Windows version !
- Thread starter SuperES
- Start date
Nice try. 
Cheers
Frank
Cheers
Frank
I'm sure this would be an obscene amount of work...however...
I'm sure I'm not alone in getting progressively fed up with Apple's pursuit of shiny and thin verses power. Cheetah runs great on my £2.5k MacBook and £2.5 imac but I bet the 2nd hand windows laptop with a Nvidia 1060 I picked up for £650 would slay them both! (ironically the same price as an equivalent eGPU)
Returning to windows is becoming a serious consideration for both cost and power and Cheetah is the only piece of software solidly keeping me on my Mac at the moment!
There is nothing comparable on Windows with Cheetah - everything is either fully featured and a fortune or budget and 10% of Cheetah's feature set. None of them have as good workflow and none of them start up as fast!
I'm not leaving MacOS just yet, but the next time I upgrade my hardware I'm likely to be very temped with windows.
I'm sure I'm not alone in getting progressively fed up with Apple's pursuit of shiny and thin verses power. Cheetah runs great on my £2.5k MacBook and £2.5 imac but I bet the 2nd hand windows laptop with a Nvidia 1060 I picked up for £650 would slay them both! (ironically the same price as an equivalent eGPU)
Returning to windows is becoming a serious consideration for both cost and power and Cheetah is the only piece of software solidly keeping me on my Mac at the moment!
There is nothing comparable on Windows with Cheetah - everything is either fully featured and a fortune or budget and 10% of Cheetah's feature set. None of them have as good workflow and none of them start up as fast!
I'm not leaving MacOS just yet, but the next time I upgrade my hardware I'm likely to be very temped with windows.
I don't claim to know Martin's private thoughts or dreams etc. for Cheetah, but if I was a betting man I would say there is no chance that Martin will produce a Windows version of Cheetah. He has already starting making the necessary changes to incorporate Metal for the upcoming versions of Mac OS, which is a big task. On top of this, he is also working on new features and the like. I'd say his hands are pretty full as it is.
Sorry bit of a rant
Macs are becoming more and more a joke. It used to be easy to justify paying the price for a Mac, but not anymore. The hardware seems to be at least a year old and the prices are more and more ridiculous, the machines less and less user upgradable, I don't want much, just to be able to swap memory and it would be nice to be able to add new internal hard disks... hell I would settle for eSATA (Thunderbolt again is overpriced).
I remember the ads for the new(current) iMacs style gushing over how thin they are when viewed from the the side. That right there was the moment they lost it. I sit in front of my computer not off to the side gazing lovely at how thin it looks. I was happy with the previous "fat" design, the current one not looking much different form the front. A bit of thought and their much vaunted user experience genius and they could have realised ports on the back are not helpful or accessible, and with the thickness of the previous style they could have added slide in bays for hard drives.
I think the only thing that keeps me a Mac user is I prefer MacOS to windows, and Linux just seems to much effort. The only two apps I have that are Mac only are Cheeth and Xcode. Xcode is mostly awful and like much of the Apple eco systems misses out on stability and useful if uncool features in favour of flashiness, which is a shame because MacOS has some really nice features. As for developing iOS apps for me at least it is painful (mostly because of Xcode which I wouldn't describe as a professional IDE), and I am only on my first one!!!
I would be sad to leave Cheetah behind but I am not sure how much longer I can justify paying over the odds for outdated hardware. (Though I expect to own this iMac for a number of years yet)
Macs are becoming more and more a joke. It used to be easy to justify paying the price for a Mac, but not anymore. The hardware seems to be at least a year old and the prices are more and more ridiculous, the machines less and less user upgradable, I don't want much, just to be able to swap memory and it would be nice to be able to add new internal hard disks... hell I would settle for eSATA (Thunderbolt again is overpriced).
I remember the ads for the new(current) iMacs style gushing over how thin they are when viewed from the the side. That right there was the moment they lost it. I sit in front of my computer not off to the side gazing lovely at how thin it looks. I was happy with the previous "fat" design, the current one not looking much different form the front. A bit of thought and their much vaunted user experience genius and they could have realised ports on the back are not helpful or accessible, and with the thickness of the previous style they could have added slide in bays for hard drives.
I think the only thing that keeps me a Mac user is I prefer MacOS to windows, and Linux just seems to much effort. The only two apps I have that are Mac only are Cheeth and Xcode. Xcode is mostly awful and like much of the Apple eco systems misses out on stability and useful if uncool features in favour of flashiness, which is a shame because MacOS has some really nice features. As for developing iOS apps for me at least it is painful (mostly because of Xcode which I wouldn't describe as a professional IDE), and I am only on my first one!!!
I would be sad to leave Cheetah behind but I am not sure how much longer I can justify paying over the odds for outdated hardware. (Though I expect to own this iMac for a number of years yet)
I have to agree with Encrypt... so I'm gonna have my own rant. As a long time Mac user, from its very early beginnings, going as far back as my Mac Plus and Aldus Pagemaker just out of high school, and as a professional Graphic Designer 30 years later, I always have stood by the real and obvious superiority of the Apple Operating System in design and function. Apple well understood the need of ultimate design supporting an extremely easy and logical GUI. Even to the point of not licensing its operating system in order to control and maintain Apple's core-menu consistency and "Finder" look, in the process changing the whole publishing industry by bringing along with Adobe the rise of "Destop Publishing" as well as completely changing a whole number of other industries.
And so it went, 10 years passed, 20 years passed... and now 30 years past... I have to agree that that is not longer the case, and hasnt been for a few years now. Perhaps that fall off the pedestal has been accelerated with the passing of Jobs, which is, I suppose, what happens when you have a highly praised and successful accountant at the helm in Cook, instead of a forward thinking technically savvy CEO. At any rate, Apple has lost its way... opting to do the following: Design over Function, and Profitability over Innovation. So gone is the ease of use, practicality and far reaching tools of productivity. Gone.
Having said that, the Apple OS is still superior, but just marginally now, with Windows 10 finally getting itself corrected enough to make it a comparable OS in design and function.
So, Im still an Apple guy, even after all its flaws, but its looking more and more as I come to the end of my career that Apple will slowly also have a slow death... at least in the industry it affected most, the graphic arts.
But I understand if Martin doesnt get around to doing a Windows version... after all, what the Hell do I know about programming... I'm just a starving artist in the age of CoronaVirus. Thats my rant.
And so it went, 10 years passed, 20 years passed... and now 30 years past... I have to agree that that is not longer the case, and hasnt been for a few years now. Perhaps that fall off the pedestal has been accelerated with the passing of Jobs, which is, I suppose, what happens when you have a highly praised and successful accountant at the helm in Cook, instead of a forward thinking technically savvy CEO. At any rate, Apple has lost its way... opting to do the following: Design over Function, and Profitability over Innovation. So gone is the ease of use, practicality and far reaching tools of productivity. Gone.
Having said that, the Apple OS is still superior, but just marginally now, with Windows 10 finally getting itself corrected enough to make it a comparable OS in design and function.
So, Im still an Apple guy, even after all its flaws, but its looking more and more as I come to the end of my career that Apple will slowly also have a slow death... at least in the industry it affected most, the graphic arts.
But I understand if Martin doesnt get around to doing a Windows version... after all, what the Hell do I know about programming... I'm just a starving artist in the age of CoronaVirus. Thats my rant.
I am not sure there is much difference between self employed artist and self employed developer in the Corona-cene age.
Just before I brought this iMac I had a look around for all in one (hell even the odd tower) systems and I could not find anything for a similar price with a 5K display. In fact the only thing with a 4K 27+ display was MS Surface, which was at least twice the price, and while nice, I felt it was more of a niche product, that said I would go for the iPad Pro for doing art but choice is always health.
Over 12 months on and I still feel that Macs are not as good value for money as they once were. The end of the butterfly keyboard (which I never had a problem with in my limited usage of it) seems to be a positive sign, perhaps Apple has started listening to its users. However, soldered RAM and SSDs is a major issue and makes a mockery of any environmental claim Apple makes with regard to its products, as does its opposition to "right to repair", both with their hardware designs and lobbying.
Its not like their designs are perfect; I read lots of reviews and they complain about bezel size on laptops, and bezel size and the chin on the iMac, but on the iMac at least this isn't a problem, what is a problem is that obsession with thin devices, not being able to slot in an extra HDD/SSD (I know we can use Thunderbolt (USB4?) but that usual requires another plug socket and thus is not a great user experience).
Then we get to the utter design failures, and I don't mean the G4 cube and its like but the current generation Magic Mouse, if you are looking for examples of Apples failures its right there in its adherence to form over function. Its a good mouse, that is, until the battery runs out on me and then its just a paperweight that renders my Mac useless! If this was Windows and MS I could almost (but not quite) forgive them because Windows is fairly easy to use without mouse, which I have never found to be the case with MacOS (your milage my vary), but at the end of the day you build a mouse centric OS and then you create a failure state (the mouse not being capable of being used and charged) which cripples the computer. Yes I know I can charge it over night or at lunch or whatever, but here's the kicker Apples instance on great user experience, its all over their literature and advertising, so what is so great about having to remember to charge a mouse? Lets not forget that the Magic keyboards can be used whilst charging.
I didnt ask for a wireless mouse, a wired version would be perfect (the only thing wrong with the Mighty Mouse was the ball kept clogging), Apples wired keyboard has a USB hub, I love it, it is perfect, it makes up for the USB ports being on the back of the computer (another example of form other function, one which they randomly attempt to address in the most inept manner on the trash can Mac Pro), and I am quite happy to plug a mouse into it.
I have also had the opportunity to use Windows 10. Now I haven't seriously used Windows since XP and to be fair there is nothing wrong with Windows 10 as such (I didnt have to maintain it and I understand the forced updates are a nightmare but that wasn't part of my experience and really isn't about the OS but more a case of MS policy), it is, in my opinion as ugly as ever, and in places incoherent. As I hadn't used it before some of my issues could be down to lack of familiarity, but it made me realise how lucky we are with MacOS, sure MacOS has issues, and we can debate until the cows come home over which OS has better fundamentals and such like, but MacOS certainly wins (in my experience) on the quality of life things.
Seriously I had never appreciated the "shake to find cursor" gesture so much as when it wasn't available to me, or that when pressing cmd (ctrl) tab not being able to use the cursor to select the app rather than being forced to tab through all open apps (which can be a lot in this day and age especially if you are a developer), or that I can rename an open file in the finder or in the application window title, and of course files that order correctly (1 is before 10). I think in the grand scheme of things, from a users perspective at least these are the important things.
I just have to hope that by the time I am in the market for a new iMac or perhaps even a laptop Apple has returned our hardware to us and stopped charging tomorrows prices for yesterdays hardware.
(I was going to rant about Xcode as well, oh how I loath Xcode, but really this post is too long and incoherent anyway)
Just before I brought this iMac I had a look around for all in one (hell even the odd tower) systems and I could not find anything for a similar price with a 5K display. In fact the only thing with a 4K 27+ display was MS Surface, which was at least twice the price, and while nice, I felt it was more of a niche product, that said I would go for the iPad Pro for doing art but choice is always health.
Over 12 months on and I still feel that Macs are not as good value for money as they once were. The end of the butterfly keyboard (which I never had a problem with in my limited usage of it) seems to be a positive sign, perhaps Apple has started listening to its users. However, soldered RAM and SSDs is a major issue and makes a mockery of any environmental claim Apple makes with regard to its products, as does its opposition to "right to repair", both with their hardware designs and lobbying.
Its not like their designs are perfect; I read lots of reviews and they complain about bezel size on laptops, and bezel size and the chin on the iMac, but on the iMac at least this isn't a problem, what is a problem is that obsession with thin devices, not being able to slot in an extra HDD/SSD (I know we can use Thunderbolt (USB4?) but that usual requires another plug socket and thus is not a great user experience).
Then we get to the utter design failures, and I don't mean the G4 cube and its like but the current generation Magic Mouse, if you are looking for examples of Apples failures its right there in its adherence to form over function. Its a good mouse, that is, until the battery runs out on me and then its just a paperweight that renders my Mac useless! If this was Windows and MS I could almost (but not quite) forgive them because Windows is fairly easy to use without mouse, which I have never found to be the case with MacOS (your milage my vary), but at the end of the day you build a mouse centric OS and then you create a failure state (the mouse not being capable of being used and charged) which cripples the computer. Yes I know I can charge it over night or at lunch or whatever, but here's the kicker Apples instance on great user experience, its all over their literature and advertising, so what is so great about having to remember to charge a mouse? Lets not forget that the Magic keyboards can be used whilst charging.
I didnt ask for a wireless mouse, a wired version would be perfect (the only thing wrong with the Mighty Mouse was the ball kept clogging), Apples wired keyboard has a USB hub, I love it, it is perfect, it makes up for the USB ports being on the back of the computer (another example of form other function, one which they randomly attempt to address in the most inept manner on the trash can Mac Pro), and I am quite happy to plug a mouse into it.
I have also had the opportunity to use Windows 10. Now I haven't seriously used Windows since XP and to be fair there is nothing wrong with Windows 10 as such (I didnt have to maintain it and I understand the forced updates are a nightmare but that wasn't part of my experience and really isn't about the OS but more a case of MS policy), it is, in my opinion as ugly as ever, and in places incoherent. As I hadn't used it before some of my issues could be down to lack of familiarity, but it made me realise how lucky we are with MacOS, sure MacOS has issues, and we can debate until the cows come home over which OS has better fundamentals and such like, but MacOS certainly wins (in my experience) on the quality of life things.
Seriously I had never appreciated the "shake to find cursor" gesture so much as when it wasn't available to me, or that when pressing cmd (ctrl) tab not being able to use the cursor to select the app rather than being forced to tab through all open apps (which can be a lot in this day and age especially if you are a developer), or that I can rename an open file in the finder or in the application window title, and of course files that order correctly (1 is before 10). I think in the grand scheme of things, from a users perspective at least these are the important things.
I just have to hope that by the time I am in the market for a new iMac or perhaps even a laptop Apple has returned our hardware to us and stopped charging tomorrows prices for yesterdays hardware.
(I was going to rant about Xcode as well, oh how I loath Xcode, but really this post is too long and incoherent anyway)
Just ordered a Ryzen 3900x with RTX2080 Super to replace my iMac which will be hanging around for a while solely for Cheetah3D.
Am learning Blender in order to transition but there's still stuff Cheetah does so much better!
I'd just like to thank Frank for a really beautiful app that I have really enjoyed using, but soon it will be goodbye OSX and Cheetah.
See you on Windows
Am learning Blender in order to transition but there's still stuff Cheetah does so much better!
I'd just like to thank Frank for a really beautiful app that I have really enjoyed using, but soon it will be goodbye OSX and Cheetah.
See you on Windows
Martin is the author of Cheetah3D, although Frank — I believe — has contributed a lot.
The poor support of macs for folks interested in 3d (especially if they're not wealthy) is very frustrating. I bought some (4!) gaming PC laptops for COVID and they're amazing (performance-wise) compared to any Macs I own (even allowing for the age of the Macs). They also don't feel like they'll last very long (our macs are 3-8 years old and are all rock solid. It's a shame Windows is such an annoying OS, but if you only live in a few apps it doesn't really matter. Heck, when I'm coding these days, I might as well be using Linux.
The poor support of macs for folks interested in 3d (especially if they're not wealthy) is very frustrating. I bought some (4!) gaming PC laptops for COVID and they're amazing (performance-wise) compared to any Macs I own (even allowing for the age of the Macs). They also don't feel like they'll last very long (our macs are 3-8 years old and are all rock solid. It's a shame Windows is such an annoying OS, but if you only live in a few apps it doesn't really matter. Heck, when I'm coding these days, I might as well be using Linux.
Conclusion: With a Windows version of Cheetah3D, Apple will lose a lot 3D customers!
This means Apple should be a sponsor of Martin, maybe by giving a Cheetah License with every sold M1!?
(my little world...
)
This means Apple should be a sponsor of Martin, maybe by giving a Cheetah License with every sold M1!?
(my little world...
)
son of the light
Member
Conclusion: With a Windows version of Cheetah3D, Apple will lose a lot 3D customers!
This means Apple should be a sponsor of Martin, maybe by giving a Cheetah License with every sold M1!?
(my little world...
That would be great. Though I can only imagine the interference you would get from Apple, so maybe not so great.
Anyway Cheetah wouldn’t make me switch to Windows. I don’t think anything would make me switch to Windows, everytime I use Windows professionally I am reminded what an unpleasant experience it is, at least for me.
Anyway Cheetah wouldn’t make me switch to Windows. I don’t think anything would make me switch to Windows, everytime I use Windows professionally I am reminded what an unpleasant experience it is, at least for me.
Somian
0
Apple wouldn't care about Cheetah3D being available on Windows, since they don't directly make money from Cheetah Sales because it's not in the AppStore. However:
Cheetah 3D is using many APIs that are Unique to MacOS. (which is a good thing because that's a main reason I use Cheetah 3D. Other 3D packages are huge bloated multiplatform messes don't take advantage of what macOS can do (the PDF support, QuickTime, built-in cocoa UX etc.).
MacOS has over 15% market share in desktop operating systems.
Macs could be considered a "premium" product. Therefore, I feel like Mac users are more willing to pay $99 for a 3D package than Windows users. On windows you either have professionals that use really expensive pro software or personal users that choose windows because they're cheaps or don't care and thus don't spend a lot of money for software. I would also say that Windows users don't care as much about User Experience as Mac users (that's why they are OK with using Windows) and therefore aren't as picky with their choice of software and just use Blender or some illicit copy of some pro Autodesk product if they want to save money.).
Personal users that are on MacOS are often comfortable with a $99 license. If I look at Windows users that I know (unless they're professionals) I see that for the most party they simply get illicit copies of the software they want to use because the attitude they have towards buying computers ("as cheap as I can get away with") is also reflected in their software purchasing behavior. I feel like on Windows, there's only really a software market for professionals, but not so much for personal users, because the users that are willing to spend money for software are more likely to be the ones that are going to buy a Mac. The same people that tell me that it's stupid of me to buy my movies instead of "pirating" them are typically the ones that tell me that it's stupid to get a Mac because I can get a windows machine with the "same hardware" for half the price.
Professional users on the other hand often don't have the monetary constraints, but for them, time (and thus efficiency) is money. That's also the reason I use Cheetah3D. It's simply a smoother experience that gives me less headaches than any of the other stuff. Simply the time spend updating license server addresses, looking at splash screens or using their subpar platform-independent file browsers in Cheetah's competitors makes Cheetah 3D worth it for me. Cheetah 3D on Windows wouldn't give me same benefits and would simply be "just another 3D package" because, to me, one of the main benefits of Cheetah 3D and what makes the UX so good is attributable to macOS.
I don't have any actual data to back this up (apart from the market share I mentioned above), but I would say that, all things considered, MacOS is at least as big of a market (if not bigger) for a "smooth" 3D package as Windows.
Cheetah 3D is using many APIs that are Unique to MacOS. (which is a good thing because that's a main reason I use Cheetah 3D. Other 3D packages are huge bloated multiplatform messes don't take advantage of what macOS can do (the PDF support, QuickTime, built-in cocoa UX etc.).
MacOS has over 15% market share in desktop operating systems.
Macs could be considered a "premium" product. Therefore, I feel like Mac users are more willing to pay $99 for a 3D package than Windows users. On windows you either have professionals that use really expensive pro software or personal users that choose windows because they're cheaps or don't care and thus don't spend a lot of money for software. I would also say that Windows users don't care as much about User Experience as Mac users (that's why they are OK with using Windows) and therefore aren't as picky with their choice of software and just use Blender or some illicit copy of some pro Autodesk product if they want to save money.).
Personal users that are on MacOS are often comfortable with a $99 license. If I look at Windows users that I know (unless they're professionals) I see that for the most party they simply get illicit copies of the software they want to use because the attitude they have towards buying computers ("as cheap as I can get away with") is also reflected in their software purchasing behavior. I feel like on Windows, there's only really a software market for professionals, but not so much for personal users, because the users that are willing to spend money for software are more likely to be the ones that are going to buy a Mac. The same people that tell me that it's stupid of me to buy my movies instead of "pirating" them are typically the ones that tell me that it's stupid to get a Mac because I can get a windows machine with the "same hardware" for half the price.
Professional users on the other hand often don't have the monetary constraints, but for them, time (and thus efficiency) is money. That's also the reason I use Cheetah3D. It's simply a smoother experience that gives me less headaches than any of the other stuff. Simply the time spend updating license server addresses, looking at splash screens or using their subpar platform-independent file browsers in Cheetah's competitors makes Cheetah 3D worth it for me. Cheetah 3D on Windows wouldn't give me same benefits and would simply be "just another 3D package" because, to me, one of the main benefits of Cheetah 3D and what makes the UX so good is attributable to macOS.
I don't have any actual data to back this up (apart from the market share I mentioned above), but I would say that, all things considered, MacOS is at least as big of a market (if not bigger) for a "smooth" 3D package as Windows.
Apple wouldn't care about Cheetah even if it was in their shop. Too less sales anyway.
The part about Cheetah very deeply embedded (if that's the right English word) is true and that it can't just recompiled and ported to Windows. There will never be a Windows version.
The rest is a mixture of prejudice and wrongly interpreted or missing data, sorry. The problem is, of course, that it's almost impossible to get the data. For example some of the market share statistics are based on web browsing, which doesn't say much, as a lot of people have different devices (for example we use out of convenience mostly our ipads for "browsing", switching to the mac when necessary (or for some reason at the moment more convenient), never using one of our windows pcs). Sales data don't tell us much because we don't know how long such a computer is used and so on.
What we know is that the desktop / laptop market was shrinking for many years, obviously going up during the pandemic because a lot more people were working from home and had to buy new hardware for that or because they were bored because of lockdowns. Also we don't know what's done with the computers that are sold (anyway, the numbers for 2020 won't say a thing). And obviously there are big differences depending on the regions. The 15 % of MacOS market share seems to be the number all the statics agree on more or less.
Piracy is still big but mostly for movies / tv shows and music, piracy allegedly taking up almost a quarter of the used bandwith worldwide, but that can be done (and is) as easily with an ipad as with an android or windows device. And no, I don't download illegally nor do I use a streaming service but instead still buy CDs (which then are ported to flac and streamed from a NAS in our home. That would be illegal in some countries, though) and Blu-rays. And it's at least 20 years or even more that someone said to me, that I should pirate movies and music. Instead they come with paid streaming services.
For desktop software piracy we don't have reliable data, but that again differs very much from region to region. For any 3d app out there you could get a cracked version from (somehow the viruses have to be spread), windows and mac versions alike (so some of the mac users also use pirated software. From time to time we see it here). In my region it doesn't seem as widely spread as it was anymore (while the people download music and movies happily).
For windows pcs there is a market for cheap hardware, and that doesn't necessarily mean that those people are misers but just that they don't need a pc very often, some just for their own accounting, some for doing some work at home (aside from the pandemic). With a 300 $ PC you can't do much else. They aren't suited for 3d work nor gaming.
Apple Hardware is a premium product, agreed, but as long as you don't expand on better hardware, like more RAM, bigger SSDs and such, they are rather reasonably priced. As soon as you need more power, though, the prices go up insanely (I can buy several top notch SSDs for the same price I'd have to pay for an upgrade). And Apple really, really blotched it years ago when they decided that PC gaming wasn't a big market anyway. You can have high end pc hardware that's very costly (you still get more power for the buck, though), and when I built my own pc I was a bit overwhelmed by the shear mass of products available nowadays. All suited for gaming, which is the main reason why we get so powerful hardware at still a reasonable price (or halfway reasonable, looking at something like a NVIDIA 3090). And those people spend big money for their gaming rigs they could easily get an Apple for. Of course market share was lost to mobile (a lot of simple games people are quite happy with) and to consoles. There are whole brands aimed at gaming (Alienware for example by Dell). So no, not every pc users is a miser or someone who can't afford a mac.
So even if you just play games occasionally on a pc, windows is better suited for you (it's not just the hardware but gamer mouses, gamer keyboards and so on). Other reasons to use windows are for example that some people are used to it from work and don't want to learn yet another system, they do it out of habit and never tried out macos, they want to install linux, like to build their own hardware and on and on. To say that windows users don't care about user experience is just prejudice. A lot of people are convinced that it is a very good OS (technically, that's probably true), and you only really see all the shortcomings of "user experience" if you can compare it to your mac. Also Apple has some bad reputation (one reason people telling them that they lack the money or don't care for user experience or are software pirates anyway, some think that the prices are way higher than they are). In a ton of forums you can find somebody asking a question because he can't do something with MacOS and the answer is: You don't need that or Apple would have provided it. And it doesn't help that you can't even a hard disk anymore yourself in a Mac mini.
Now Blender is obviously the cheapest dcc app around, and according to a ton of videos and articles it's the best out there, far better then maya, modo, 3ds max and c4d combined, and all that for free. That's crap, but because of the hype it's today usually the first contact with 3d apps for hobbyists. 2020 it was downloaded 6,5 million times according to blender.org. Now, that's not that much, and we have even that number to take with a grain of salt, because it was during a worldwide pandemic and (depending on the region) more or less severe lockdowns, a lot of people not knowing what to do with their time (which is a sorry testament of our society imho). Most people open the thing, stare at it for a while and close it again to do something instead they don't have to learn so much. It's my personal experience, that says nothing, that most don't go further than rendering a cube or two and in best case a donut. Some stay with it, and a part of them maybe gets later another app (pirated or paid). But anyway you look at it, it's a rather small market. Something like Cheetah would have a chance, because it's inexpensive and far more accessible than Blender. But it's a very small market and it probably wouldn't be worth the work Martin would have to put in to really port it to windows. I don't have the numbers, but I sincerely doubt that any well-known 3d suite has more than 100'000 thousand customers (that would be C4d), others less than 20'000, and that all over the OSes they support. Cheetah could only get a fraction of that.
Professionals use mostly windows as you can see in any of the forums of the bigger apps. It's again because of the price (here it's true. You can get more pc power for a fraction of the price) and especially hard- and software availability). And of course that's considered. Think of a studio with 10 people or more, buying 10 very costly (and outdated) mac pros. Business is usually a matter of making money (and, sadly, for some of surviving in times as this), and I know not any manager, boss or self-employed who hasn't to consider the price (that includes of course support, failures, whatever. So a costly Mac pro, upgraded to the max, can indeed be the cheaper solution than a pc at a quarter of the price, depending very much on what you do). The main reason, though, is hard- and software availability, gpu rendering still a big thing (even if I think those times are coming to an end in the coming years because of SoC).
That works best with Nvidia GPUs, many professionals using several of them in one pc (not only two but some even more like 4 or 8), rtx gpus at the moment the best choice for that. Look at one of the most beautiful renderers out there, Maxwell, which is available for Mac and Windows. Their GPU rendering (something of their own) only works with NVIDIA, so mac users are out. According to their website with one GPU your 25x faster, with two GPUs 40 times, with four 60 times (and they used only an rtx 2060 for that, so something rather affordable).
Also there is software availability to consider, special devices you need, what the rest of your firm uses, and habit. Cheetah is good, obviously enough for your needs, but there are reasons that movie studios, game developers, product designers, architectural visualizers (or however you want to call them), vfx specialists, and so on use other 3d apps (Blender more and more among them). They may seem "bloated" and certainly look intimidating on first sight, but if you work daily in something like 3ds max, C4d or Blender you're getting used to it, know your shortcuts perfectly well and so on. For myself Modo is at least as smooth an experience as Cheetah (but I only had it relatively easy to get into it because I was a lightwave user for many years). The learning curve is steeper, but it depends on what you do what software you need. For example for VFX there seems to be nothing better suited than Houdini at this point in time.
Like I said many times before: Cheetah is the best suited app in my opinion for learning 3d. Just showing the UI of an app like Maya can turn people off of 3d who could have a lot of fun with Cheetah. For most use cases, though, it's not on a really professional level, very much depending on what you do.
With professionals, which is the reason other dcc apps stay alive (for a while), Cheetah wouldn't stand a chance. And that's ok, by the way, you still get a lot for 99 bucks.
For hobbyists, I agree, Cheetah would loose too much of it's charm in a windows version to compete against blender, silo and whatever. Especially as they like their GPU rendering, too, a lot of which works only with Nvidia or reasonably better (iray for example).
The part about Cheetah very deeply embedded (if that's the right English word) is true and that it can't just recompiled and ported to Windows. There will never be a Windows version.
The rest is a mixture of prejudice and wrongly interpreted or missing data, sorry. The problem is, of course, that it's almost impossible to get the data. For example some of the market share statistics are based on web browsing, which doesn't say much, as a lot of people have different devices (for example we use out of convenience mostly our ipads for "browsing", switching to the mac when necessary (or for some reason at the moment more convenient), never using one of our windows pcs). Sales data don't tell us much because we don't know how long such a computer is used and so on.
What we know is that the desktop / laptop market was shrinking for many years, obviously going up during the pandemic because a lot more people were working from home and had to buy new hardware for that or because they were bored because of lockdowns. Also we don't know what's done with the computers that are sold (anyway, the numbers for 2020 won't say a thing). And obviously there are big differences depending on the regions. The 15 % of MacOS market share seems to be the number all the statics agree on more or less.
Piracy is still big but mostly for movies / tv shows and music, piracy allegedly taking up almost a quarter of the used bandwith worldwide, but that can be done (and is) as easily with an ipad as with an android or windows device. And no, I don't download illegally nor do I use a streaming service but instead still buy CDs (which then are ported to flac and streamed from a NAS in our home. That would be illegal in some countries, though) and Blu-rays. And it's at least 20 years or even more that someone said to me, that I should pirate movies and music. Instead they come with paid streaming services
.For desktop software piracy we don't have reliable data, but that again differs very much from region to region. For any 3d app out there you could get a cracked version from (somehow the viruses have to be spread), windows and mac versions alike (so some of the mac users also use pirated software. From time to time we see it here). In my region it doesn't seem as widely spread as it was anymore (while the people download music and movies happily).
For windows pcs there is a market for cheap hardware, and that doesn't necessarily mean that those people are misers but just that they don't need a pc very often, some just for their own accounting, some for doing some work at home (aside from the pandemic). With a 300 $ PC you can't do much else. They aren't suited for 3d work nor gaming.
Apple Hardware is a premium product, agreed, but as long as you don't expand on better hardware, like more RAM, bigger SSDs and such, they are rather reasonably priced. As soon as you need more power, though, the prices go up insanely (I can buy several top notch SSDs for the same price I'd have to pay for an upgrade). And Apple really, really blotched it years ago when they decided that PC gaming wasn't a big market anyway. You can have high end pc hardware that's very costly (you still get more power for the buck, though), and when I built my own pc I was a bit overwhelmed by the shear mass of products available nowadays. All suited for gaming, which is the main reason why we get so powerful hardware at still a reasonable price (or halfway reasonable, looking at something like a NVIDIA 3090). And those people spend big money for their gaming rigs they could easily get an Apple for. Of course market share was lost to mobile (a lot of simple games people are quite happy with) and to consoles. There are whole brands aimed at gaming (Alienware for example by Dell). So no, not every pc users is a miser or someone who can't afford a mac.
So even if you just play games occasionally on a pc, windows is better suited for you (it's not just the hardware but gamer mouses, gamer keyboards and so on). Other reasons to use windows are for example that some people are used to it from work and don't want to learn yet another system, they do it out of habit and never tried out macos, they want to install linux, like to build their own hardware and on and on. To say that windows users don't care about user experience is just prejudice. A lot of people are convinced that it is a very good OS (technically, that's probably true), and you only really see all the shortcomings of "user experience" if you can compare it to your mac. Also Apple has some bad reputation (one reason people telling them that they lack the money or don't care for user experience or are software pirates anyway, some think that the prices are way higher than they are). In a ton of forums you can find somebody asking a question because he can't do something with MacOS and the answer is: You don't need that or Apple would have provided it. And it doesn't help that you can't even a hard disk anymore yourself in a Mac mini.
Now Blender is obviously the cheapest dcc app around, and according to a ton of videos and articles it's the best out there, far better then maya, modo, 3ds max and c4d combined, and all that for free. That's crap, but because of the hype it's today usually the first contact with 3d apps for hobbyists. 2020 it was downloaded 6,5 million times according to blender.org. Now, that's not that much, and we have even that number to take with a grain of salt, because it was during a worldwide pandemic and (depending on the region) more or less severe lockdowns, a lot of people not knowing what to do with their time (which is a sorry testament of our society imho). Most people open the thing, stare at it for a while and close it again to do something instead they don't have to learn so much. It's my personal experience, that says nothing, that most don't go further than rendering a cube or two and in best case a donut. Some stay with it, and a part of them maybe gets later another app (pirated or paid). But anyway you look at it, it's a rather small market. Something like Cheetah would have a chance, because it's inexpensive and far more accessible than Blender. But it's a very small market and it probably wouldn't be worth the work Martin would have to put in to really port it to windows. I don't have the numbers, but I sincerely doubt that any well-known 3d suite has more than 100'000 thousand customers (that would be C4d), others less than 20'000, and that all over the OSes they support. Cheetah could only get a fraction of that.
Professionals use mostly windows as you can see in any of the forums of the bigger apps. It's again because of the price (here it's true. You can get more pc power for a fraction of the price) and especially hard- and software availability). And of course that's considered. Think of a studio with 10 people or more, buying 10 very costly (and outdated) mac pros. Business is usually a matter of making money (and, sadly, for some of surviving in times as this), and I know not any manager, boss or self-employed who hasn't to consider the price (that includes of course support, failures, whatever. So a costly Mac pro, upgraded to the max, can indeed be the cheaper solution than a pc at a quarter of the price, depending very much on what you do). The main reason, though, is hard- and software availability, gpu rendering still a big thing (even if I think those times are coming to an end in the coming years because of SoC).
That works best with Nvidia GPUs, many professionals using several of them in one pc (not only two but some even more like 4 or 8), rtx gpus at the moment the best choice for that. Look at one of the most beautiful renderers out there, Maxwell, which is available for Mac and Windows. Their GPU rendering (something of their own) only works with NVIDIA, so mac users are out. According to their website with one GPU your 25x faster, with two GPUs 40 times, with four 60 times (and they used only an rtx 2060 for that, so something rather affordable).
Also there is software availability to consider, special devices you need, what the rest of your firm uses, and habit. Cheetah is good, obviously enough for your needs, but there are reasons that movie studios, game developers, product designers, architectural visualizers (or however you want to call them), vfx specialists, and so on use other 3d apps (Blender more and more among them). They may seem "bloated" and certainly look intimidating on first sight, but if you work daily in something like 3ds max, C4d or Blender you're getting used to it, know your shortcuts perfectly well and so on. For myself Modo is at least as smooth an experience as Cheetah (but I only had it relatively easy to get into it because I was a lightwave user for many years). The learning curve is steeper, but it depends on what you do what software you need. For example for VFX there seems to be nothing better suited than Houdini at this point in time.
Like I said many times before: Cheetah is the best suited app in my opinion for learning 3d. Just showing the UI of an app like Maya can turn people off of 3d who could have a lot of fun with Cheetah. For most use cases, though, it's not on a really professional level, very much depending on what you do.
With professionals, which is the reason other dcc apps stay alive (for a while), Cheetah wouldn't stand a chance. And that's ok, by the way, you still get a lot for 99 bucks.
For hobbyists, I agree, Cheetah would loose too much of it's charm in a windows version to compete against blender, silo and whatever. Especially as they like their GPU rendering, too, a lot of which works only with Nvidia or reasonably better (iray for example).
At the risk of offending Martin, blender is now simply fantastic. The user interface issues have almost all been fixed (still cluttered because it has so much functionality), but the two new rendering engines, EeVee especially. are simply a joy, and the modeling tools are now as good as anything out there.
blender on mac has a TON of users. So many Mac users are clamoring for the M1 native version (currently in alpha) that blender users joke about it.
blender on mac has a TON of users. So many Mac users are clamoring for the M1 native version (currently in alpha) that blender users joke about it.
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I have to agree, I remember looking at Blender back in the day and think “oh my god this is horrible”. If I remember rightly you only had half the screen to model in, and different views for different aspects like modelling or rendering. Coming from trueSpace this was a shock.
Watching recent videos of Blender however and I can see the UI/UX has improved so much that I have downloaded it for when I get five mins.
It seems to have some nice features that I am not sure Cheetah has that make life a little easier/fun.
I do think we have to be careful of chasing features though, that way lies the “Word Processor wars”
Watching recent videos of Blender however and I can see the UI/UX has improved so much that I have downloaded it for when I get five mins.
It seems to have some nice features that I am not sure Cheetah has that make life a little easier/fun.
I do think we have to be careful of chasing features though, that way lies the “Word Processor wars”
I still do not like Blender. It certainly has some problems and in parts is overly complex. But it matured into a very capable and solid software which is actually a danger for other dcc apps (albeit on professional level it seems to be agreed that you absolutely need some add-ons).
And there are a ton of plugins and add-ons (for almost everything like creating humans or plants), a lot of renderers (octane for free, xcycles, vray, redshift, amd pro render (free, but still not production ready) and a lot of others). All this is not possible for Cheetah, and even if it was, the user base is simply too small for selling add-ons and making a living from that (you can earn decent money with such stuff for Blender). It also has bridges to Unreal, Zbrush, and a lot of other standard software. It plays ball with almost anything out there.
The in-built capabilities are enormous, including sculpting on a quite high level (it's no Zbrush, though, but that's expensive and complicated), capable fluid simulation, Eevee for previz (and often used as "renderer alone"), shader nodes that really are complicated, but of course include sss since ages, shear endless opportunities. While I don't like it, Cycles isn't that bad, by the way, and the new one will be a lot better (except for missing stuff like sss Falcon is for me visually much more appealing, though).
And most of these renderers include gpu rendering (not all on a mac, though) as well as denoising, which got far better in the last view years. With smaller renders it usually kills too much detail anyway, but for big ones it's really, really helpful to keep render times halfway decent. At first grudingly, I started to use it (it's possible with my software to render different variants of the same picture, for example without and with different denoisers) and have to admit, often the result is gut enough. Intel denoising is at the same level with optix (though different, in some situations better, in some worse, but the new version I couldn't try out yet) and it would be a good thing to include that into Cheetah. With a newer A.I. denoiser finally even AMD has created something that's usable, sometimes keeping more of the details than Intel (and Optix), though it works only on newer cards (it also works with NVIDIA cards, and if they develop that even more, AMD finally gets a chance to really compete with Nvidia here (not with the render engine, though). I sincerely doubt that they can do to Nvidia what they did to Intel, though.
All in all, Blender has multitudes of features that Cheetah is missing and can do a lot of things far better than Cheetah (try sculpting). Not just a few. There is also a ton of free or paid materials, an overwhelming amount of tutorials (you need it, working with that app) and actually a market for blender-content with models (the vast majority of users, though, is not willing to pay a dime, even some professionals).
But for all this you pay a price, as Blender is very complicated, a ton of buttons, nested menus. In short, it's quite overwhelming. Even if you know your 3d stuff it's still a lot to learn, in my opinion more so than with other apps I use(d) or tried. Even after years of doing other stuff I just could open Cheetah and start to create, the same with Lightwave back then, with Modo and whatever I tried out over time, even Houdini which was a thad less approachable than the others. Of course with every one of these apps, there is still a lot to learn, and I personally lack a lot of knowledge in Cheetah alone. Probably even with this app there is nobody around who knows all what can be done with all the tools, certainly not for any other 3d suite out there,
I know people who were interested in 3d and did their first steps in Blender. They never got far and one of them, someone really intelligent, invested more than a year in watching tutorials and learning by doing, while he never achieved much, far less than he would achieved in a week or so in Cheetah. Blender and other dcc apps are too intimidating, to complicated, to concentrate on what a beginner should learn imho, all the basic stuff like proper subd-modeling and understanding topology and all the basic concepts everything else is building on. With Blender you spend a lot of time just learning to find your way between all the whistles and bells. For someone starting his journey in the world of 3d there is nothing better suited than Cheetah.
One other thing. I belong to those who see danger in free software killing of better products. So if anybody is considering adding other tools to his arsenal of 3d, look further than just Blender. Houdini, Maya (for both there is a indie license), Modo, C4d etc. are all well worth a look and may be better suited for your needs, dedicated amateurs and (semi-)professionals alike (but keep away from lightwave. Sadly, that has no future). The same is true for renderers (keyshot for example is awesome), if you're happy with Cheetah's modeling but need better rendering capabilities. You pay probably more for your streaming services, coffee, the fitness center you never visit or the magazine subscriptions you pay but never come to reading the things. (Too many people are not willing anymore to pay for services rendered and especially not for products produced with some concern for the wellfare of workers or the climate and nature in general, just to spend their money on stupid stuff like in freemium games).
And there are a ton of plugins and add-ons (for almost everything like creating humans or plants), a lot of renderers (octane for free, xcycles, vray, redshift, amd pro render (free, but still not production ready) and a lot of others). All this is not possible for Cheetah, and even if it was, the user base is simply too small for selling add-ons and making a living from that (you can earn decent money with such stuff for Blender). It also has bridges to Unreal, Zbrush, and a lot of other standard software. It plays ball with almost anything out there.
The in-built capabilities are enormous, including sculpting on a quite high level (it's no Zbrush, though, but that's expensive and complicated), capable fluid simulation, Eevee for previz (and often used as "renderer alone"), shader nodes that really are complicated, but of course include sss since ages, shear endless opportunities. While I don't like it, Cycles isn't that bad, by the way, and the new one will be a lot better (except for missing stuff like sss Falcon is for me visually much more appealing, though).
And most of these renderers include gpu rendering (not all on a mac, though) as well as denoising, which got far better in the last view years. With smaller renders it usually kills too much detail anyway, but for big ones it's really, really helpful to keep render times halfway decent. At first grudingly, I started to use it (it's possible with my software to render different variants of the same picture, for example without and with different denoisers) and have to admit, often the result is gut enough. Intel denoising is at the same level with optix (though different, in some situations better, in some worse, but the new version I couldn't try out yet) and it would be a good thing to include that into Cheetah. With a newer A.I. denoiser finally even AMD has created something that's usable, sometimes keeping more of the details than Intel (and Optix), though it works only on newer cards (it also works with NVIDIA cards, and if they develop that even more, AMD finally gets a chance to really compete with Nvidia here (not with the render engine, though). I sincerely doubt that they can do to Nvidia what they did to Intel, though.
All in all, Blender has multitudes of features that Cheetah is missing and can do a lot of things far better than Cheetah (try sculpting). Not just a few. There is also a ton of free or paid materials, an overwhelming amount of tutorials (you need it, working with that app) and actually a market for blender-content with models (the vast majority of users, though, is not willing to pay a dime, even some professionals).
But for all this you pay a price, as Blender is very complicated, a ton of buttons, nested menus. In short, it's quite overwhelming. Even if you know your 3d stuff it's still a lot to learn, in my opinion more so than with other apps I use(d) or tried. Even after years of doing other stuff I just could open Cheetah and start to create, the same with Lightwave back then, with Modo and whatever I tried out over time, even Houdini which was a thad less approachable than the others. Of course with every one of these apps, there is still a lot to learn, and I personally lack a lot of knowledge in Cheetah alone. Probably even with this app there is nobody around who knows all what can be done with all the tools, certainly not for any other 3d suite out there,
I know people who were interested in 3d and did their first steps in Blender. They never got far and one of them, someone really intelligent, invested more than a year in watching tutorials and learning by doing, while he never achieved much, far less than he would achieved in a week or so in Cheetah. Blender and other dcc apps are too intimidating, to complicated, to concentrate on what a beginner should learn imho, all the basic stuff like proper subd-modeling and understanding topology and all the basic concepts everything else is building on. With Blender you spend a lot of time just learning to find your way between all the whistles and bells. For someone starting his journey in the world of 3d there is nothing better suited than Cheetah.
One other thing. I belong to those who see danger in free software killing of better products. So if anybody is considering adding other tools to his arsenal of 3d, look further than just Blender. Houdini, Maya (for both there is a indie license), Modo, C4d etc. are all well worth a look and may be better suited for your needs, dedicated amateurs and (semi-)professionals alike (but keep away from lightwave. Sadly, that has no future). The same is true for renderers (keyshot for example is awesome), if you're happy with Cheetah's modeling but need better rendering capabilities. You pay probably more for your streaming services, coffee, the fitness center you never visit or the magazine subscriptions you pay but never come to reading the things. (Too many people are not willing anymore to pay for services rendered and especially not for products produced with some concern for the wellfare of workers or the climate and nature in general, just to spend their money on stupid stuff like in freemium games).
I so totally agree.
Absolutely true, but less so for Blender than its VERY expensive rivals. And we can't even get Cheetah's menus sorted into alphabetical order.
I used WriteNow over MS Word until I was forced to change. Cheetah 3D is like the WriteNow of 3D. Light, fast, incredibly good at what it does. But it doesn't support tables properly, won't build a table of contents or index, and so on. Eventually Word gained features that were indispensable, and worth the pain of all the cruft.
I think the thing that made Cheetah so fantastic for so long is that Martin only included the features he had time to, and he was thus very careful and picky about what he did. The problem now is that open-source 3d has captured the interest of an astonishing number of programmers and academics. A grad student invents a new rendering or rigging algorithm and AS PART OF THEIR DISSERTATION writes a Blender plugin to demonstrate it. The community loves the plugin and turns it into production-quality software. For Blender, that was heat-map rigging and cycles rendering.
I saw the writing on the wall about 4y ago when the Blender community finished implementing 90% the UI fixes I suggested ten years earlier (which got me flamed off their boards and alienated me from them). Cheetah could never catch up to Blender's rendering engines, so it should give up and concentrate on modeling, rigging, animation, and export to game engines.
Instead Martin chose to write and refine a new rendering engine…
Today, Eevee (the realtime rendering in Blender) produces better output in most cases than C3D can do in minutes or hours AND it has a modeling, animation, and rendering tools.