Request for Specifics per Running Bryce 7 Pro on HD partition with Snow Leopard.
dongenaro
Posts: 15
From Sticky... "Info for Mac Users Regarding OS X Lion and Mountain Lion" -- author Chohole# Bryce 7 is Not currently compatible with OS X 10.7 and above.(this is stated on both the Product Page and the Tech Specs for the program.)
# Bryce 7 is not currently in the Dev cycle
# Bryce 7 was released before OS x 7 was released by Apple
# Bryce 7 dev cycle was wound up before the release of OS X 7
# A member of the DAZ 3D Management Team did say, a while back, that working on getting Bryce 7 to work with the newer OS Xs will be a priority when Bryce enters the dev cycle again.
# There has been no date given for when Bryce will re-enter the dev cycle.
# Some Mac Users have been successful in getting Bryce 7 working either under parallels or using Boot Camp.
# Some Mac users say that The best method of getting Bryce to work on an iMac machine made this decade is to get a copy of Mac OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and install this system on a hard drive partition. Then boot your computer from this system, and load this partition up with your legacy software.
Snow Leopard is still available online at various outlets, but is probably not available directly from Apple’s App Store (as of May, 2013)
Understanding all the above, and that DAZ3d is more of a boutique-style company versus a mega-corp with the resources to upgrade products in step with Apple OS upgrades (most media software & hardware interface manufacturers take about six months maximum) and understanding that it could be months or unfortunately years before Bryce is upgraded to accomodate OS X 10.7 and above -- if one wishes to use Bryce today, which I do, one of the practical workarounds above must be implemented. Though the suggestions above are generally helpful, they paint in broad strokes and I think it would benefit Mac users to have more specifics, before we jump down the proverbial rabbit hole.
Given that many Mac users choose not to run Boot Camp or Parallels --installing Snow Leopard on a partition with Bryce 7 Pro would appear to be the best workaround until DAZ3d makes Bryce both Lion/Mountain Lion and 64-bit compatible.
My questions are as follows:
Does this hard drive partition have to be on the Mac's internal hard drive?... or can one use an external hard drive connected via USB or firewire 400/800. I ask because I'm on a Macbook Pro running 10.7.5 and my internal drive cannot be partitioned at this point. I would have to use an external HD. The one I have available is a Mercury On-The-Go Pro Oxford Firewire 800/400 + USB 5400rpm 8MB cache Portable SATA 2.5" HD from MacSales/OWC. More details here:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/on-the-go
I have a 70GB partition available.
Assuming the hard drive connects to the MBPro via Firewire 800 and given the external drive's 5400 rpm spin rate, will that be fast enough for Bryce to seamlessly engage the MBP's display & trackpad functions? Will it run without hiccups and the dreaded spinning beachball? Is the 70GB partition big enough to accommodate seamless Bryce operation/rendering?
If we choose to implement this workaround, and of course assuming that we have the appropriate license/serial number, can DAZ make the software available again on a short-term basis for download?
I purchased Bryce 7 Pro back in May 2011 and was able to use it for a couple of months (Snow Leopard) until we were compelled to upgrade our media production computers to Lion so as to accommodate FCP X and Logic which is my core biz. This was the second time a Mac OS upgrade had broken Bryce for me. The first time was when we upgraded to Snow Leopard, which caused an earlier version of Bryce to break. I share this not to snipe at DAZ3D, but rather, to share my personal disappointment because I'm a Bryce user from way back... going back to the initial version offered by MetaCreations. You could say I'm a long term, loyal customer and I absolutely love Bryce and miss it greatly. One would think that given the Mac's significant presence in media production, that there would be enough Mac-based DAZ3d customers to warrant that Bryce be put into its development cycle sooner than later but of course all this is predicated on the company's bottom line and available resources.
That said, please note that I receive promotional emails from DAZ almost daily, selling product library packages, etc., but I haven't been able to use Bryce for almost two years. I think there's some significant irony there, and a major disconnect between DAZ and a reasonable portion of its (loyal) customer base.
So here's hoping that DAZ3d will be wildly successful moving forward such that Bryce can be returned to its Dev Cycle and restored to functionality with the current Mac OS X. Please advise. My very best wishes for your continuing success.
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Comments
Well the one thing that I can answer is that once you purchased Bryce, is in you account history for ever.
Go to your account ( top right of the forum page) Log in and the go to Product Library TOwards the top of the next screen, where it says Account Dashboard. You should then be able to search for Bryce and find a download link. The blue button is the manual download. Bryce is not available through the DIM yet.
You will also find your serial numbers on that account Dashboard page as well.
And in addition to what Chohole says above, as far as I know, as long as you can boot up the Mac from the hard drive ie; using the partition as your start up disc (it doesn't matter if it's internal or external) with Snow Leopard fully installed, then Bryce will run as fine as it runs. Can't guarantee it not crashing because it crashes even on a perfect system like mine. I know that in the past, you could only do that using Firewire but am not sure if this is still the case as I haven't had to try it for many years.
It's to your advantage here that your Mac used to run on Snow Leopard as it's not one of the newer Macs that reportedly can not physically run the older OS (because of some firmware issue or something).
Also, it may be worth checking if your partition needs to be formatted in one of the older file formats. Again, as I've never had to do it, I don't know.
Otherwise, give it a go, as long as you don't mess with your internal hard drive content in any way (and I'd advise backing up any content on your external drive before starting), you've got nothing to lose and please do report back so we can help other people with your experience.
Thanks
I have two internal HD's and all I had to do was install 10.6 on the external drive, which didn't require any partition of the external drive. Don't see any reason a Firewire drive wouldn't work the same. To get to 10.6 I just hold down the Option key on startup or restart and I get to chose which OS I want to load.
-but- I have the 10.6 install disks not the App store download. If you still have the disks you should be in good shape - not sure if that works with the D/L.
I nave a 2009 Mac Pro running 10.6.8 and 10.8.4.
I'm not on the Mac, TheSavage64 and dan whiteside are and their advice is very valuable. I'm addressing the question quoted because this goes for Mac and PC.
Bryce does everything in memory. It may take a bit longer to launch it and save files if you're on a slow external drive, also loading objects from the libraries may be slightly delayed. That's all. Modeling, rendering, etc. will nor be impaired because everything is in memory. In fact, I still have a Bryce version on a 4GB USB1 stick (for the PC) and once Bryce is loaded, I notice no difference in speed. 70GB should nicely do.
Hi Horo... when you say, "Bryce does everything in memory".... do you mean using the RAM of the computer? So in this case, if my computer has 8GB RAM, bryce will be sourcing that for process functions?... or rather, the available HD space on the external hard drive where Snow Leopard and Bryce will be installed.
Thank you one and all for your input!
Yes Bryce does everything in RAM.
It won't access 8gb of RAM though as it's only a 32bit application. It will only be able to access 2gb of RAM.
As for your USB drive; As long as you can select it as a startup disc in your system prefs, it'll be fine. Though I know in the past a startup disc had to be firewire, I believe that had changed with the latest versions of hi speed USB.
Yup, you're USB drive should work according to this Mac tech note:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1948
Greetings One & All,
Reporting back on my progress thus far. I decided to use an external USB drive . I have a Snow Leopard installer disk which was used to upgrade a Mac Pro desktop machine from Leopard to Snow Leopard a couple of years ago. I connected the USB drive to my Macbook Pro laptop and inserted the Snow Leopard install disk into my MBPro, with the intention of installing Snow Leopard on the external USB drive. The drive is correctly formatted -- Apple Extended OS (journaled) with a GUID partition scheme.
When the disk spun up and the installer window appeared, I clicked on the install button and received an error message saying that I could not use this install disk. The installer software was in fact, assuming I was trying to overwrite the current OS (OS X Lion) on the MBPro internal HD, with an older OS (Snow Leopard) and there is no backward compatibility. I could not even access the screen to choose the destination for the install. The installer refused to go beyond its initial window (error message) and operate on my MBPro.
My next step was to try and boot directly from the install disk. I pressed the appropriate keys on start-up, but the MBPro would not boot from the Snow Leopard Install disk.
Given that my MBPro shipped with the Lion operating system, I was informed on the Apple Forums, that it cannot be booted from a Snow Leopard install disk.
DW's post points to this very fact in the document he referenced on the Apple website which states that one should not attempt to boot one's Intel Mac from an external drive with an earlier version of the OS.
As I recall, there were major EFI upgrades with Lion. I remember having to download a significant firmware upgrade shortly after I purchased my MBPro laptop -- solely related to OS X Lion. I have a feeling this is not backward compatible with Snow Leopard... so unless someone can come up with a valid workaround, I'm not sure I'll be able to run my Macbook Pro (model identifier 8,3 - early 2011) as an interface for Bryce running from a bootable Snow Leopard external drive .
If this is in fact true, then I would have to find and buy an older Mac, install Snow Leopard, and run Bryce on that. Seems like a lot of trouble and expense.
I would be very curious as to whether there are any OS X Lion/Mountain Lion users on Macs built after 2010, whom have successfully installed Snow Leopard on an external drive, booted from that drive, and gotten Bryce to run seamlessly on their Intel-based Mac's.
I would like to know if and how they did it.
A couple of other threads in this forum suggest that additional revenue from the sale of Bryce is required to pay for the recoding of Bryce for OS X Lion/Mountain Lion compatibility but that DAZ3d is giving Bryce away free as an incentive to purchase their other software products. Tell me that isn't true. How can a company predicate the upgrading of software on revenues they can't possibly collect by giving away the product for free. Once again, the operative word is "irony".
Unfortunately and sadly, we Mac users may have to give up the ghost and find other alternatives... (sigh) :( It's a shame because in its infancy, Bryce was, as I recall, only running on Macs. We are the one's whom supported the product from the very beginning.
As I recall, there were major EFI upgrades with Lion. I remember having to download a significant firmware upgrade shortly after I purchased my MBPro laptop -- solely related to OS X Lion. I have a feeling this is not backward compatible with Snow Leopard... so unless someone can come up with a valid workaround, I'm not sure I'll be able to run my Macbook Pro (model identifier 8,3 - early 2011) as an interface for Bryce running from a bootable Snow Leopard external drive .
If this is in fact true, then I would have to find and buy an older Mac, install Snow Leopard, and run Bryce on that. Seems like a lot of trouble and expense.
I would be very curious as to whether there are any OS X Lion/Mountain Lion users on Macs built after 2010, whom have successfully installed Snow Leopard on an external drive, booted from that drive, and gotten Bryce to run seamlessly on their Intel-based Mac's.
I would like to know if and how they did it.
A couple of other threads in this forum suggest that additional revenue from the sale of Bryce is required to pay for the recoding of Bryce for OS X Lion/Mountain Lion compatibility but that DAZ3d is giving Bryce away free as an incentive to purchase their other software products. Tell me that isn't true. How can a company predicate the upgrading of software on revenues they can't possibly collect by giving away the product for free. Once again, the operative word is "irony".
Unfortunately and sadly, we Mac users may have to give up the ghost and find other alternatives... (sigh) :( It's a shame because in its infancy, Bryce was, as I recall, only running on Macs. We are the one's whom supported the product from the very beginning.
To address what you are seeing in other threads, first of all those threads are a year old and in some cases older. More importantly they are not official statements from Daz they are speculations from Bryce users like myself who have only bits and pieces of info to go on. The following is my attempt to sum up what we know. When Bryce 7 was last in the Development Cycle Snow Leopard was the latest and greatest version of OS X and Bryce 7 worked on it. It then went out of the Development Cycle. The main programmer able to make Bryce work in a Mac environment is not a full time employee of Daz. He is someone who works on contract, so recruiting him for future work is not only a matter of how much he charges but also his availability. I mention this because many Mac users have come here seemingly under the impression Daz has the money and man/brain power sitting around their offices and it's just a matter of someone saying "Let's upgrade Bryce" it's not that simple. Now as far as we know the problems center around the fact that Macs used to run Motorola chips but at some point around the time of Snow Leopard they started switching over to intel chips. There was a third party solution for the compatibility issues called Rosetta I believe, that Apple licensed and included for the first year which allowed it to continue to work but when Lion and Mountain Lion came out the license had expired and Apple decided not to renew it since most companies had upgraded their software to be compatible and I guess Apple didn't feel it necessary to continue supporting a solution for the old code for Motorola chips they were no longer using. That is more or less how we got to the point of Bryce 7 only working on older versions of OSX and newer Macs being unable to run older versions of OSX.
Now the Mac users who used Bryce may have at one time been a great number of people back in the old days well before Daz ever acquired it. I'm guessing it might have been because back then there were less options and Bryce under the guidance of it's original programmer was pretty far ahead of it's time. Unfortunately though it got sold and there were two or three companies before Daz that had it and did little to nothing to keep it up to date or to market it much for that matter. So Bryce sat for years virtually undeveloped while the rest of the 3D graphics world was advancing and this wiped out the ahead of it's time quality Bryce had and between that and new options becoming available I suspect a large portion of Bryce's Mac users gave up and moved on. Then Daz got ahold of it and took it thru several upgrades from v5.5 thru the current v7.1 and in the process brought it back to current as far as abilities, the only thing they fell short on was bringing it into the 64 bit realm and not just for Mac but PC users as well. Another problem that didn't help was that Daz was trying to generate new interest but a lot of it's customers were used to programs like poser where you don't really need to know much and using it was much like dressing up dolls. These types of customers were lost in the Bryce Interface and it didn't help that somewhere along the way people kind of forgot about updating and including documentation. So a lot of those new customers quickly lost interest which brings us more or less to where we are now with the Bryce community of users being very loyal but not many in number. Also most are fairly proficient at using Bryce and are not likely to buy the typical content that might be sold for Bryce because they can create what they need themselves rather then depend on vendors to do it for them. Which means there is not much demand for Bryce products and therefor not much revenue coming in for Bryce. Daz tried to generate renewed interest by giving Bryce away free for about a year along with the then current version of it's Studio Pro program and Hexagon. As near as I could see by the activity in the forum was that it did generate a lot of new interest but any Mac user was immediately frustrated because it didn't work even though it clearly stated on the product page what versions it was compatible with.
Now this is my personal opinion and as such it may be wrong but as near as I can tell the only reason why Bryce isn't completely dead and no longer around is because of the efforts of the very dedicated members of the steering committee from the last time Bryce was in development it has been largely because of them that the lack of documentation has been addressed at least partially. Two of those people in particular David Brinnen and Horo Wernli have really kept things going by continuing to explore and make accessible to users the new abilities given to Bryce in it's last upgrade, especially in the area of lighting. Also those two have been responsible for making quite a few video tutorials that they make available for free to help people with specific goals in Bryce. They and many of the other steering committee members are also active here in the forums and have been invaluable in keeping the forum a friendly place that tries to help people as best they can.
That pretty much sums things up although I did leave out one aspect of things. When Bryce was last in development the programmers were made aware of the hardware changes and direction Apple was going in but the way it was announced and the wording used left the impression that the change would come with a major revision like if they went to OSX v11 rather then a minor revision such as going from 10.6 to 10.7 so when they ended the development cycle Bryce was working with the latest version of OSX on the market and they thought they had time to solve any issues the change from the Motorola chip might cause. Of course all of this wasn't helped in any way by the fact that it happened right when the economy tanked and people had less discretionary funds to work with for things like 3D art.
Now I myself am not a Mac user ,at the time PC's were first becoming available I couldn't afford the much pricier options from Apple even though the word on the street was they were much better then the alternatives powered by Microsoft. So I got me a PC and while it might have been inferior PC's always did what I needed them to do and so I grew in that direction and became very familiar with working with PC's. By the time I could afford to entertain the idea of getting a Mac I was completely immersed in the understanding of how to work in the PC environment and the prospect of owning a Mac looked like it would involve me giving up on everything I knew and relearn everything from scratch which I just didn't want to do and the few benefits I might get weren't enough to overcome the need to relearn things. Anyway I mention all that so you understand where I'm coming from. The best solution out there for Mac users seems to be one that few Mac users want to accept. I only mention my background because when I say what I'm about to say you'll understand why it might seem like a poor suggestion. From everything I've heard the best solution is for Mac users to get ahold of an older machine and run the older version of OSX. The other solutions work but between the cost, performance and the indignity of a Mac user having to run windows the older Mac with the older OSX seems like the best option. I say this because the only reason for trying to stick with the newer hardware and OS is because of speed improvements but since Bryce is still a 32 bit only program the performance improvements newer hardware and OS would give, wouldn't do much if anything to improve Bryce's performance.
I wish I could end it better then that. I wish I could tell you Bryce is going back into development very soon and these problems will be solved. I really do wish that even though I'm a PC user because in the process it would likely mean bringing both the Mac and Windows versions into the 64 bit realm. Unfortunately there is no sign from Daz that this will happen soon if at all. The last official thing we heard from Daz is that when/if it does go back into development fixing the compatibility issues with the latest versions of OSX is the top priority but we heard that over a year ago and there's no sign it's any closer to happening then it was a year ago.
As you say Mark, there is a lot in there that is your own opinion, not fatc.
A couple of things I will put you straight on
Originally all Bryce users would have been Mac users, because originally Bryce was only released for the Mac. We had to wait till 1997 to get a stable windows version. So the percentage of Mac users in the Bryce world is probably far higher than with other programs.
Also there was only one owner between Metacreations and Daz 3D. Corel acquired Bryce in 2000, and apart from adding metaballs and the tree lab did nothing much with it until they sold it to DAZ 3D in 2004. DAZ 3D are the ones who have added more to Bryce than any other developer apart from the original devs at Metacreations.
Greetings Again One & All,
First of all I'd like to express my appreciation for all whom are contributing their time and energy to this thread.
Lord HD... thank you for taking the time to share your perceptions regarding the evolution of Bryce in regard to this topic and the circumstances in which Mac OS X 10.7+ users find themselves. Doubly so, considering that you are a PC user and this Mac issue doesn't affect your ability to use Bryce, so thanks again.
Lest you perceive that I do not appreciate the position in which the DAZ3d leadership finds themselves, I can plainly state to the contrary -- I fully empathize with the realities of any company's bottom line and realize that the recoding of Bryce to both 64-bit and Mac OS X 10.7+ compatibility is wholly reliant on the availability of revenue and resources. I don't think any Mac users believe that DAZ staffers are out drinking tequila and playing video games while Bryce sits idle on a shelf. What you're hearing from most of us is frustration.
The information shared in your post infers a number of possibilities.
One school of thought would suggest, assuming DAZ has analyzed projected revenues for Mac OS X 10.7+ Bryce sales in the future, that the recoding of a Mac OS X 10.7/8-friendly product may not present sufficient cost-benefit, and that Bryce for Mac OS X 10.7+ is no longer really a possibility -- because by the time they get around to upgrading it, there could indeed be an OS X 10.9 (Octopus) and we find ourselves right back where we started.
A similar school of thought would suggest that the product is simply under-capitalized, which is ultimately the bane of most "start-up"'s and/or products in "development". The end result is the same though... an inability to remain competitive and relevant to the marketplace. Because as much as Mac users would love to just sit back and wait for DAZ to upgrade Bryce, the world and its markets won't wait for us.
The thing I find confusing is that at its price point, I believe an OS X 10.7+ version of Bryce would sell a lot of units, and as the old saying goes, "You have to spend money to make money." The real question is, what would it cost to recode Bryce? What is the actual cost?... which begs the question, "Did you get more than one bid?" Hard to believe there are only one or two people on the planet capable of doing this job.
I offer this thought and suggestion both kindly and respectfully. Right now Bryce is dead in the water for all practical terms for anyone on a Mac built after 2010 running OS X 10.7+ so day by day, as loyal as that customer base may be, you're losing users whom will leave reluctantly, but leave nonetheless. So if the project is undercapitalized relative to the internal resources of DAZ3d, then for Mac users, it will slowly die on the vine -- because it's not really reasonable to ask your user base to jump through all these hoops to use your product. That being the case, why not open up the funding process for the recoding and development of Bryce to some sort of crowdsourcing effort like Kickstarter. You're a viable, ongoing concern and extremely viable crowdsourcing partner -- not some kid in his or her parents' garage trying to invent the next Facebook. You might have to share some of the proceeds for awhile with your funding "partners" in the form of a dividend, but so what. You can put a cap on the payback and retain your customer base while monetizing the promise and total value of your asset in which you've already invested a considerable sum, i.e., Bryce. Bryce fits the crowdsourcing demographic PERFECTLY. Couldn't find a better match for a development product and the crowdsource demographic -- not to mention the exceptional "free" PR and advertising by creating social networking incentives for Bryce developer/users associated with funding the project. So why not? You have nothing to lose (except for more frustrated Mac users from your customer base).
Chohole -- I would concur with your observation -- that there are a whole lot more Mac users than one might think because like myself, many have been using Bryce since MetaCreations released it. We stayed onboard through the Corel acquisition (even though many of us thought that it would be the death of the product for Mac). The acquisition by DAZ3d and support for Mac has always been appreciated to the extent that it has been effected, but I really think leadership is missing the boat by not engaging more creative funding models for Bryce if they're light on capital. Make it current. Keep it current and you won't be sorry.
Again, if anyone can figure out how to install and run Snow Leopard on an external USB HD connected to a MacBook Pro (8,3 2011/shipped with Lion) such that I can run Bryce in its current state, I'm all ears!
Thanks one and all and that includes Team DAZ3d.
As Mark has said the problem here is not in funding, although Daz 3D is not a large company, The main problem has been the fact that the Mac dev who brought Bryce 7 pro to fruition was emplyed as a contractor, not a regular staff member, and his contract expired not long after the dev cycle was wound up for Bryce 7. It is not easy to find a dev who is both a Mac dev and familiar with the rather unique code that is Bryce.
Daz 3D is fully aware that is has a reasonable size Bryce community, as shown by the fact that they have agreed to sponsor the newly launched Bryce render challenge on a monthly basis.
At this point in time the dev team are concentrating on DS, Carrara and the development of the new figures for DS. However. last time I spoke with a member of Daz 3D management team about Bryce I was given the assurances which are stated in the sticky thread.
@Don Genaro - I understand your - and all Mac users - frustration at the state of affairs. Personally, I find leaving out Mac users is inacceptable since Bryce was made for the Mac to begin with. There are - or at least were - much more Bryce users on the Mac than on the PC. I appreciate the way you discuss this matter without putting blame on anybody and keep factual.
As a matter of fact, Bryce should have become a 64-bit application from v6.3 to 7. Development was on the way though I don't know how far it went before it was abandoned because the task would have taken much longer than anticipated and hence overrun the budget largely. The main thing that got in the way is the proprietary Axiom code which was developed by Metacreations at the time and has the big advantage that its code can be used for Mac and PC. However, it is not 64-bit compatible. The same code is also a hindrance to put Bryce open or crowd source. It is proprietary and specifications not public.
This all doesn't help any Mac user, I know. However, I am confident that DAZ 3D will resume working on Bryce eventually.
me too. I do feel empathy towards Mac users. I remember the nice guy in the ltittle computer software shop I used regularly (and in them days it was little shops, not the big stores) kindly demonstrating to me what Bryce could do, and then disappointing me because it wouldn't work on my PC. I also remember being very much impressed the first time I saw a Mac, I think at the time we had an Amstrad at home and my son was using a BBC at school. However it was out of my price range at the time, as I was raising 2 sons as a divorcee, so money was tight.
Don Genaro
The Mac user on the CV team, who is quite good with the pros and cons of what can or cannot be done has returend from his holidays. I chucked your query at him, and got this short reply.
[JARRING CHORD, Cardinals burst in]
Cardinal Reality: "NOBODY remembers the Bryce5 Improvements!"
Honestly, this wrong-story / misinformation has more legs than the infamous plastic turkey. In fact, it's a plastic turkey with an Austrian accent and bright red eyes that absolutely-will-not-stop.
Yes, good old metaballs and tree lab. Thanks Corel, and yeah - whatever.
Alright, well, ok - thanks also for the network rendering, true ambience, soft shadows, blurry reflections, blurry transmissions, depth-of-field, light lab, improved sky lab, upgraded terrain editor and premium effects render process (plus myriad minors).
We have ways of dealing with this heresy. Your dungeon awaits, and I can assure you that all the stuffing is up one end...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSe38dzJYkY
[/delurk]
It's starting to get trickier as you seem to be hitting many dead ends.
Maybe you could find a helpful soul locally with an old enough Mac who could install the Snow Leopard to your USB drive for you?
I'm fairly sure that once it's installed and that USB drive is set as your start-up disc, it'll run fine.
Maybe it's just me, but I've still got every Mac I ever owned... they simply don't break down so I pack them away in the cupboard under the stairs. It means I can (in theory) still run every version of Bryce that's ever been made right back since the KPT days.
If anyone needed System 7 installing or wanted to play Infotron I'd be able to do it. Heck I've even got a Syquest drive in the old Quadra 650 and a stack of Syquest discs with stuff I've no idea what on them.
Or maybe if you have Toast or can use the OS disc burner to create a disc image of the instal discs onto the USB drive.
I believe the install disc also has a very stripped down System folder on it so when the Mac is new, you can use it to start the machine and install the OS, so maybe if you can make the Disc Image onto the USB drive and then start up from that drive it'll fool it into running the installation because it won't know there is a Mountain Lion lurking in the shadows?
Last on my list of suggestions (because it's the phaffiest suggestion) is to get on eBay and buy something like a late model eMac. They go for between £80 - £100 and most have either Leopard or Snow Leopard. You could install the OS to the disc using that machine and then simply re-list it back on eBay. Or you could just install Bryce onto it and keep it as a Bryce Only machine.
When I eventually upgrade mine, I'll be hanging onto this 2007 Macbook running leopard and will most likely only have Bryce on it, just so I don't have to give up using Bryce... unless DAZ has sorted it by then.
Ha... I have an old G4 iMac (the one with the re-positional 17" screen) that I'm flushing, cleaning and reselling... I have no idea what kind of price I'm going to get for it. The biggest task will be to return the keyboard to white... from an extremely pronounced yellow :/
But I have to get rid of it... Because when that new Mac Pro comes out, MINE.
Okay but as you noticed I myself stated I was giving my opinion so I'm really not sure why you felt it necessary to point out I was stating my opinion?
Now let me put you straight on something I never said or implied that Bryce/Mac users were always a minority. I know full well that it was originally a Mac only program. What the percentages of Mac users are now though is pure speculation on your part so what are you pointing out and setting me straight on there Pam? Your opinion?
As for the owners of Bryce, was it under Metacreations when Bryce was created? No so Metacreations was one owner, Corel another and Daz is the current owner and lets not forget that Ken Musgrave, Eric Wenger and Kai Krause were the owners of it before Metacreations acquired it in 1997. Now lets review what I said that you set me straight on "there were two or three companies before Daz..." Okay, the original creators one, Metacreations two, Corel three, wow looks like I was spot on. Also you apparently misread or misunderstood what I was saying because it seems like you're accusing me of saying Daz didn't do much. When I said it sat for years virtually untouched I was talking about when Metacreations and Corel owned it. Yes Daz has done more for Bryce then anyone else with the exception of the real creators. Here's a tip for the future, before you decide to set people straight on things, make sure they actually need to be set straight first.
I know it seems unlikely that there are only one or two people up to the task of recoding Bryce but think of what they need to know. From what I understand there is a lot of older code involved so if one wasn't familiar with that they would have to pretty much completely reinvent Bryce and there are a lot of things to Bryce that Bryce users don't want to see reinvented. Even if there was another guy though with the exact same knowledge as the current guy they've been contracting he wouldn't be as familiar with things and so to go with him would be slower and if this knowledge this skill set is rare then his price is not likely to be significantly cheaper.
I don't know what exactly is behind things Daz doesn't make a habit of discussing in depth these sorts of things with end users but I'm sure a lot more factors into it then just the cost or even the availability of contractors.
Anyway I only weighed in on this because I was the one or at least one of the ones saying there wasn't enough revenue being generated which caused you to wonder about why Daz is doing the things they are doing now. So I felt obligated to try to paint a more complete picture and I've done that to the best of my ability. The direction this is going now though is into the realm of speculation and I don't know enough to comfortably and confidently speculate on what Daz will do with Bryce in the future. So based on that I'll try to avoid muddying the waters any more then they already are.
For the immediate future if you have real world deadlines that must be met and you want to meet them with Bryce your best bet is to try to acquire an older system that can run Snow Leopard and then use that as a Bryce only machine. If that's a no go your only other option is to move on because there is no sign Daz is going to do anything in time to meet current real world deadlines.
If you are still interested in doing this (running snow leopard), there is another option available, although it is something of a kludge. If I understand correctly (I'm not a Mac user), the problem is the lack of drivers for the newer Macs for running snow leopard. Here's the workaround: install virtualization software under mountain lion, then install snow leopard in a virtual machine. This avoids the driver problem since the virtual machine uses its own virtual drivers. You should then be able to install Bryce in your snow leopard virtual machine. Its not elegant, but it should work.
At this juncture, I'm still inclined to install Snow Leopard on an external drive one way or another, and get that drive to boot my MacBook Pro. I think this is possible. Given the lack of backward compatibility between my MacBook Pro running Lion, and the Snow Leopard install disk, the challenge is installing Snow Leopard on the external drive. I'm looking at a few options and will report back in a few days. In the meantime, I have a question for all the Bryce veterans whom have been sharing their valuable input on this thread. I had talked about using a 70 GB partition on an external drive to install Snow Leopard & Bryce. I'm looking at another option that may only offer a smaller partition.
What is the minimum size recommendation (GB's) for the partition for a scaled-down Snow Leopard operating system, and Bryce, and, operate Bryce smoothly -- even with a big laundry list of objects. I believe the last Bryce file I worked on had 360 objects or thereabouts.
What is the minimal partition size I can use for this Snow Leopard/Bryce configuration that will run smoothly?
Consensus seems to be 30GB minimum and 50 GB recommended. 10GB is the OS only requirement.
Thanks Dan, that's really helpful... I'll report back on our progress... Thanks one and all!
Greetings Friends,
I'm reporting back on progress to date.
I found an associate with a 2007 iMac running Leopard. We connected my external Firewire 800 hard drive (available 70GB partition). Again, we made certain the entire external hard drive formatting was Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and that the partition was formatted (GUID). Both these settings are essential.
After loading the Snow Leopard retail disk into the iMac, we were able to run the installer and install OS X version 10.6.3., which we had to update to 10.6.8 via Apple's Software Update. Between the installation and the updates, it took about 2 1/2 hours with a reasonably fast internet connection. The updates took a considerable amount of time... to bring Leopard up to date with all its updates, per Security, Java, etc.
Later that day, I booted the MacBook Pro laptop in OS X Lion, and reset the startup disk for the new, bootable Snow Leopard partition on the external firewire drive and rebooted without any hiccups. I was able to operate Snow Leopard. Though time-consuming, the installation of Snow Leopard has been a lot easier and straightforward than trying to download and Install Bryce 7 Pro and some additional Bryce Content files on the Snow Leopard partition.
My doubts began immediately per downloading Bryce 7 Pro and Bryce Pro Content.
From my DAZ3D account Product Library, I clicked on Bryce 7 Pro and saw four files -- two were Bryce Lightning and two were BrycePro Content 7.0.0.19 -- one each for Windows and Mac. I did not see any versions of Bryce 7 Pro -- the application itself. Below those file names in bold type, was the sentence, "This product is a bundle that contains the following product," which was a Bryce 7 icon. Clicking on the icon brought me to a Bryce 7 Product page offering the Bryce_7.1.0.109_Mac32, and, Bryce Content_7.0.0.21. I downloaded both of these manually and installed one after the other.
First installed was Bryce_7.1.0.109_Mac32 which appeared to know exactly where it needed to go and chose the following path:
Applications/DAZ 3D/Bryce 7. Several files installed inside this Bryce 7 folder, including the Bryce Application and several other Bryce documents and folders, including Data; Docs; Plugins; Presets; and Uninstallers.
Second installed was BryceContent 7.0.0.21 which I chose to install because it was included in the same list of offerings as the Bryce App. Bryce Content installed on the following path: Users/User [Name]/Library/Application Support/DAZ 3D/Bryce 7/DAZ 3D/Bryce/Presets. Inside this Presets folder are several folders including Content; HDRI; Lens Flares; Light Gels; Scene Files; Tutorials, and an uninstaller (Remove Content).
After these files were installed, I restarted the computer, launched the Bryce App, entered my Bryce 7 Pro serial number, and all seemed well. The application booted and I saw the Bryce 7 Pro logo on the screen as the app launched, but I am not completely certain that I am actually running Bryce 7 Pro -- versus regular Bryce, because the content folder I installed was BryceContent_7.0.0.21 and not BryceProContent_7.0.0.19.
My first questions would be:
1) Have I installed the correct version of Bryce 7 Pro? (7.1.0.109) If not, why does it not appear in the list of download/install options in my account Product Library?
2) If I have installed the correct version of Bryce 7 Pro, do I need to (a) uninstall BryceContent_7.0.0.21 and install BryceProContent_7.0.0.19 in its place?, (b) install BryceProContent_7.0.0.19 alongside BryceContent_7.0.0.21, so both files are installed?, or (c) none of the above.
Secondly I also paid for and tried to download and install the following content/texture/materials files:
Bryce Forest
Bryce Instance Grass
Realistic Leaves for Bryce
Glorious Glass -- 20 materials for Bryce, and
Bryce Masters Series: Cloud City (a tutorial)
... none of which, was I able to install on the Snow Leopard partition.
The DAZ3D website seemed to favor using the DAZ Installer Manager so I downloaded and installed it first. Though the installer placed support files in Library/Application Support and Shared folders, the application itself, DAZ3DIM, installed on the following path inside the DAZ3D folder inside the Applications folder: Applications/DAZ 3D/DAZ3DIM1/DAZ3DIM
After installing and activating the DIM, all five items above appeared on the list of available downloads.
Though the files appeared to have downloaded successfully, they did not install. I received the following error message: "Install Manager cannot find a required path. The installer for [insert file name here] requires that the installed path for "Bryce 7 Pro;7" be defined. Make sure that a path for this application is present on the "Applications" page of the "Settings" dialog, then try again."
While four of the five files were now listed on the "Ready to Install" Tab of the DIM, "Realistic Leaves for Bryce" is nowhere to be found on the DIM lists.
I contacted DAZ3D tech support and received a somewhat generic response more helpful to Windows users than Mac users.
My understanding per the tech's suggestions is that I need to define an installation path for the applications. Can I assume she meant the Bryce application itself? How far along do you need to define the path?... as far as the DAZ3D folder inside the applications folder?... or all the way through to the Bryce3D folder?
Secondly, regarding the five files above, the tech advised that, "The installation path for content is wherever you choose to save your content to." I guess I'm scratching my head here. Why on earth would you leave that up to the user? Why not just program your installer to put the content where it functions best with the application, especially since we've already installed BryceContent or BryceProContent.
Part of the confusion here is that I'm not sure if these are "content" per se or if they go in the DAZ 3D/Bryce applications folder.
More specifically -- the Bryce app installs to my applications folder on this path: Application/DAZ 3D/Bryce7. Nested in this Bryce7 folder are the Bryce application and several other files and folders including one for Plugins, and one for Presets. This Presets folder holds all the textures, materials, etc. that one finds in the Palette/drop down triggered by clicking on the arrow next to the Edit button in the Bryce app -- enabling one to assign the textures and materials to the wireframes built in Bryce. It would not be unreasonable for me to assume that as an example, that Glorious Glass might go in the Glass Folder so all its options appear to me as additional options available in the Glass menu when using the Bryce app normally. It might follow that Bryce Instance Grass and Bryce Forest should also be installed in perhaps the Trees folder or some other folder inside this Presets folder.
Perhaps I'm supposed to just point the installer to the Applications/DAZ 3D/Bryce7 folder and allow it to figure out the rest?
Part of my confusion is that 99% of applications for the Mac intuitively know where they want to be installed and don't even ask. One does not ever have to provide paths unless one wishes to diverge from the default, so this is somewhat challenging.
Adding to my confusion is that when the Bryce Content file is installed after installing the Bryce Pro 7 app, the Bryce Content files install to a completely different area -- in the User/Library/Applications Support/DAZ 3D/Bryce 7/DAZ 3D/Bryce/Presets folder. In this folder, one finds Content and Lens Flares and Tutorials, etc. The Content, Scene files and tutorial folders also seem like possible destinations for some of the files I'm trying to install. Perhaps ALL the files I'm trying to install go in the Content File and Bryce automatically sorts it all out? I have no idea.
I'm hoping someone on this board with some knowledge of Mac's and Apple file hierarchy can simply provide the correct path solutions for the files I'm attempting to install on this Snow Leopard partition. Short of that, if anyone knows how to contact Kraig Hausmann directly at DAZ3D, that would be really helpful because he's always been of great help in the past. You could reach him by phone and he was always able to sort out Mac-related issues. Now, whenever I call, I end up in the "overflow" call center. Has anyone had any luck actually talking to someone on the phone at tech support?
Thanks in advance for any and all input.
Congratulations on your success! The BryceContent_v4.pdf will give you answers about the installation of the content. The document covers Mac and PC.
Hi Don.
Kudos to you for your persistence, congratulations on getting positive results and many thanks for reporting back.
Horo's document will give you detailed instructions about where to put content, but I think that the trouble you're having is because Bryce isn't where it's expected to be because of the hoops you've had to jump through to get it to work.
On the whole, Bryce content can go anywhere on your drive. For instance, if you have an .obp file (Bryce library object pre set file), you can import it into Bryce from within Bryce and Bryce will then put it where needs to go (you can also do it manually by placing the .obp file in the correct presets folder within your Bryce app folder). to import int into Bryce from within the application, you need to open your pre-set library and use the 'Import' option in the grey band along the bottom. Then simply point the import window to where you downloaded it and Ok it. It will then appear in your pre-sets where ever you set it to. The same can be done with materials, skies etc.
Many people don't like to use the Download Manager and choose instead to use the manual download option and sort out the content themselves afterwards. Personally, I would hate for my copy of Bryce to get as bogged down as my copy of Poser which has a bulging at the sides Runtime folder stuffed to the edges with content and as such try to keep the preset libraries in Bryce as free as possible from things I don't need all the time.
Your other point about not knowing which version of Bryce you're running;
DAZ only has the latest version of Bryce available for download, so if you downloaded it recently (the last 12 months), it'll be the latest version (7.1.9.109). If you need to check, the easiest way is from your desktop, open the Bryce application folder and highlight the Bryce application icon. Then use Quicklook (the little eye icon at the top of the finder window), This will open up a semi transparent info box which has the Bryce Icon to the left and the full version, application size and last modified date to the right... and is different from using the old Apple + I command to get 'Get Info'.
Hope this helps.
Greetings Horo & Savage 64... Thanks for the input. I'm going to take a close look at Horo's PDF link and see if that can help sort this out. I'll report back with results and/or questions... Thanks again!
OK... I took a close look at Horo's PDF file, which answered a lot of questions.
In summary:
I installed Bryce_7.1.0.109_Mac32 on this path: Applications/DAZ 3D/Bryce 7. The Bryce installer intuitively picked the Applications Folder and created the folder hierarchy for DAZ3D/Bryce 7.
Secondly, BryceContent 7.0.0.21 installer intuitively picked the following path for installation: Users/User [Name]/Library/Application Support/DAZ 3D/Bryce 7/DAZ 3D/Bryce/Presets
If I correctly understood both the PDF and Savage64's response, Horo was suggesting installing elements of BryceContent 7.0.0.21 directly into the appropriate folders nested inside the Bryce 7 Application Presets folder such that they're readily available to the user without having to import them. Again, if I understand Savage64's response, he is suggesting that perhaps it's best not to do this, so as not to overburden the active memory/processing and in effect, make the program run more sluggishly. I believe he is opting for a leaner DAZ3D/Bryce 7/Presets folder with less content to keep track of -- content that one might not need everyday such as tutorials. I took his recommendation.
Based on Horo's PDF file however, I installed BryceProContent 7.0.0.19 into the DAZ3D/Bryce 7/Presets/Materials folder as that seemed like the appropriate location.
Installing the purchased content was hit and miss.
Glorious Glass was easily installed by simply importing the Glorious Glass.mat file into the appropriate category and sub-folder of the Materials Window/Pallette.
BryceForest was a simple matter of importing the BryceTree.obp files into the Objects Library with their own sub-folder. I was unable to import them all at the same time and had to import all 25 files one at a time. But they're there and they work.
Bryce Grass (for use with the Instancing Lab) was a little confusing. The presence of a Grass.obp file made sense but the Grass.mat file seemed a little odd but I installed it in its own sub-folder in the Materials Folder. Applying this material with its own pre-ordained shapes to other shapes seemed a little counter-intuitive. I tried it on a cube and got some strange results but on a 2D vertical plane it behaved a little better -- though didn't look too natural, but bottom line... it's loaded and working.
I'm totally lost regarding the Bryce Masters Series: Cloud City tutorial which comes not only with a file folder, but with its own installer as well. The file folder contains all manner of file types including Materials, Objects, Content, etc. It seems like these should be placed in their appropriate locations inside the DAZ3D/Bryce7/Presets folder.
When I click/activate the installer, it does not intuitively choose a path, or offer a choice/list of paths. It asks for a path and I am not sure where to point it or where to manually place all these other files found inside the Cloud City Folder.
If anyone knows exactly where to point this installer, or how and where to install these files, I'd surely like to know.
What I find odd about this "tutorial" is that the other tutorials contained in the BryceContent folder, utilize HTML files and supporting graphics which open in one's browser. It's more or less a static experience which one goes through in a linear fashion like a PDF file, but in one's browser.
I see no HTML files with this Cloud City Tutorial -- just a Bryce 5 file. I'm wondering how this tutorial works. Perhaps if one knows where to point the installer, the installer places all the files where they need to go, including a set of instructions on how to proceed with the tutorial.
Lastly, I am unable to download and install Realistic Leaves for Bryce -- though it appears on my invoice as an item that has been paid for. Clicking on the blue "download" button takes me to a webpage with my list of available downloads, none of which is Realistic Leaves for Bryce . Clicking on the green "download & install" button for the DIM, activates the DIM, but does not include Realistic Leaves for Bryce on the list of available downloads. Anyone understand why this doesn't work?
Thanks for any and all valuable input!
I went to my account through the button top rigt on forum screen, click on Product Library on the top line, and then searched for Leaves in the filter by pane, clicked the filter by button and the download was there
Some older products have yet to be added to DIM I think, and that is an old product.