Windows-based, every developer out there almost... sometimes a dev kit (like the 360 IIRC) will use a G5/OSX, but that's rare.

You can try an Intel Mac with Bootcamp and only do XP stuff for the pipeline work (exporting/importing).

EDIT: Not sure about Unix, but do you really find even that easier than XP?

Hey Edwin,
I am sad to say that I am at much the same place as you. I have worked in the graphics industry for 15 years and have always used a Mac for art and design and as I plan the jump over to working as a game artist I am left with the same choice as you. The good news, though, is that because I love my iBook and I don't have the money to buy a new computer I am forced into finding creative ways to use my Mac on indie projects. With the exception of a really good level editing tool, most of what you would need to work on mod teams or on portfoilo type work is available and in many cases free. As always, Macs are better at playing with others and can handle most of the files you would need when transferring work around on a virtual team. Every asset on my project passes through my Mac at some point or another before going out the door and it is rare that there are problems (at least for the type of work we do with static models).

Of course, everytime someone looks at my resume and sees that I know Blender they ask if I know Max. Years of experience and talking to people tells me the same as Prof420 did -- it's a Windows world. Ah well, 6 of one, half a dozen of the other. Once you get an app like Photoshop open it's all pretty much the same.

In the casual games space there are a lot more Mac developers, though.

Scott

Good luck installing OSX on your PC.

As far as I know, you're going to get terrible performance from OSX on PC. It just doesn't work well. It'd probably just be worth it to stick with PC.

Cancel the PC order and get the bootcamp Intel Mac, the other way round is just not going to work [grin]
Apple sells OS X by itself for good reason, they know you cannot install it on any old PC, only on a Mac. I believe there was a hacked BIOS chip that could boot OS X 10.2 for a while, but I am pretty sure they fixed that, and the legality is pretty shaky anyway. Also, OS X has no drivers for standard PC hardware, in particullar there is no support for PS2, still comon on PCs, and even getting it to run the HD or CD burner would be a real fiddle.

The app situation on the Macisn't so bad, there is Maya, Lightwave (well maybe not anymore), and all the open-source (blender, wings3d, etc.). iDevGames.com had a news item about a shareware Mac based normal map generator a while ago, so maybe not so bad there. Apple's own OpenGL and Shader tools are also quite useable.

And as I said, dual boot is probably the way to go (you could probably even dual boot to linux, if you really wanted to).

I'd like to point out some irony here. Your reason for switching is that you were spending more time dealing with XP and less time time working. But your solution has been to have OSX run on PC, get lesser-quality Mac's-equivalent software, and researching into a wiki, as well as how much time spent to set it up. Wouldn't it be simpler, and more efficient, to just bite the bullet and use Windows for a couple years until your next computer purchase?

Quote:

Original post by edwinbradford I will though need access to OSX for commercial projects outside games which is how I pay the rent in the meantime.

Why???
I am a die-hard Mac fan, but that statement makes no sense to me. Surely it is cheaper to pickup a Windows copy of Photoshop/Illustrator (or whatever you use), than to run two computer and two platforms at once, especialy if you have to take the time to switch between them?

All of the Pro-Apps (such as Photoshop and dreamweaver) that I have used run just as well on Windows as on Mac, although the interface is not quite as nice [grin]

Ah, hadn't thought about fonts [smile]

I am not primarily a graphics designer (more of a hobby really), but I have a fair collection of fonts, and interestingly enough, they are all normal Windows-compatible truetype font files (they are also all free, that might be why). Ah well, I guess I probably didn't keep my fonts when I moved from OS 9 to OS X.