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BootLoxes

macrumors 6502a
Apr 15, 2019
749
897
Have you tried rendering in Keyshot with the Zbrush>Keyshot Bridge? Be interesting to see how a dedicated standalone CPU renderer performs on the M1. Keyshot has a C4D rendering plugin too, never tried it myself but would like to hear any reports on it.

I'm working on a dark gothic client illustration right now and just added 1000 monks to a scene using Redshift scatter, it's appreciably more responsive and providing much faster visual feedback than my Mac Pro. The Renderview updates instantly and of course the M1 is completely silent - just a joy to use. In the same scene I'm using volumetric light, Megascans assets, displaced textures, post effects and its still completely workable and responsive. Redshift definitely feels like the most robust and stable renderer on the M1 right now.
Unfortunately I cant justify buying keyshot as a hobbyist. Marmoset toolbag 4 is pretty much as far as I am willing to go for a rendering program
 

Saad Ismail

macrumors newbie
May 25, 2021
1
2
This is a thread for discussing everything about 3D rendering on Apple Silicon, M1 and beyond. Whether you're using a dedicated CPU renderer like Keyshot, a plugin like Redshift, Cycles, Arnold or Octane for C4D, Maya or Houdini, or even if you're rendering inside ZBrush with its native renderer, all 3D and related subjects are welcome in this thread. I'm sure we're all very eager and interested to read about performance, thermals and stability of our favourite engines on the new Macs.

So far, Jules Urbach of OTOY (Octane render) has announced that an M1 version of Octane is in development and that is it "FAST!"

If anyone has news of their favourite plugins for C4D being ported to Apple Silicon or any other 3D news of note, please feel free to post it up.
Blender 3D has added support for Apple Silicon in v2.93.0. It is in beta and available for download on blender's website.
CPU rendering is fully supported, however GPU rendering is not. Still waiting on that.
 

hifimac

macrumors member
Mar 28, 2013
64
40
WWDC Metal Sessions have been posted. I noticed in the Hybrid rendering @8:15 they mention Apple GPUs will now work directly with Tile Memory. Most of this is above my head, but I think this signals we'll start to see the advantages of Metal + Apple GPUs soon.

Anyone have any more insight from the sessions?

 

leman

macrumors Core
Oct 14, 2008
19,516
19,664
WWDC Metal Sessions have been posted. I noticed in the Hybrid rendering @8:15 they mention Apple GPUs will now work directly with Tile Memory. Most of this is above my head, but I think this signals we'll start to see the advantages of Metal + Apple GPUs soon.

Anyone have any more insight from the sessions?


That particular aspect of Metal RT is probably of less interest to production renderers, as it’s more about real-time RT (games and such). However, they have also introduced an extended memory setting for RT that would allow one to encode substantially larger scenes than before. Plus, you have the nice motion blur effect that works by encoding animation into the raytracing scene itself. If I’m not mistaken, these limits are much higher than what Nvidia currently allows, which would make Apple RT API potentially an interesting target for production renderers.
 

deconstruct60

macrumors G5
Mar 10, 2009
12,493
4,053
WWDC Metal Sessions have been posted. I noticed in the Hybrid rendering @8:15 they mention Apple GPUs will now work directly with Tile Memory.

Not necessarily versus a RX 6900 can plug in to a Mac Pro or eGPU now. Infinity Cache is also a cache. As long as Metal doesn't "impede" ('bad' data segmenting) or unoptimized RNDA2 calls to negate it the RDNA2 system may do write backs to faster GDDR6 but parts of that data could still be sitting inside the Inifinity Cache. ( are those drivers mature. No. but neither is macOS 12 ... which has many waves of bug fixes coming over next 6 months. )

The older legacy Intel GPUs , AMD Vega , and others are at more of a disadvantage, but Apple doesn't have some magical exclusion here that everyone else (with valid drivers) is missing the boat on.

P.S. context on Infinity Cache

"..And finally, the Infinity Cache is also a big factor in AMD’s ray tracing accelerator cores, which keep parts of their significant BVH scene data in the cache. ..."

same general tool of holding more BVH data in the cache.
 

syncopy

macrumors member
Jun 6, 2016
95
112
Bumping this now that the M1 Pro and Max laptops are out. Does anyone here use Keyshot at all? I just installed it on my new M1 Max 16" and the render times were slower than on my 2019 Intel Core i9 due to the Rosetta translation layer. Seeing as this is unacceptable, I'm now looking into alternative rendering programs that are M1 native.

So far, I've listed RedShift and Octane Render. Any others that I should look into? I do some artistic animation with a lot of complex reflections and textures, so preferably something that is physics based or at least looks realistic.
 

syncopy

macrumors member
Jun 6, 2016
95
112
If you are in to GPU rendering Blender Cycle will support Metal. On the CPU side native support is coming to Vray.
Thanks! I looked into Cycles already and it seems like Octane produces more realistic imagery with less tweaking, but I’m hoping future Metal support (with Apple’s help) will push it ahead.

I won’t mention the V word. Not cursing my new computer with such evil. ?
 

vel0city

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 23, 2017
347
510
Shame Keyshot isn't native yet, it looks like CPU rendering is going to be amazing on the new Max chips.


Cycles4D, Arnold and Corona all still not ported to Apple Silicon, can't think of any other native third party CPU renderers that we could try.

Redshift looks like the best option for now - performance slightly above a 1080ti on an M1 Max from what I've seen so far.
 

jmho

macrumors 6502a
Jun 11, 2021
502
996
Have you tried rendering in Keyshot with the Zbrush>Keyshot Bridge? Be interesting to see how a dedicated standalone CPU renderer performs on the M1.
I have ZBrush Keyshot 10.

I tried rendering the Fuzz demo project on my M1 Air before deactivating the licence and it took 5 minutes 57 seconds.

My M1 Max did it in 2 minutes 25 seconds, which is really really nice.
 

vel0city

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 23, 2017
347
510
I have ZBrush Keyshot 10.

I tried rendering the Fuzz demo project on my M1 Air before deactivating the licence and it took 5 minutes 57 seconds.

My M1 Max did it in 2 minutes 25 seconds, which is really really nice.

Are both ZBrush and the KS Bridge running in Rosetta? I own a license for ZB but haven't needed to use it for a while.
 

jmho

macrumors 6502a
Jun 11, 2021
502
996
Are both ZBrush and the KS Bridge running in Rosetta? I own a license for ZB but haven't needed to use it for a while.
Yes, they both are still Rosetta.

The viewport performance in KeyShot is fantastic. I'm looking at a 3.4 million poly sculpt that I did on my 2020 iMac and I remember it being really difficult to move the camera around in KeyShot without going into performance mode.

The M1 Max just flies around it.
 

vel0city

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 23, 2017
347
510
That's great to hear. I really like Keyshot and the workflow with Zbrush, it's great on a dual monitor setup.

Does ZB play nice on the Max?
 

jmho

macrumors 6502a
Jun 11, 2021
502
996
Does ZB play nice on the Max?
Yeah. ZB seems to be great. It ran pretty well on the standard M1 too, but there wasn't enough ram so larger files tended to struggle.

With the 32 gb in the M1 Max those larger files seem to work no problem.
 
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vel0city

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 23, 2017
347
510
Yeah. ZB seems to be great. It ran pretty well on the standard M1 too, but there wasn't enough ram so larger files tended to struggle.

With the 32 gb in the M1 Max those larger files seem to work no problem.

M1 native version should absolutely fly then. Have to say my ZB skills are very mediocre and I never really push the app anyway, I'm certainly no Pavlovich!
 

jmho

macrumors 6502a
Jun 11, 2021
502
996
I get 1.55

Not sure if that's good or bad.
Hmm, apparently it's how many times faster your computer is than their baseline machine.

For reference my PC with a 3900X and a 2080 Ti gets 3.45x when using the CPU and 45.54x on the GPU, so the M1 Max is useable but it's not going to replace my PC just yet.
 

jmho

macrumors 6502a
Jun 11, 2021
502
996
I tried rendering the Fuzz demo project on my M1 Air before deactivating the licence and it took 5 minutes 57 seconds.

My M1 Max did it in 2 minutes 25 seconds, which is really really nice.

Also tried the same Fuzz demo file on my desktop Windows PC:

M1 Air5m 57s
M1 Max2m 25s
AMD 3900X1m 07s
2080 Ti (GPU rendering)20s

So yeah, Keyshot on an M1 Max is definitely not going to beat a Windows PC, but tbh if I was rendering a long animation overnight I might be happier spending 6 hours rendering on the M1 Max in silence instead of 3 hours on the PC with all the fans spinning up and down all the time.
 

nathan_reilly

macrumors 6502
Apr 2, 2016
361
1,113
Hmm, apparently it's how many times faster your computer is than their baseline machine.

For reference my PC with a 3900X and a 2080 Ti gets 3.45x when using the CPU and 45.54x on the GPU, so the M1 Max is useable but it's not going to replace my PC just yet.
1.82 on my 2010 Mac Pro with 12 cores...so the Rosetta emulation is definitely hurting here I believe.
 
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vel0city

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 23, 2017
347
510
Thanks for the benchmarks. Most likely is Rosetta bottlenecking performance as Nathan said. Looks like Redshift is the only serious contender for rendering right now.

I would really love to get an M1 version of Arnold above anything, I'm sure it would fly on the new chips. I've been using it today on a Mac Pro and it's just such a great looking, robust and featured renderer. Assets that I've used in Redshift like HDRIs and PBR textures just look that much more convincing in Arnold.
 

jmho

macrumors 6502a
Jun 11, 2021
502
996
Thanks for the benchmarks. Most likely is Rosetta bottlenecking performance as Nathan said. Looks like Redshift is the only serious contender for rendering right now.

I would really love to get an M1 version of Arnold above anything, I'm sure it would fly on the new chips. I've been using it today on a Mac Pro and it's just such a great looking, robust and featured renderer. Assets that I've used in Redshift like HDRIs and PBR textures just look that much more convincing in Arnold.
Yeah, I think you're right.

I just gave Houdini 19 a test. It's fairly snappy and useable and the new Karma XPU renderer seems good, but also it doesn't support gpu rendering on Mac and is using rosetta so again it's probably not going to compete with a Windows PC.
 
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