software for macs

[evolutiontheatre]

anyone know of any software for macs? specifically perhaps a lighting design program, like wysiwyg?

and if there's any free stuff, that would be cool too!

 

[Chris Chapman]

Go with VectorWorks since that is almost the industry standard. Dig around online and you might find an old, creaky copy of MacLux Pro. It won't run on Intel based Macs though. VectorWorks runs nicely in OS X environtments.

Chris Chapman
TD, Greenville Performing Arts Center

 

[soundlight]

MacLux Pro is a great program for really basic stuff. You can learn how to plot in about twenty minutes. Really easy, but absolutely no 3D visualization.

 

[chieftfac]

Go with VectorWorks since that is almost the industry standard. Dig around online and you might find an old, creaky copy of MacLux Pro. It won't run on Intel based Macs though. VectorWorks runs nicely in OS X environtments.
Chris Chapman
TD, Greenville Performing Arts Center

You can still get MacLux Pro online at their site... and I've been using it on my MacBook Pro 17 for almost a year now... They are starting the development of a new program call LXFree... Though it is beta right now, it has good possibilities. Like Chris said... Vectorworks is just about top dog in the industry for us Mac folks...

 

[phil000]

vw 08 is free to students

Edit: see the CB Glossary for the link. -DL

 

[propmonkey]

what about lighting offline editors? so far i found etc's eos for mac but cant find a strand, grandma, hog, or any others

 

[icewolf08]

what about lighting offline editors? so far i found etc's eos for mac but cant find a strand, grandma, hog, or any others

That is why god invented Parallels and VMWare. So you can run OLEs for Windoze and DOS based consoles. In fact, if done correctly with those pieces of software you can, theoretically, turn your computer into a console.

 

[jdandreas09]

that is what i use
you can get a free full copy if you fill out the student request form
a week after i filled it out they sent me a dvd to instal it
i have yet to pay a sent
and there tech suport people are realy helpfull and nice to a person who dosent know what they are doing
i do not know if you can get 2009 for educational use
but i im useing 2008

 

[Pip]

that is what i use
you can get a free full copy if you fill out the student request form
a week after i filled it out they sent me a dvd to instal it
i have yet to pay a sent
and there tech suport people are realy helpfull and nice to a person who dosent know what they are doing
i do not know if you can get 2009 for educational use
but i im useing 2008

Yep! Works great, I'm running it too! The only thing is you get little, very unobtrusive watermarks on the top and bottom of your pages.

 

[jdandreas09]

Yep! Works great, I'm running it too! The only thing is you get little, very unobtrusive watermarks on the top and bottom of your pages.

yes but it is worth it

 

[jerekb]

What about audio cueing and stuff? I like iTunes but you cant play two things at once and is there anything that incorporates sound cues and light cues together I love cross integration. And what about midi isn't that stuff usually processed through a computer and if so how does the stuff work on a mac.. USB? Cause like iMac only has one sound input and one out put same goes for the mac books/pro so whats the best option there... USB again? (well unless you spend like $10K on a nice mac pro.) come on people talk. help us out here. ideas?? ideas??

 

[icewolf08]

What about audio cueing and stuff? I like iTunes but you cant play two things at once and is there anything that incorporates sound cues and light cues together I love cross integration.

There isn't any software that I know of that directly runs lighting and sound cues from the same program. This does not mean that you can't have a unified control system though. There is software like QLab, Macs Cue, and Ex Cues for running sound cues. QLab is probably the most full featured of the three, capable of running sound and media cues as well as sending MIDI commands.

And what about midi isn't that stuff usually processed through a computer and if so how does the stuff work on a mac.. USB? Cause like iMac only has one sound input and one out put same goes for the mac books/pro so whats the best option there... USB again? (well unless you spend like $10K on a nice mac pro.) come on people talk. help us out here. ideas?? ideas??

MIDI, or Musical Instrument Digital Interface is a control protocol that has been adopted by the theatre world for what we call MIDI Show Control or MSC. MIDI was originally designed to allow musical instruments to talk to a computer for the purposes of communicating what an instrument is doing. MIDI does not contain any audio signal at all. MIDI can be used with any modern computer system. You can get MIDI PCI card or USB MIDI devices. The number of audio in/out ports on a computer has no bearing on MIDI.

The real question is what you want to be able to do with MIDI. You can use MSC to trigger cues on many theatre devices. If you have software capable of sending MSC commands you can control things like lighting consoles, digital sound consoles, other computers, etc. By the same token, if you have software on the computer configured to take MSC commands you can have many other devices control the computer

On the flip side, you can also use products like the Rosco Keystroke to trigger cues on your computer from the lighting console. The Keystroke can be configured to "push" different keys or combinations of keys when it is fed certain DMX values from the console. Keystroke works with both PC and Mac.

 

[willbb123]

Is there any good wysiwyg software out there for mac? I just want something simple.
I have vectorworks 2008 but I can not figure out how to make my 2d plot 3d...

 

[erosing]

VectorWorks Tutorials for Theatre is a good place to start with vectorworks, if you want to learn how to do things quick.

As far as wysiwyg type programs, ESP Vision 3 is going to be released for the mac, but probably not for a while yet.