I’m still completely new to Unity and don’t even have a Mac, yet (but this is probably coming soon ). Since I’ve been using Realsoft 3D since the Amiga days (when it was still called Real 3D), and it is also a software with a really nice community, I was wondering if anybody using Unity3D knows this tool?
They’ve moved to Windows quite a while ago, reworked everything and now have a beta for Mac OS, too. I think it’s a really powerful modeller, also with a nice GUI (by now ), and nice renderer. It seems to be somewhat left behind when it comes to game development, though… which is why I’m mentioning it here (I wouldn’t be surprised if Realsoft 3D and Unity 3D became really good friends one day ).
I’ve taken a look at RealSoft before, but never tried it.
Have you tried running RealSoft under “Parallels Desktop” or “VMware Fusion”? If you’re getting a new Intel Mac Mini, then it may be worth a try. I’m running more than 50% of all my PC CAD and graphics apps on my iMac without any problems using Parallels.
The big obstacle I see with using it with Unity is that (and correct me if I’m wrong) RealSoft appears to be largely a Nurbs based app and the only formats that (after conversion) you’ll be able to use are .3DS and VRML. Neither of these are very good for game development IMHO and will need to be converted something Unity uses like .OBJ or .FBX.
Since there’s a native Mac OS X version of Realsoft 3D now, I guess the ideal would be directly using that version (it’s still beta, though… not sure how well it works).
Thanks for pointing me to “Parallels Desktop” and “VMWare Fusion”, though… I really love virtual machines, and it would be incredibly cool if I could use my nicely configured development VMs on the Mac (then, it might even happen I never ever buy a WinPC again ).
VMs are much nicer than dual boot, I think… at least when you have plenty of memory available…
Actually, I would say the current version of Realsoft 3D has somewhat balanced support for subdivision surfaces, and I assume those shouldn’t be too bad for game development… correct me, if I’m wrong
Realsoft 3D 5.1 does come with .OBJ export. I’m not sure how well it works, though. So far, I’ve only tried the 3DS and OBJ import, and with the OBJ import of rather complex anatomy models, there were funny holes in one of the models (but not in the others), while 3DS import only took the first 8 characters of the names of the objects (not cool with hundreds of long latin anatomy names).
For virtualization the Mac has a great combo: Parallels BootCamp
You install your windows under boot camp so you can dual-boot into it. Then you install parallels and you can use that machine as a virtual one.
So when you just want to use your weird win-only homebanking app, you just fire it up under parallels. When you want the full power of the machine (for rendering, ehm, Quake4 ;-)) dualboot into it.
From what I read on the website, the OS X version is “PPC only”. If you buy a new Mac Mini (or iMac) it will be “Intel” based, so you probably can’t use the PPC binary. Weird, yeah I know. One of the things I had to learn when making the leap from Windoze…
But the good news is that Parallels works very nicely and the latest version makes running Windows on your Mac pretty seamless. I have no experience with Bootcamp, I never installed it.
Yeah, that’s a bit tricky… The issue, however, seems to be that Realsoft’s Website is not ideally organized. In the product info pages, it says PowerPC only - when you go into the shop and check out the info button, however, it says:
I think that’s good news… might be a good idea to ask before buying to be 100% sure, though
Sorry, that’s what I mean’t to say… although I’ve had missed luck getting PPC apps to run on my iMac, some run fine, some run slowly and others don’t run at all. Best thing to do is give it a whirl…
). Since I’ve been using Realsoft 3D since the Amiga days (when it was still called Real 3D), and it is also a software with a really nice community, I was wondering if anybody using Unity3D knows this tool?