News: Cinema 4D And Cinebench Available In 64-Bit

[Scot Walker]

It is true 64 bit, it’s just the GUI isn’t 64 bit.

The math is 64 bit (128 bit, actually) and the memory addressing is now 64 bit.

There is no advantage in making OS X not be able to run 32 bit binaries by making it “fully 64 bit”, as far as I can tell.

[Scott Frizzle]

I don’t disagree with your assessment, but if developers like Maxon are hedging moving forward with 64 bit versions of their apps because of Apple’s 64/32 bit approach, then there is a problem; possibly just one of communication between Apple and its developers. If Apple is going to stay with this 64/32 bit approach for the forseeable future, then hopefully they are communicating this to developers like Maxon, who seem to be waiting for the other shoe to drop so they can go ahead and make a totally 64 bit app and not have to double their efforts first supporting the 64/32 bit OS and then the totally 64 bit (including GUI) OS.

The document which I quote above states “Cocoa and Carbon Application GUI frameworks are not ready for 64 bit programming.” The wording of this leads one to believe that they will be eventually. I can understand a developer hesitating in light of this.

[Scot Walker]

I’m guessing that Apple won’t go full 64 bit, breaking compatibility with 32 bit applications, for a very long time, especially when there isn’t any real benefit for doing so.

I’m speculating, obviously, but I think Maxon could make the Mac version utilize more than 4 gigs (it doesn’t even use 4 gigs yet, so what’s up with that?) and require Tiger and they wouldn’t have to update it again for a few years.

And I would assume that any changes they had to make to the application to utilize more than 4 gigs in Tiger would carry over to a 64 bit GUI version, so it’s not like efforts today wouldn’t be utilized in the future.

I could be wrong, but this is what I gather from reading.

If one of Maxon’s competitors comes out with more than 4 gigs access on Tiger, that might put a burner under Maxon’s seat.

[Scot Walker]

One other point – isn’t Maxon keeping two different code-bases for Cinema on Windows now? 32 bit and 64 bit? That wouldn’t be necessary with Cinema for Tiger that accesses more than 4 gigs of RAM like Motion 2 does. Maybe Apple’s method is better for that reason alone?

[Björn Marl]

Support of more then 4 GB might have been done using some paging mechanism. While usefull for videoeffects or painting it is not an option for rendering or high poly scenes in the editor. Paging would not require a true 64 bit application.
Cheers
Bj

[Björn Marl]

The codebase of CINEMA is the same for OS X and Windows 32/64 bit. If we were to support a 64 bit non GUI renderer to make use of the 64 bit parts of OS X this would need a seperate codebase, thereby increasing workload in programming and quality assurance immensly.
Cheers
Bj

[Brian Hughes]

This developer article would seem to indicate otherwise: 64-bit Porting
Read the section entitled “Who should read this document” in the intro, especially the 64-bit myths.

Since few applications will benefit from being fully 64-bit, and as the 32-bit GUI can handle the 64 bit data, it’s unlikely that Apple will make major changes to the GUI any time soon. Reading that developer guide, it’s pretty obvious that the Cinema 4D could be ported to 64 bit. Cinema 4D is exactly the kind of application that would work well under the 32-bit GUI/64-bit processing model. The 32-bit GUI and underlying 32-bit libraries can already work within the 64-bit codespace, they just can’t access more than 4 GB of RAM.

Even if Apple creates an entirely 64-bit OS, Maxon would have to maintain 2 codebases, I seriously doubt they want to stop creating applications for Tiger and older versions of Mac OS X. Also unless Maxon creates the ability of it’s 64-bit apps to work with 32-bit plugins, plugin developers will have to create both a 32-bit and a 64-bit version.

[Björn Marl]

>Reading that developer guide, it’s pretty obvious that the Cinema 4D could be
>ported to 64 bit. Cinema 4D is exactly the kind of application that would work
>well under the 32-bit GUI/64-bit processing model.

Fact is the modeller can’t be ported to 64 bit with 10.4, therefore it would be impossible for mac user to create scenes where the scene size demands more then 4 GB.

>Also unless Maxon creates the ability of it’s 64-bit apps to work with 32-bit
>plugins, plugin developers will have to create both a 32-bit and a 64-bit version.

The ability to link 32 bit libraries in a 64 bit apps is something none of the major players on the OS market were able to pull off, why should Maxon be able to do it? It’s like trying to put the hood of a VW bug on a lincoln continental. Either it won’t work or it won’t be the hood of a VW bug anymore.
Cheers
Bj

[Craig Shields]

Well, it sounds like your saying that we won’t see a 64-bit version for the Mac any time soon. Is that right?

[Scot Walker]

I’m confused.

The 64 bit of Cinema for Windows is a separate version and 3rd party plug-ins require updating to work with it. It requires a 64 bit Windows and a 64 bit X86 processor.

You have a 64 bit version and a 32 bit version, for Windows.

If that’s not separate code base, what is? Maybe I’m wrong. I’m no CS major, obviously, so any explanation is very much appreciated. 🙂 Maybe “code base” isn’t the proper term.

But if Maxon were to update Cinema for OS X Tiger, there would still only be the one version of Cinema for the Mac. Like Motion 2, the one Cinema 4D would work in Tiger on a G5 and give us more than 4 gigs of RAM, and it would also work in OS 10.3.9 on a G4. I also noticed that Motion 2 for OS X uses 32 bit plug-ins just fine.

BTW, why doesn’t Cinema use more than 2 gigs of RAM? Thanks!