IMPORTANT: Mac OS X 10.9 Compatibility with Autodesk Smoke

[Robert.Adam]

Hi everyone.

Autodesk is working closely with Apple to certify Autodesk® Smoke® software on the new Apple® Mac OS® X 10.9.

Until further notice, we recommend that you do not upgrade to 10.9 as you may experience degraded performance and other unexpected behavior.

Further updates on Smoke and Mac OS X 10.9 will be provided soon.

Regards,

Robert.

[Anonymous]

my god !!

[Robert.Adam]

Hi, Scott.

The QA team is still testing the 10.9.1 update.

I'll let you know once the results are in.

regards,

Robert.

[Anonymous]

10.9.1 update. for Smoke 2013 Ext1 MacBookPro 15 - late 2013 2,3Ghz Corei7 16G RAM - 512 SSD 2G nVidia GT750M

will update you guys the result...

[Anonymous]

What is this craziness? Here comes anarchy... 🙂

[Robert.Adam]

Unfortunately, the issues Smoke has with 10.9 are still present in OS 10.9.1.

Here's a recap of the main issues we have found:

- Archives don't restore because the /usr/bin/gnutar utility was removed from the OS. Smoke's archiving relies on that to unpack the archives.

- Stand-alone licenses can't be activated or transferred because of compatibility issues between the ADLM version in Smoke 2013 Ext1 and OS 10.9.

- Performance issues (sometimes significant), due to changes in the way the OS interfaces with the graphics card / driver.

I want to reassure you that we are working on finding solutions to these problems. Stay tuned for updates when we know more.

Best regards and thank you all for your patience and understanding so far.

Robert.

[Anonymous]

BSD tar is a nightmare - tar

As before its really easy to install gnutar, its perfectly ok for end users to agree to the free license its just that Apple won't, hence no install in Mavericks.

Install Apple's "Command Line Tools (OS X Mountain Lion) for Xcode - October 2013". You can download those from https://developer.apple.com/downloads.

Install Home Brew. Go to http://brew.sh/ and just do what it says. s.

Install git. In a terminal type: brew install git

Now you're a homebrew user, welcome to the club - lets install gnutar. In the terminal;

brew install gnu-tar

cd /usr/bin

sudo ln -s /usr/local/opt/gnu-tar/libexec/gnubin/tar gnutar

Gnutar is hopelessly out of date and pretty much not compliant with any current Posix standard but its a better idea to stick with what works on Flame than reinvent the wheel because Apple have issues with GPL.

Mike

[BKM]

I hate to say it... but that's a lot of extra clicks. 🙂  

Surely this is not a viable option to have the users deal with on top of running Smoke. 

[Anonymous]

Nice 🙂

Course you only have to do this once not every single time you ever want to do something... And it could be scripted down to 2. click on a shell script.

It's really distressing to me to see apple so determined to go their own way in core is utilities - understandable in this context as Darwin is bad based but it's hardly an hardship to bundle 39k of code.

[Robert.Adam]

There is an easier way to fix the lack of gnutar, but it's a hack not a proper fix like the one Mike posted.

The basic gnutar options are the same as the regular tar command, so you could just map gnutar to the regular tar and trick the system into thinking gnutar is installed:

sudo ln -s /usr/bin/tar /usr/bin/gnutar

Regards,

Robert.

[Anonymous]

is there any news about the fix, i just bougth a new imac with osx 10.9 installed mostly to use this software so i really need to know an aproximate time frame for a fix, or will i need to start using another software? please i really like smoke but i also need to work . thanks i hope the fix comes really soon.

[Robert.Adam]

Hi.

Unfortunately, there is no news to share at this time. We're still working on the issues I've mentioned in a message above.

Have you already purchased Smoke? Did you get a standalone license or a network license?

A network license should work properly on 10.9 and I can provide a workaround for the archiving issue. However, you might run into the performance issues I've mentioned.

Regards,

Robert.

[stephen]

Hello Robert, do you have any estimate yet on when this will be fixed, going on 2 months now with a system that won't work. I purchased smoke & a new MBP because I travel so much and I can work on the road. This is expensive and fustrationg. Just curious, did Mac not give any developers a heads up on this texture issue before Mavricks was released, seems you guys got caught flat footed? 

Any work around would be greatly appreciated. Currently Smoke locks up my computer every time I try open it.

Thanks

Stephen

[Robert.Adam]

Hi Stephen.

Apologies for the issues you're going through. Unfortunately, there's no workaround for the performance issues.

The graphics change was unexpectedly introduced by Apple in the last beta. So, yes, it did catch us a bit off-guard, but we're working hard to address it.

Now, if your Smoke locks up immediatly after you start it, that might be due to another issue.

Can you please email me the _shell.log and _app.log files in the /usr/discreet/log folder?

Regards,

Robert.

[Anonymous]

Robert,

For those of us who are stuck using Mavericks (we have equipment that is not OS downgradeable), is there a way to at least get the standalone licensing working? 

If I attempt to activate smoke, I get a 110 license error. 
Is there a workaround?

[Anonymous]

Im on late MBP 2013 Mavericks 10.9.x

this is going to be happen and it happen now

the machine are non downgradable

maya come with sp3 if im not mistaken, ..

did they fix maya?

look forward for any possible solution , and thanks fot the hadwork to who are involve

[Anonymous]

10 weeks to nab.

[jamesgrean]

The Mac Pro is shipping March now (according to the Apple store website). Are we going to be up and running then? If we have pre-ordered a specced-up Mac Pro, is it going to be useless to us? For how long? Pretty frustrated with this. First we had to wait months for the Mac Pro, now we're looking at more months to get Smoke working on it. 1 month? 3? 6??

Hoping for answers soon.

[Anonymous]

Avid also wont run on the new mac pro. Marianna reported that they got their hands on their first new mac pro only yesterday. the initial test indicates that the issue is that the macpro has no audio inputs and so Avid hangs looking for one. Adding a usb audio in fixes it and it boots but ot will take a bit of time to check for other unexpected errors of that kind.

I fully expect everyone to be on track in a month or so in which case most people will simply roll the updates for the new mac pro into the NAB releases. It makes no sense to release a temp fix for what will be a small number of users initially.

Its a lot like buying the first fax machine. Looks like a good idea until you realise theres no one to fax to... I'd wait 3 months before buying any new apple product anyway, the pioneers get the arrows but the settlers get the land.

Mike

[jamesgrean]

I can see that from AD's point of view it makes more sense to wait until NAB. But from a freelancer's point of view, days = dollars. The whole point of going Mac Pro is that we can run Smoke with something like the power that we're used to on a Z800 or similar. Which means I can work more effectively and please my clients, without needed to be inside a post house with overheads.

Working on the iMac on Smoke is like pushing boulders uphill, even with a fast model and as much RAM as it will take. What we need is more processing power, more GPU, and more RAM. Until we're on the Mac Pro, Smoke is not all that it can be.

I do hope there's news soon!

[utopiamediaent]

As far as I know archiving is one issue. Try archiving a project. Please let us know.