose out so much so that I may as well stick with Windows.
So do any of you guys use a complete Mac workflow? What tools are you using?
Obviously Maya/ZBrush isn't an issue, CrazyBump has a Mac beta which appears to work ok, but the bits I'm stuck on are a baking tool, and an engine.
I use xNormal to bake under Windows, is there a quality Mac alternative? I've never learned to bake inside of Maya but I hear it's a capable renderer for baking.
And most importantly, and perhaps the most difficult one, is the engine. What are my options? Nothing as good as UDK I presume? I've tried Unity, and I don't really want to pay for the Pro version just to display my work, and without Pro, I don't get the nice lighting engine right? Also, without a paid plugin, it doesn't appear to offer a shader editor anywhere near as good as UDK's.
I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Looking for some advice/suggestions on the possibility of making the Mac switch for game art.
I work in Arch-Vis and use Macs for work, I've been a Mac user at home for a few years now too. Currently, I use VectorWorks and Cinema4D for work, both of which are Mac native, but all my game art is done in BootCamp using Maya +ZBrush and UDK (amongst other little tools).
I just picked up a new MacBook Pro, the i7 with the 6750M GPU and it's an awesome little machine, and I'm finding myself really wanting to make the Mac switch for my game art too. I'm just not sure if it's completely possible, or whether I'm going to lose out so much so that I may as well stick with Windows.
So do any of you guys use a complete Mac workflow? What tools are you using?
Obviously Maya/ZBrush isn't an issue, CrazyBump has a Mac beta which appears to work ok, but the bits I'm stuck on are a baking tool, and an engine.
I use xNormal to bake under Windows, is there a quality Mac alternative? I've never learned to bake inside of Maya but I hear it's a capable renderer for baking.
And most importantly, and perhaps the most difficult one, is the engine. What are my options? Nothing as good as UDK I presume? I've tried Unity, and I don't really want to pay for the Pro version just to display my work, and without Pro, I don't get the nice lighting engine right? Also, without a paid plugin, it doesn't appear to offer a shader editor anywhere near as good as UDK's.
I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Replies
just boot camp it.
I don't mind Windows, I just much prefer the OS X environment, and if there was a way to get everything done inside of OS X, I would love to do it.
same here, but it's just not very practical to do - unfortunately.
when i work with audio it is the same thing, it would be nice to switch to windows since my PC is way better than my mac but a lot of my plug-ins relie on OS X so it just isn't worth th trouble of fucking my work flow just to work on a different platform.