3D Rendering on Apple Silicon, CPU&GPU

[vinegarshots]

I see your point but I don’t agree, when I need to do an animation I just use online farm that will render faster than any hardware you can buy as a freelance/small studio. And that do not cost me a single penny since I pass the farm cost to the client

I like to try to maximize profits when possible, so it makes more sense to me to bill the client for the render cost and add that to my profit.

BTW, very nice renders. I would drive myself insane modeling all the gold filigree on the lamps and furniture. Do you sculpt those from reference images, or from memory?

Great that we get a discussion about specific scenarios instead of benchmarks. 1.5h for a high res still and 5-30 seconds per frame (X1000) says it all in regard to different demands and likely the complexity of the scene.

How much time does it take to model and animate (not the rendering) the 1000 frames?

It varies depending on the product/concept being demonstrated. Usually the client provides the 3D models, so it can be just an hour or two to add materials and animate. Add a couple hours if I need to model from scratch. For more complex projects, modeling/animating might be a couple weeks, but I tend to focus more on the quick-turn stuff.

 

[Boil]

Sirio76 demonstrates that actual render times are far less important than the overall experience, as 3D artists don’t spend all their time rendering - they spend most of it sculpting, modelling, texturing, scene-setup etc.

This is where I feel ASi & macOS/Metal can shine, giving the end user a satisfying experience in the day-to-day of production work; said from the viewpoint of a (at best) hobbyist in the realm of 3D/DCC...

"Back-in-the-day" it was editing a low-budget indie sci-fi/fantasy flick with a Media 100 system in the studios 9500, and dipping my toes in 3D with EIAS on my PowerTower Pro 225...

Ultimatte (just the software variant, no dedicated hardware accelerator was involved) was in the mix, along with After Effects for compositing and some cheesy FX software that I cannot remember the name of but believe to now be defunct...

But that was late last century, now I just dream about high-end ASi Mac Pro systems while planning (hoping) for a M2 Pro Mac mini (N3E, please)...

Some of us will not compromise on the OS and money is not an issue as the software costs far more than the Apple hardware, others have to compromise due to the cost and can only use free software.

Don't knock "free software"...! Blender is getting a good deal of help from Apple in regards to ASi/macOS/Metal optimizations; seems like a case where the software might really "come alive" with future hardwares (looking at you, 3nm processes)...!

I will continue to say that, IMHO, the ASi Mac Pro will really start to shine once it is on the N3X process; more transistors for more GPU cores & higher power limits for faster clocks...!

 

[iPadified]

I like to try to maximize profits when possible, so it makes more sense to me to bill the client for the render cost and add that to my profit.

BTW, very nice renders. I would drive myself insane modeling all the gold filigree on the lamps and furniture. Do you sculpt those from reference images, or from memory?



It varies depending on the product/concept being demonstrated. Usually the client provides the 3D models, so it can be just an hour or two to add materials and animate. Add a couple hours if I need to model from scratch. For more complex projects, modeling/animating might be a couple weeks, but I tend to focus more on the quick-turn stuff.

Then it is easier to understand your dependence on quick renders and then Macs have never been competitive. Others have another mix where modelling takes far longer time.

 

[innerproduct]

This discussion is interesting but also a little weird to me. we are discussing that for some workflow there is no big need for render speed since there are also other tasks. so for that reason we need no fast macs…. Sound kinda backwards to me. It is approaching the ultimate use case where you actually need no rendering at all since you do something else. Can we not agree on that it is beneficial to have quick feedback while doing lookdev? Time to first pixel and then to reasonable resolved so we can make decisions for the next step. We take this loop for granted in most other workflows. No need to wait for illustrator to rasterize vectors right? So getting back
To the basic issue at hand: mx series is awesome for everything but rendering. Now please fix that as well apple! It doesn’t need to be best in class, just decent.

 

[singhs.apps]

This discussion is interesting but also a little weird to me. we are discussing that for some workflow there is no big need for render speed since there are also other tasks. so for that reason we need no fast macs…. Sound kinda backwards to me. It is approaching the ultimate use case where you actually need no rendering at all since you do something else. Can we not agree on that it is beneficial to have quick feedback while doing lookdev? Time to first pixel and then to reasonable resolved so we can make decisions for the next step. We take this loop for granted in most other workflows. No need to wait for illustrator to rasterize vectors right? So getting back
To the basic issue at hand: mx series is awesome for everything but rendering. Now please fix that as well apple! It doesn’t need to be best in class, just decent.

This.

Thread went on some weird injected strawman tangent workflow argument. Gave "you are holding it wrong" vibes.

It's given all else being equal (talent/time/client demand/'workflow) that the discussion is about mac performance, NOT workflow or speed or talent, etc.

Example: I can knock off a competent idea in a few minutes to half an hour with pencil+paper. But that doesn't negate hardware competency as an important unit in my 'workflow' (whatever that means) when I turn that idea into 3d.

 

[jujoje]

Can we not agree on that it is beneficial to have quick feedback while doing lookdev? Time to first pixel and then to reasonable resolved so we can make decisions for the next step. We take this loop for granted in most other workflows. No need to wait for illustrator to rasterize vectors right? So getting back

My impression was that the M1 chips were very good for time to first pixel and interactivity (at least the videos I've seen comparing the M1 Max to equivalent windows desktops in Redshift and Blender), which makes them a pretty good bet for lookdev, it was the time for final frames that is slow.

Workflow wise, personally speed for iterating and tweaking the look is more important that speed to final frame as final frames would go to the farm, but obviously ymmv.

GPU are great for product animation, motion graphics etc, but for anything complex CPU engines are still king due to stability and versatility, as I always say, there is a reason why any Hollywood blockbuster is still rendered on CPU using Renderman, Vray, Arnold etc.

Generally still on the CPU bandwagon for predictability and flexibility - GPU renderers are still pretty limited for FX. Really curious to see how a 40 core Mac Pro performs (or whatever chip count we are on for the Mac Pro atm).

 

[singhs.apps]

Some of us will not compromise on the OS and money is not an issue as the software costs far more than the Apple hardware,

What 'softwares' are we talking about?

 

[sirio76]

This discussion is interesting but also a little weird to me. we are discussing that for some workflow there is no big need for render speed since there are also other tasks. so for that reason we need no fast macs…. Sound kinda backwards to me. It is approaching the ultimate use case where you actually need no rendering at all since you do something else. Can we not agree on that it is beneficial to have quick feedback while doing lookdev? Time to first pixel and then to reasonable resolved so we can make decisions for the next step. We take this loop for granted in most other workflows. No need to wait for illustrator to rasterize vectors right? So getting back
To the basic issue at hand: mx series is awesome for everything but rendering. Now please fix that as well apple! It doesn’t need to be best in class, just decent.

You start from the wrong assumption that everyone is using or should use a GPU engine
CPU engines are already more than decent, I would say pretty good all things considered.
Of course it would be nice to have more competitive** performance on GPU too, but I'm afraid that's not going to happen anytime soon.
**Not saying that you can not use them, AS GPUs are fine for average works, just not on par with the competition.

 

[sirio76]

What 'softwares' are we talking about?

If you consider the lifespan of a computer (in my case about 3 years) it's quite easy to spend more on software than the hardware itself.

 

[singhs.apps]

If you consider the lifespan of a computer (in my case about 3 years) it's quite easy to spend more on software than the hardware itself.

Well, assuming we are talking Mac Pro territory and renderfarms, my experience is the opposite.

Maxon one is around 1.2k PA if I am not mistaken.
Add a renderer of your choice. I am assuming it would be either vray/corona/Arnold. Vray is appx 700 USD PA. Arnold is even cheaper.
In fact chaos pushes its GPU real-time solution as part of the subscription.
Adobe suite + 3D would be appx 900 USD PA.(insert alternate options here which would be even cheaper)
What else ? Megascans + other texture/asset source ? 600-800 PA ?

Rest of support apps would be common expenses (online domain expenses, finance, management, client service etc) across most disciplines. And they don’t need Mac pros to work.

So we are looking at less than 4k annual or about 12k in 3 years.

Over the decades/years software prices have come down drastically while hardware has been creeping up (with great performance in tow admittedly) but man my first workstation was 12x cheaper than my current one and both were top of the line territory of their respective eras

I bet a competent Mac Pro (esp on the CPU side with 40 cores+ ) won’t come cheaper than 12k.

Of course if you are rendering on a farm, or have your own in-house mini farm, then even a M1 Max based MBP would be far cheaper to operate.

 

[singhs.apps]

You start from the wrong assumption that everyone is using or should use a GPU engine

My interest in the Mx SOC approach is precisely the GPU part with vram bottleneck removed + time to first pixel that approaches the CPU.

Having tasted GPU speeds, I am not going back to CPU (though I have a Threadripper system for the just in case scenarios)

 

[BootLoxes]

Zbrush presentation ended. Better masking tools, more c4d integration, and redshift inside zbrush (gpu if you have the sub and cpu if you use a perpetual license)

No mentioning of apple silicon support

 

[tomO2013]

Well, assuming we are talking Mac Pro territory and renderfarms, my experience is the opposite.

Maxon one is around 1.2k PA if I am not mistaken.
Add a renderer of your choice. I am assuming it would be either vray/corona/Arnold. Vray is appx 700 USD PA. Arnold is even cheaper.
In fact chaos pushes its GPU real-time solution as part of the subscription.
Adobe suite + 3D would be appx 900 USD PA.(insert alternate options here which would be even cheaper)
What else ? Megascans + other texture/asset source ? 600-800 PA ?

Rest of support apps would be common expenses (online domain expenses, finance, management, client service etc) across most disciplines. And they don’t need Mac pros to work.

So we are looking at less than 4k annual or about 12k in 3 years.

Over the decades/years software prices have come down drastically while hardware has been creeping up (with great performance in tow admittedly) but man my first workstation was 12x cheaper than my current one and both were top of the line territory of their respective eras

I bet a competent Mac Pro (esp on the CPU side with 40 cores+ ) won’t come cheaper than 12k.

Of course if you are rendering on a farm, or have your own in-house mini farm, then even a M1 Max based MBP would be far cheaper to operate.

This verbal … “word salad“ …as you might say again suggests that your individual and personal software permutation is the only workflow that matters or holds waters from a cost/budget perspective..

If your workflow includes Maya (6300 CAD for 3 years), Bentley/ BIM/REVIT, Adobe Substance painter…. those costs are obviously significantly higher. In other words it’s not a one size fits all. I’d note that not all of the software mentioned is Apple Silicon well optimized at this stage. You’d be better off or solely served with x86 - the workflow choice being determined by availability.

 

[Boil]

Over the decades/years software prices have come down drastically while hardware has been creeping up (with great performance in tow admittedly) but man my first workstation was 12x cheaper than my current one and both were top of the line territory of their respective eras.

1994 pricing
SGI O2 & Maya Complete - $17,500
SGI Octane & Maya Unlimited - $36,000

I bet a competent Mac Pro (esp on the CPU side with 40 cores+ ) won’t come cheaper than 12k.

Base half-binned (GPU cores) M2 Ultra (24-core CPU/60-core GPU) with 96GB RAM and 1TB SSD should stay at the current $6,000 pricing of the 2019 Intel Mac Pro; full-die M2 Extreme (48-core CPU/152-core GPU) with 384GB RAM and 8TB SSD should run about $16,000 or so...?

Then there is the question of what process the ASi Mac Pro will be on, 5nm/4nm/3nm...?

Is the earlier M2 Ultra Mac Pro prototype reported on in this thread using a 5nm M2 Ultra SoC, and might the production M2 Ultra (and M2 Extreme) SoCs be using a 3nm process; and if so, might the GPU core count go up...?

 

[singhs.apps]

This verbal … “word salad“ …as you might say again suggests that your individual and personal software permutation is the only workflow that matters or holds waters from a cost/budget perspective..

If your workflow includes Maya (6300 CAD for 3 years), Bentley/ BIM/REVIT, Adobe Substance painter…. those costs are obviously significantly higher. In other words it’s not a one size fits all. I’d note that not all of the software mentioned is Apple Silicon well optimized at this stage. You’d be better off or solely served with x86 - the workflow choice being determined by availability.

As is your injected 'workflow' strawman point. And asking others to adjust their perception of what they know works better for them (they know better than you, anyway). So, please.

Revit? 7.5k USD over three years. Still much cheaper than a 10-12k mac pro over three years.. Or on par with a maxed-out M1 Studio pro.

Bentley? Do they work on M1 macs? or even 'macs' for that matter?

BIMS ? Do suggest some that are available on the mac and cost 'much' higher than hardware.

And insofar as I know, for the CAD industry, 'Maya' and 'Substance painter' (the latter part of a 400 USD annual pack BTW ) aren't traditional considerations ( and both would still be cheaper than a mac pro over a three year period)

Still trying to figure out the 'workflow' part, though.

What's your 'workflow,' BTW? Just asking.

 

[singhs.apps]

Base half-binned (GPU cores) M2 Ultra (24-core CPU/60-core GPU) with 96GB RAM and 1TB SSD should stay at the current $6,000 pricing of the 2019 Intel Mac Pro; full-die M2 Extreme (48-core CPU/152-core GPU) with 384GB RAM and 8TB SSD should run about $16,000 or so...?

I don't know. Logically a base mac pro should come within sniffing distance of a mac studio ultra, if not higher ( an Mx max-based mac pro makes no sense unless it offers something that isn't available in other macs. The only thing that would make it so would be expansion... But let's not go there and derail this thread )

Edit : just checked. The lowest configurable ultra is 4k. So maybe an entry level Mac Pro with the same configuration should come around 5-6k as you suggest … based on whatever ‘advantages’ Apple bestows to justify the extra over an ultra Mac Studio.

 

[singhs.apps]

1994 pricing
SGI O2 & Maya Complete - $17,500
SGI Octane & Maya Unlimited - $36,000

Yeah, and Wintel ate SGI's lunch, as did Nuke over a decade later viz Autodesk/Discreet's turnkey solutions.

Back in the early 2000s, a Maya unlimited, perpetual seat cost 16k USD. Today (and as a much more proficient software, barely 5k over a three-year period )

 

[Boil]

BIMS ? Do suggest some that are available on the mac and cost 'much' higher than hardware.

Having worked as the IT guy for a small architectural firm in the early 2000's, I deployed a handful of iMacs for workstations (running Parallels & AutoCAD) and a Mac Pro running OS X Server, I had the firm preview ArchiCAD for a good bit; when I left that job, they reverted back to all Windows & AutoCAD for the workstations and the new IT guy put a Linux server in, of course...

TL;DR - ArchiCAD is a BIM that comes to mind, but I believe the Apple silicon variant is still a Tech Preview...?

But even there, the three year sub is in the same $7.5K range as Revit...

I don't know. Logically a base mac pro should come within sniffing distance of a mac studio ultra, if not higher ( an Mx max-based mac pro makes no sense unless it offers something that isn't available in other macs. The only thing that would make it so would be expansion... But let's not go there and derail this thread )

Edit : just checked. The lowest configurable ultra is 4k. So maybe an entry level Mac Pro with same configuration should come around 5-6k as you suggest … based on whatever ‘advantages’ Apple chooses to bestow to justify the extra over an ultra Mac Studio.

My thoughts on the ASi Mac Pro... ;^p

 

[iPadified]

This discussion is interesting but also a little weird to me. we are discussing that for some workflow there is no big need for render speed since there are also other tasks. so for that reason we need no fast macs…. Sound kinda backwards to me. It is approaching the ultimate use case where you actually need no rendering at all since you do something else. Can we not agree on that it is beneficial to have quick feedback while doing lookdev? Time to first pixel and then to reasonable resolved so we can make decisions for the next step. We take this loop for granted in most other workflows. No need to wait for illustrator to rasterize vectors right? So getting back
To the basic issue at hand: mx series is awesome for everything but rendering. Now please fix that as well apple! It doesn’t need to be best in class, just decent.

I believe the thread started with discussions about novelties for rendering on Macs. That is, which render engines that run native etc. Especially improvement in the Blender cycles code was of interest. Inevitably it turns into a contest with 4090 and then it misses the point. Anyone in the business knows that NVIDIA is king in GPU rendering last time I checked, there are no NVIDIA GPU support on modern Macs so improvements to MX is very interesting for the community.

 

[Xiao_Xi]

I believe the thread started with discussions about novelties for rendering on Macs. That is, which render engines that run native etc. Especially improvement in the Blender cycles code was of interest.

Blender 3.5 (codenamed Full Metal) - scheduled for March - is getting more and more interesting, as it will receive most of Apple's ongoing projects. Apple is currently working on Cycles optimizations and the Metal backend for the viewport.

• Apple Metal:
  • Michael submitted a new shader specialization patch, that addresses various issues with the previous one and generally makes a much better user experience. Brecht will review it, impact of this is fairly complex so might take some time.
  • Some prototyping was done to improve CPU + GPU rendering performance, which gave a 5-10% speedup. There is some interest from the BF side in this, though higher priority is multi GPU performance. Need to look at patch to discuss if design approach is right.
  • Various fixes for MetalRT were done, including to make point clouds work. Still various remaining issues to be fixed.

2022-11-15 Render & Cycles Meeting

Attendees Brecht Van Lommel (Blender) Thomas Dinges (Blender) Weizhen Huang (Blender) Christophe Hery (Meta) Brian Savery (AMD) Sebastian Herholz (Intel) Michael Jones (Apple) Patrick Mours (NVIDIA) Notes Blender 3.4 AMD: New Windows HIP compiler received to fix performance regression and...

devtalk.blender.org

PS: I find it more interesting to discuss how 3D software is slowly adapting to Apple Silicon than to compare performance between Nvidia and Apple Silicon, but I may be in the minority.

 

[jujoje]

Blender 3.5 (codenamed Full Metal) - scheduled for March - is getting more and more interesting, as it will receive most of Apple's ongoing projects. Apple is currently working on Cycles optimizations and the Metal backend for the viewport.

March-ish was when the rumoured M2 Mac Pro / MacBook Pro events were predicted to be. Getting the Cycles and the viewport backed would definitely make for a good demonstration...

Then again I was convinced the Mac Pro would be teased at WWDC so what do I know

 

[innerproduct]

Good to see some progress being made. I guess some of us vent our frustration that apple has denied us good tools for 3d for a long time. And when they finally released the 2019 mp that was spot on except for software support, but then it just took a year until
They announced the AS transition. Making the 19mp a really bad buy for 3d and future investment. No roadmap except as towards irrelevance. As you may or may not know only redshift is currently running on 2019 mp out if the gpu plugins. You can use an older preview release of octane if you absolutely must. Not recommended though. Very volatile. Some of us waited to buy a mp19 since we wanted to be sure that the sw was there before we switched. Now I am glad I didn’t buy one but continued to resort to PC for these tasks. For the kind of work I do personally I push even my PC with a 3090 during lookdev in Octane. Time to first pixel is very important but the image needs to be reasonable resolved quickly as well. Before that card I used 2080ti. On the he side I have been trying out mac 3d work and consider how much perf I could spare for the privilege of using macs for all tasks. Bought a maxed out mbp16 and it is an absolute marvel for almost any task. But for 3d it has been a waiting game. For example, Still no production build for octane as a plugin to Houdini wich is the sw I use We are clearly in a transition time and it is very annoying to me that it takes so long and that, from what we have seen yet, macs will continue to be a second class citizen when it comes to 3d. Maybe the next mp will he adequate, who knows? To me only Arnold provide similar nice look and workflow as Octane and that is not even CPU native yet and Autodesk is as silent as ever. So, personally I am sad and frustrated that I still have to use PC for work when I am a Mac person at heart. I do believe I have said what I can say in this thread by now without continuously repeat myself. Glad that some of you have workflows that you are satisfied with.
Btw, these sw are still not in a native production state for AS macs: Maya, Fusion, Zbrush, substance, Houdini, Nuke, Modo, Clarisse, vray for Houdini, arnold in general, octane in general etc etc. some Are on the way, like Houdini that is in preview and has great performance uplift going native. Sadly native host means need for native renderer plugins and that makes only redshift available. Etc. and on top of all that, if you find sw that is usable, it ends up chocking when it comes to the rendering parts as we all have been discussing. I guess you get my point here: it’s messy and for many not a good a workable situation. Im out of here for now. Have a good day all!

 

[sirio76]

As is your injected 'workflow' strawman point. And asking others to adjust their perception of what they know works better for them (they know better than you, anyway). So, please.

Revit? 7.5k USD over three years. Still much cheaper than a 10-12k mac pro over three years.. Or on par with a maxed-out M1 Studio pro.

Bentley? Do they work on M1 macs? or even 'macs' for that matter?

BIMS ? Do suggest some that are available on the mac and cost 'much' higher than hardware.

And insofar as I know, for the CAD industry, 'Maya' and 'Substance painter' (the latter part of a 400 USD annual pack BTW ) aren't traditional considerations ( and both would still be cheaper than a mac pro over a three year period)

Still trying to figure out the 'workflow' part, though.

What's your 'workflow,' BTW? Just asking.

Again, you are starting from the wrong assumption that everyone is using a 10/12K system
Your mileage may vary, a lot!

 

[Boil]

Blender 3.5 (codenamed Full Metal) - scheduled for March - is getting more and more interesting, as it will receive most of Apple's ongoing projects. Apple is currently working on Cycles optimizations and the Metal backend for the viewport.

Is that actually the official codename, because I started using that phrase (in this thread) once I read about the viewport going Metal... ;^p

Yes, I may have watched some Full Metal Alchemist in the past...!

Also, RIP to Full Metal from SEAL Team (on Paramount+)...

 

[singhs.apps]

Again, you are starting from the wrong assumption that everyone is using a 10/12K system
Your mileage may vary, a lot!

Look I was just rebutting the suggestion that cost of software is much higher than hardware. It works both ways.

If I am not mistaken you have an ultra + some windows machines + online render jobs (which even as service is utilised as hardware cost ) what would be the cost of said hardware vs your software expenses (over a 3 year period?)
Certainly paying for subscription based apps shoots the cost up over long term, but then the same can be said about hardware churn over a 3 year period.

If by software, you also mean 3rd party digital assets, then again unlike hardware they don’t age. So over all cost of said assets spreads over a long period, bringing their PA cost down. Those assets should work regardless of whether you have a 4-5k system or a 12k one.

Anyway I have made my point with examples.
There have been no counter examples to support software = much more expensive than hardware theory (and what’s that got to do with sticking with macOS even if cost wise it’s hardware is less valuable than its PC counterparts)

That said I will not want to add anything further and derail this thread over unsupported tangent theories that have nothing to do with the topic.