About to start the 2.8 course. I can do both OSes, and I understand Mikey is going to lecture using Windows, but still am going to ask: hand in heart, what is better to use if we want to get the most out of this course in particular? If I choose MacOs will I have trouble following Mike on screen? Are layouts going to be different, keyboard shortcuts a real issue? Slightly easier for me to use MacOs, but can also boot my MacBook Pro on Windows if necessary.
Thanks, and really excited about this!
I don’t think there are any major differences with layout in a different OS. I’m a windows user and I would say go with whatever OS you are most comfortable with in the long run because you go beyond the gamedev tutorial eventually and into your own projects.
Gamedev are usually good at highlighting the differences as you are learning from their tutorials for any subject matter, where specific buttons are different etc. but even if that wasn’t the case, you looking for that alternative button or how something works in your OS vs the Os being used in the tutorial, may help make the learning stick more. You are more likely to remember a solution or method of doing something that you search for yourself than copying from a tutorial. That is just my own personal preference and how I learn. I remember doing one of their old Unity 4.0 tutorials in Unity 5+ and there were quite a lot of differences, but me searching for those solutions myself helped my learning massively.
When it comes to you graduating the tutorial and you want to work on your own stuff, you will be in a much better position to hit the ground running in your preferred OS if you have already been working in it before.
Hi,
I tried on both OS (macOS and Windows) and honestly I had a better experience on macOS specially rendering time. On Windows is easy because you have the F keys but you can skip that “issue” with practice and I do not see any interference on your workflow. I am 100% with @John you cannot rely only on the course, do your research to find the best way to solve the challenges and you will not even remember if you done on macOS, Windows or Linux.
If we are talking Blender, as far as I can tell, just go with what your comfortable with at this point. The one real difference that I have been wrestling with is the gpu. For some add-on’s CUDA is necessary which is unavailable on the mac. At this time it’s probably not an issue for you… but as you grow into the application it may be something you might have to consider.
Couple of points to mention
I’m the teaching assistant for the course and i do not own a Mac. In those instances for support i have to either rely on google or ask Mikey or another student. Support will be restrictive on Mac for that reason and unless someone donates me a Mac i cant do much else with this.
It wont match the course shortcuts as these are different on Mac’s, Most are in the Q&A but again i am restricted on the information i can provide on that.
Blender dropped support for the METAL drivers and so you need to use AMD Pro Render to render out (with cycles i believe) in a Mac OS so for compability is a bit of a pain.
As previously mentioned its what you feel comfortable with and i will always do my best to support everyone and every set up but that is not always possible. In these cases you may need to rely on the community and maybe a bit of googling (I know, I know!) to help
If you get stuck you can always ask and i will try my atmost to help you
Thanks to all who gave their thoughts. I think Windows it is… Mostly because all of the online learning materials I have come across (including this course) are on Windows. And it seems 99% of the time game development happens on PCs anyway (I started the Unreal course on Mac but switched to Windows), so I’ll stick to Windows10. Once I’m more comfortable with the software I can check out how the workflow is like under MacOS.
Yes AMD Pro can be used. I have not tried it yet. As of yet I have had no real need to render with gpu, and have found cpu rendering works fine for most projects I have worked on.
Not sure which shortcuts your talking about, but if it’s keyboard shortcuts, they are very similar between platforms and not too hard for a mac user to figure out.
Usually the ones where people also have emulate middle mouse on as well which is common with mac.
This topic was automatically closed 24 hours after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.