Unity Mac - Dont have either, but i do have a question

Hi All

Im desperate to get into some 3D Application development. Ive tried so many different engines and development suites ive lost count (all PC based)

Ive seen all the reviews for UNITY3D and im seriously considering buying a MAC exclusively for UNITY, just been checking out Ebay.

Anyway, i have a fairly strong programming background, i work in the IT industry, my real week area would be 3D modeling, artisticly im fine, but 3d is a different kettle of fish.

My question is does Unity help/aid those not so strong in 3D modeling? Or do you still need to resort to external modeling apps?

 

Unity lets you position objects in 3D to make your game, but you build the objects elsewhere. There are some free 3D apps, some more newcomer-friendly than others. Maybe Google Sketchup would be a good starting point? (I haven't tried it yet--I use LightWave.)

PS, If you need help choosing a used Mac, just post... the question has come up before A very basic used Mac (like a G4 Mini) + a copy of Unity can total less than $500... well worth it! I converted to Unity the month before last and never looked back. I'm running on a 1.25 GHz G4 and it works fine.

 

Hopefully one day we'll have better primitive support! :O)

 

What do you want, a teapot?

-Jon

 

Nope, others and dynamic control over the supported ones. But who said that each program should have it's own teapot! ;O)

 

Also, a lot of the people here are more experienced with asset creation than programming and I'm sure would love to collaborate with someone skilled in that area.

 

I just did what you're thinking about doing. If you're in the US, here's my advice (ignore this if you're anywhere else):

Forget about eBay. I've been watching the prices and you'll only save a couple hundred bucks on a used G5 over a new Intel Duo. I just bought a "remanufactured" iMac 17" Intel Duo 1.83 GHz for $1150 shipping was free but I had to pay state sales tax. It's basically a brand new machine with a 1 year warranty. You won't find any difference between a remanufactured Mac or a new one, in fact, they guarantee you won't.

Go to Apple.com and follow the links to the Store, it's a much better deal than 99% of what I saw on eBay.

I'm also buying a 1 GB RAM upgrade through newegg.com for about $79 plus shipping. Post if you need a link.

 

Plus... you get to use a Mac!

 

Thanks for all the feedback, very helpful.

Well im still gonna go for it i think, just keep hearing to many good things about Unity.

I live in the UK not the States, so cant take advantage of that Apple offer, everything is more expensive here!!

The cheapest deal i can find on Ebay is £290 for a G4 Mini 500mb Ram 60gb Hard disk (Radeon 9200 - 32mb) - i think that works out to around $600??

 

It's a solid little creature. For a little more you could get an Intel mini, however, that will come with a warranty and have a processor that is more than twice as powerful.

 

But the GPU in the G4 mini is much better. I've heard people reccomend that one over the intel Mini for Unity work for that exact reason.

 

I've got a 9200 in my eMac, and I can't see the vast majority of effects from the pro assets. My processor is a 1.25 ghz, and I find it's adequate to do most things. I get a variance of framerates on larger scenes, like the FPS tutorial, but it works well enough most of the time. It's also great for keeping low-end machines in mind while developing.

The sad part is, unless you only want to support pro-level machines, you're going to have to support the new mac mini's crappy video card. So either one would be a good choice, depending on what kind of machines you want to support.

 

Even the UK Apple store has refurbished Macs - look in the bottom left at http://store.apple.com/Apple/WebObjects/ukstore

A refurb has an Apple warranty and will be newer models than you usually find on eBay.

The best buy in a Unity system I think is an iMac Core Duo. (An old G4 or G5 is fine for now, but Intel Core is the future.) A MacBook PRO is nice if you need portability. Both have a real GPU--which the Mac Mini Core Duo and the non-Pro MacBooks lack.

I see the UK refurb store has 20" iMac Core Duos for £921 including VAT. If you found a 17" one it would cost less. The refurb list changes daily.

But the old G4 Mac Mini does have a real GPU, and a used one would be a very CHEAP way to get into Unity. That's no bad thing

 

Personally I think ebay is a good idea. I bought my G5 17" iMac on ebay over a year ago for $850 (a good deal at that time).... I think you could find them for about $600 now. I wouldn't try finding a Mac Mini on ebay, they are too new and people are paying way too much for them. Anyway, Mini's aren't very good to develop with Unity, the graphics card sucks. My G5 iMac has NVIDIA graphics and runs fast.

As for needing to learn 3D to use Unity, not at all. In fact Unity doen't do 3D modeling, for that you would have to use something like Maya. You can create a game in Unity without having to creae your own 3D models because there are a lot of good 3d models for sale (or free) on various sites on the internet. Also, there are a number of simple-to-use apps that can create 3D objects with no 3d modeling knowledge needed; like Byrce (for terrains), Tree Magick, Plant Magick, etc. Just import these "props" into your Unity project and start using them.

 

Mac Minis aren't that new--not the G4 ones--but they far fall short of the speed of a G5 iMac Minis are cheaper than G5 systems though, if you can't afford more.

 

one thing i'd like to add, buying new gets you applecare, which for me has been worth its weight in gold. i bought a G5 imac about a year ago started having problems around the holidays - long story short they replaced two motherboards, it died again so they offered me MY CHOICE of a new G5 or the lastest intel (which i took of course bacause it neatly coincided with unity's UB release).

major problems with macs don't happen that often but when they do applecare rocks.