I'd hate to buy Hexagon and find out it doesn't run on OS X 10.8
Kevin Rye
Posts: 392
Strange. I thought Hexagon was free. I could have sworn I saw it listed as free when I downloaded DAZ Studio last month. I figured, meh, I'll get that another day. That day is today. I just went to check it out and was surprised to see it's $14 bucks. (After PC discount). Not that I'm complaining. $14 is peanuts.
I'd just hate to pay $14 bucks and have it not run on my Mac. That little warning in the description about not being a dual binary is a little concerning. Intel Macs have been around since 2006! Why is this still a PowerPC app?
Anyone else running Hexagon on 10.8? Does it work? Didn't Apple drop Rosetta support for PPC apps in 10.7/10.8?
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Comments
At one point Bryce 7 Pro and Hex were free along with DS. However, the product pages did clearly state they were free for a limited time only.
I've not tried running Hexagon on my Mac but if you'll give me a few minutes I'll download it and give it a shot.
However, just so you know Hexagon - at least the PC version - hasn't been updated in at least 5 years so it's not surprising that it might still be a PPC app.
Just downloaded and installed.
It seems to run fine though since I only have the trackpad on my MacBook not exactly able to do a lot of serious testing. I did create a cube, added an edge and shifted some vertexes around. Applied smoothing to generate more geometry and manipulated that a bit.
So, yeah it works under 10.8.4 on a 2.8GHz Core i7 MacBook.
Awesome. Thanks for trying it.
It's a pity I missed it when it was free. Oh we'll. Guess I'll have to pony up the $14 bucks. I wanted to try it out to see if it's a good alternative to ZBrush. I'd hate to spend $200 bucks on a dead product, so it's a good thing it's not expensive. It doesn't sound like DAZ is putting any more focus on it.
Officially only up through 10.6 is supported. However the latest update to hexagon made it compatible with Intel Macs without Rosetta. This means that it should work on 10.7 and 10.8. I just tested and the application launches, I can load primitives etc. However, the application hasn't been tested extensively on OSX 10.7 or 10.8.
Remember we do have the 30 day risk free guarantee (or whatever we're calling it these days). Essentially if it doesn't work you can get your money back within 30 days.
That's good to know. Thanks.
Is Hexagon still in active development? OS X Mavericks will be here in a month or so. It's crazy to think that Hexagon has top-billing on your Products page, but it's 3 OSes behind!
Ryemac3,
if you are looking to learn Hexagon and are in need of tutorials, you can go here - http://www.geekatplay.com/hexagon.php - and watch them for free online.
Nice. Thanks.
Hexagon has a beautiful UI. Even just firing it up and playing around I was quickly making models and after watching a few tutorials I was sailing along. Or at least I was sailing along as best I could considering it's Hexagon and it crashes if you look directly at the screen for too long.
I too would buy Hexagon 3 if an updated package was made available with new features and bug fixes and stability issues corrected.
Personally I think it's dirty pool for Daz to be selling a program which is basically abandoned and with as many known stability problems like Hexagon. When it's free you can easily forgive its short comings but if you're going to charge people money for a product then that comes with a reasonable expectation of support and stability.
Counterpoint: Hexagon has a horrible UI, after ten minutes of trying to do anything in it I gave up and went back to Blender, now there is a program that makes sense.
I did not have a good time on it with my Dual Intel 10.6.8 with 8 GB RAM, not at all.
however you can always download blender and make it look like this:
Doesn't Blender really need a 3-button mouse?
Hello ryemac3,
I'm using flawlessly Hexagon 2.5 and Hexagon Public Beta 2.5.1.79 since a long time now on my iMac(OSX 10.8.4) and recently my Mac Mini(OSX 10.8.5 beta Build 12F33)…
It is not only a PPC app, it is also an Intel 32 bit one and it works on my macs started in 64 bit mode.
So I am using the 2 versions on my 2 Macs.
I bought Hexagon 2.0 on 5 Oct, 2009 for $149 so $14 is peanut…
Cheers !
I'm using it with a two button mouse on my Dual Xeon 10.6.8 and it's a champ, v 2.67
it's a but keypad intensive so if you are comfortable with your laptop functions as a keypad you can use that, or change the layout but it I had the easiest time hooking up a USB full size keyboard to my MacBook.
http://cgcookie.com/blender/cgc-courses/blender-basics-introduction-for-beginners/
it used to run fine on my 10.8.4 , but now it crashes on 10.8.5, every time I run it... sometimes when it crashes it will even reboot OSX, makes my OSX feel just like a Windows OS :)
Hexagon has a very simple, and logically laid out interface. As a noob you can start doing stuff with it (even if you don't understand what you're doing or how to do it right) within minutes of playing with it.
I loaded Blender and couldn't even get the camera to move properly.
Making Blender the same colours as Hexagon isn't really going to make it Hexagon.
My counterpoint was, not everyone thinks alike. Hexagon came across too CAD like and I hated it, whereas Blender's functions seemed straightforward and logical.
I always find Blender's interface to be too much like programming. It's too dry and technical and requires a lot of esoteric memorization before you can even start using it.
It's an interface that technicians would like but not optimized for artists and there's numbers everywhere. It bombards you with too much information. Plus if you want a dedicated modeller Blender ends up being a bloated resource hog since it is an all-in-one program. With Hexagon the first time I loaded it I loaded one of the second life sculpties, went to the sculting tab, and started making stuff within minutes. I didn't have to study the interface for weeks and memorize every hotkey before I could even get the camera to move.
I don't think Blender will ever have an intuitive interface because there seems to be a divide in the community. There are those who want a more standardised, user friendly interface, but they seem to be shouted down by the old guard Blender users who resist every effort to make Blender more accessible. They like that it's dry, technical, and requires lots of memorization and that it discourages new people from using it and they seem to be in the majority for now.
A new user should be able to sit down at a program and just explore it with no documentation and within a couple of hours be able to figure out how to access most of the functions of the program. There should be no functions that are locked behind hotkeys only and you shouldn't have to study it and memorize the UI before you even boot the program.
That it started as an in-house program is obvious in it's UI. Since it was originally designed to be used primarily by the guy who wrote it hitting CTRL ALT + SHIFT TAB 3 G to bring up a commonly used function may have seemed obvious to the guy who wrote it but it sure as heck isn't obvious to the new user exploring it for the first time. The Blender community loves to talk about how if you don't like the Blender interface you can simply customize the interface and it will be 100% exactly like what you want it to be so it will flawlessly emulate any other software. But in order to do that you have to rewrite over 150,000 lines of poorly documented source code. Sure you can make it run exactly like Hexagon, but the effort needed to do that is equal to the effort required to make a Hexagon 3 app from scratch. Blender is a program designed by programmers for programmers and if all you want to do is model and not write code you're out of luck.
Once the old guard starts to pass on and the new users take over maybe then we'll see Blender develop a truly standardized, intuitive, user friendly UI but that's currently not what the majority of the Blender community wants. I really wish I could love Blender, but Blender doesn't want me to love it. It wants people who already love it to love it and nobody else.
When I get to the point where Hexagon can no longer perform for me I'll probably move onto Silo as it seems like the next best choice in a dedicated modeller. The fact that Blender is free is meaningless to me if I have to memorize a non standardized interface and non-industry terminology.
a proposed redesign for the Blender interface has been suggested by Andrew Price based on Jeff Johnsons "Designing with the Mind in Mind" Apple Computers design concepts to a smaller degree
http://www.blendernation.com/2013/10/05/blender-ui-redesign-proposal/
the camera in Blender moves properly, it just does not behave like a Daz product.
Hex isn't even properly coded for Intel Mac
Blender is incredibly stable vs Hex which does not have any such reputation.
Hex is $20, Blender is free, however Blender is not free due to any inferiority, Blender has functionality not even dreamed of in Hex, Hex has not had a feature update in years.
That's why I'd love to see Daz focus on making Hexagon 3.
The problem with Blender's design is you can't learn it just by exploring. Hexagon can easily be learned through exploration. With Blender the first time I loaded it I couldn't even get the camera to move properly. It was impossible to pan it until I found out pan is only available through a hotkey. No UI should have functions that are only accessible through hotkeys.
Blender is free because nobody would pay for it.
My philosophy, "Push buttons, see what happens", worked just fine for learning most of Blender's basic functions. People pay for it all the time in the form of donations.
I love that philosophy, and have lived by it many times. lol ;) I'm also one who prefers Blender to Hex.
Good thing I held off.
Maybe this super mega price at the end of the PC Anniversary sale will be Hexagon 3 with full 64-bit OS X support?
Looks out window, sees pigs flying.