I’ve been quietly praying for Autodesk to bring out StudioTools for the mac (probably will never happen) so that I can take Windows off my mac and stop using bootcamp. I heard that Rhino is working on an OSX version and that Rhino is the closest thing out there to StudioTools (although not as competent and shite at rendering)…
Has anyone tried the OSX version yet?
How easy is it to learn Rhino as an Alias user?
Cheers!
I haven’t tried the OSX beta, but the switch from Alias to Rhino is pretty easy. I was originally taught Alias, and I spent about an hour every day or so over a three month co-op learning Rhino. The workflow is nearly identical; it’s just a matter of learning new names for the same commands.
but as a hardcore rhino user on windows, I am still a bit concerned about the state of iRhino, it is not production ready. Some annoying things are still interfering with the usability (no simple maximizing of view ports is the biggest issue)…
In general I prefer Rhino over Alias at any time (I use Alias only for Rendering, as all the plug in renders for Rhino are lacking a good GUI) for modeling. The concepts are very similar (rhino offers more specific tools while in alias you do more things with one tool after changing its properties)
so no problem to switch
hi,
to do production quality work, provided you’re good alias user, it’ll take you three months to “feel at home” again. for me as evaluator, it was (and is) a funny thing to work with two packages based on the same surface modellin principles. the only downside is that scripting-heavy plug-ins do not work yet. but exporting models to render in hyperShot or Maxwell Render works, although not at all like in the windows version.
it is well worth trying because of the large variety of superb external renderers and scripting capability.
i have no information, though, when it’s going to be officially released 
Ive been hearing about rhino beta for Mac for years. Why is dat sh*t still in beta? they got some slow programmers over there.
well,
McNeal seems to be one of the last companies to release an app as soon it is finished…not due to an exhibition show. This was one of the reasons why I said bye bye to alias: yearly updates without real improvements (in rhino they call them service releases and are free of charge) and huge stability poblems!
Sure Alias 2009 seems to be a bit more reliable…but who doesn’t rember 13.5??? Rhino development is slower than Autodesk, that’s true, but much more quality oriented! i am sure that Rhino OSX will be awesome once released, but it will need time! It is still in Alpha Stage!
In case you didn’t notice, Autodesk announced AliasStudio 2010 will appear on Mac.