hello all. we are investigating 3d modeling software for a basic three-dimensional design class at the college level.
a few questions are being raised and i’ve been tasked with finding answers.
is the mac version stable enough to cover the basics of modeling, material mapping, rendering? are there potential issues with crashing systems or affecting other software?
we haven’t allocated funds in the budget for software this year so can’t afford to go the basecamp/windows version route yet. if we do move in that direction, are there issues with functionality? is this the better option?
again, with no budget for spring term, are there potential licensing issues running the free mac version in a classroom? will we need to buy licenses just to use the software?
are there any other potential liabilities that i’m not even aware of ?
I think it’s plenty stable, as in it won’t ruin your machine or any such nonsense, but since it’s in development, some features may bomb on you, and as such may not do your models any good. For free…you can’t beat it. Since it’s not commercially available yet, you don;t need to purchase a license, since there aren’t any licenses available to purchase. Support for OSX rhino is free, and you can’t beat that anywhere. Do the rhino folks a favor though…if you are going to use it for free, participate on the forums, assist in the development, and be patient if something isn’t quite perfect…That’s only fair-
Hi Chad- as far as licensing goes- the potential snag I see is that while no budget works well with the free beta of OSX Rhino, you don’t want to get caught out with the thing being released, no budget, or insufficient budget, and the betas running out at an inopportune moment. Not saying it will happen, just since release dates are completely unknown, it is a scenario that could happen.
The other potential snag is that Mac WIP versions expire very quickly - about a month - so you are going to constantly need to reinstall your classroom. I don’t know how it works for you, but here our computer lab isn’t updated that often, normally only once a semester. As it’s WIP software, you may also get a version which has a major bug, and will need to reinstall a few days later when a fix is released…
As far as basic modeling goes, most of the commands work. As far as materials/rendering you will only have the native Toucan renderer, no other render plug-ins run in MacRhino. Well, you have no budget for those anyway…