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I like to used Rhino, but have a Mac. Rhino runs beautifully on my Mac using Parallels Desktop. I would love the Rhino Plug-in to utilise the OSX version of M~R instead of the Windows version.

Does anyone think this could (might be) possible? I guess this is similar to using a Plug-in to point to a copy of M~R on another computer on the same network.

I generally get round this by using the Windows verion of M~R while developing a model and then do the final renders in OSX (much quicker).

Anyone else in the same boat? I seem to remember a discussion a while back about pointing a PC and OSX version of M~R to the same Materials Library (and the problems this creates).

I don't think that you could get the plugin to use mxcl on another (virtual) machine. Maybe if you could re-write it.

Not completely automated, but you could use the plugin to export the .mxs and render it with the command line in OSX. If you are working on a shared folder accessible to both OS you should be able to do that without having to move files around.

Thanks for the response dyarza.

I am currently doing exactly as you suggest. It works pretty well. I guess I was hoping for too much, to make it a bit easier.[/i]

Hi Both,

I'm trying to do the same thing here, using Rhino in Parallels, but rendering via command line in OS X. The problem is, I can't find a way to get the paths to the materials right. Is there a way to set up a shared folder on my own computer, so that it is accessible from within Parallels AND OS X at the same time, using the same kind of pathname?

Or, do I HAVE to use a third computer? (silly)

- Björn

Must admit I have given up on Parallels, and I do everything on OSX, but the problem you are having is pretty typical. The paths in Win and OSK are called differently so there is the problem.

I never got around to trying it (because I switched to all Mac) but I was thinking that having an external ethernet drive that I could call up from both systems with a UNC path (//device/share/folder...) should do the trick.

Alternatively, you can specify the path to bitmaps in the command line MXCL, but I don't know if the patch to MXM files also follows that, probably not.

Or, at an office I used to work, I would tell users to copy MXMs to the folder where they were working and to keep all the files there, models, output, textures, and materials. This way our master materials library did not get crowded with use made materials, and I could incorporate the really good ones that people made. I believe that no matter what the path is, if the materials and textures are in the same folder as the MXS it will find them, thus eliminating the problem.

Good luck, let us know how you resolve it.

Cheers,

D

dyarza wrote:Alternatively, you can specify the path to bitmaps in the command line MXCL, but I don't know if the patch to MXM files also follows that, probably not.

This came to my mind aswell, and was the first thing i tried. It WOULD have worked, since the MXM-data for the material not having textures is stored inside the .mxs. However, the reason I can't use it, is that custom texture projections set up in rhino, does not transfer in this workflow. I do not know why, they just doesn't.

So, If I set up a material, with a custom texture projection, and render it in OSX with the -bitmaps flag, the textures show up and all, but their projection/placement is the default/surface one. This is really a problem..

JD? you know anything about this?

So, If you've switched entirelly to os x, you don't use Rhino any more then?

- Björn

JD? you know anything about this?

No, as I told you when you reported it in the Rhino forum, I don't see this -bitmaps vs. UVs issue happening here, at least on 1.7. Have you re-tested with 1.7?

Really it makes no sense to me at all. UVs are written in MXS files on a per-vertex basis, directly on the mesh. There are no 'default' UVs contained in the file for it to revert to - if UVs were lost/corrupted by some OSX-related bug, I would think you would just end up with no recognizable UVs at all. So I really do not understand the effects you're seeing there.

JD

Yep, sounds reasonable.. I have not tried it in 1.7 yet, but what I've just realised is that if I use the "Relocate paths" function, and move the entire folder with MXS and "textures" sub folder over to a location on my Mac, mxcl can render it without the bitmaps flag, since it finds the textures in the "textures" subfolder even though some paths look like "C:\whatever" ...

This is great for me, it will solve all practical issues until 2035 when windows and mac might have similar looking paths...

bjorn.syse wrote:So, If you've switched entirelly to os x, you don't use Rhino any more then?

Yeah,

I don't really model anything that I can't do in C4D, so it works for me. McNeel was beta testing Rhino on OSX but I don't know where they are at with it.


D

I know, I use have the beta, but they're not very far in it. And as far as I know there is no SDK yet, so I wouldn't expect a plugin for a while...