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3D Rendering on Apple Silicon, CPU&GPU
- Thread starter vel0city
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Yesterday I was rendering 30fps 4k loops from After Effects whilst C4D/Redshift was rendering a sequence of hi-res (4000x4000px) 32bit EXR stills with ~15 AOVs each to Dropbox in the background, system still completely responsive, After Effects UI snappy and responsive, no fan noise whatsoever, Finder, Firefox, Spotify, Mail, Adobe Cloud, Dropbox etc all running and no lag, Mac completely silent and this is all running on battery. Absolutely astonishing. 16" M1 Max 64GB.
Dream of a computer.
Dream of a computer.
Thanks for your ongoing reports, really appreciate them. Keep them coming as the rest of us wait for our new MacBook Pros. ✌️
I should add that all I posted above was on High Performance mode, but still no fan noise or heat from the computer. I mean completely, absolutely silent when rendering from both C4D and AE at the same damn time.
The desktops are going to be insane.
The desktops are going to be insane.
Thinking about a new Cube; 7.7" x 7.7" x 9.8", just a hair over 9.5 liters; seven (current 2018 Space Gray Intel) Mac minis tall...! So, the Mac mini has a 150W PSU in a 1.4" tall chassis; one would need only three of those to power a M1 Max Quad MCM, which means room for (optional) redundant PSUs...?
PSU(s) running up one side of the chassis, vertical mobo up the other; double-sided mobo (like 2019 Mac Pro), possible replaceable secondary RAM (AppleCache) & replaceable M.2 NVMe SSDs on back side of mobo, vertical ports on back of chassis...
Heat sink (with vapor chamber?) filling interior volume between mobo & PSU(s); 2019 Mac Pro-style 3D venting front & rear, 180mm intake fan up front, 2021 MacBook Pro-style feet...
Kinda bummed out that Zbrush 2022 released without native support. It was the one thing I wanted most. Oh well at least they confirmed its in the works.
Been considering dropping marmoset toolbag for another renderer thats native to apple silicon. I was looking into keyshot (something I never thought I would do) and they said the lack of native support was due to no ray tracing cores in the silicon which I thought was just an excuse.
I wonder if the next version of substance painter will be native or if we will have to keep waiting. It would suck if the standalone version on steam isn't native and you have to pay a sub to get it.
EDIT: Nevermind keyshot. Brought my M1 to its knees. I can't see myself using it until it is brought over natively with GPU rendering. So until apple adds those RT cores its pretty much off the table for macs
Been considering dropping marmoset toolbag for another renderer thats native to apple silicon. I was looking into keyshot (something I never thought I would do) and they said the lack of native support was due to no ray tracing cores in the silicon which I thought was just an excuse.
I wonder if the next version of substance painter will be native or if we will have to keep waiting. It would suck if the standalone version on steam isn't native and you have to pay a sub to get it.
EDIT: Nevermind keyshot. Brought my M1 to its knees. I can't see myself using it until it is brought over natively with GPU rendering. So until apple adds those RT cores its pretty much off the table for macs
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I ended up just going back to my desktop PC for 3D work (I still absolutely love the M1 Max for everything else).
It feels like the hardware is almost there, apart from RT cores, but the software situation is just awful, and will probably still be awful for at least the next few years. Everything is slow and crashes a lot and there are mountains of features that are missing or just don't work on Mac.
Even if Apple release a Mac Pro that can run circles around a PC, if the software has a bunch of buttons greyed out, lacks hardware acceleration, and is running through 3 different compatibility layers and is full of bugs it's just not going to be worth it.
I'm convinced that Apple need to do a Logic Pro / Final Cut Pro and make their own first-party 3D software if they're going to make Apple Silicon an attractive platform for 3D content creation because I don't trust any of the current 3D software vendors to put more than the minimum amount of effort into their Mac ports.
It feels like the hardware is almost there, apart from RT cores, but the software situation is just awful, and will probably still be awful for at least the next few years. Everything is slow and crashes a lot and there are mountains of features that are missing or just don't work on Mac.
Even if Apple release a Mac Pro that can run circles around a PC, if the software has a bunch of buttons greyed out, lacks hardware acceleration, and is running through 3 different compatibility layers and is full of bugs it's just not going to be worth it.
I'm convinced that Apple need to do a Logic Pro / Final Cut Pro and make their own first-party 3D software if they're going to make Apple Silicon an attractive platform for 3D content creation because I don't trust any of the current 3D software vendors to put more than the minimum amount of effort into their Mac ports.
My PC:
- AMD Ryzen 3900X CPU (12c/24t)
- Arctic Cooling Liquid Freezer II - 240 AIO (w/two Noctua A12x25 intake fans)
- ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Impact mDTX mobo
- 32GB G.Skill Trident Z Neo DDR4 RAM (two 16GB DIMMs @ 3600MT/s - 16.16.16.36 timings)
- (2) 1TB Sabrent PCIe Gen4 x4 M.2 NVMe SSDs
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 650Ti (blower cooler / 2GB VRAM)
- Corsair SF750 PSU / 750W / Platinum-rated / SFX form factor
- Fractal Era ITX chassis (w/Noctua A8 exhaust fan)
And then (once again) GPU prices skyrocketed...!
Is there possible hope for Blender, seeing as how Apple is giving it some attention...?
I have been saying this since FOREVER...! ;^p
Yeah I know kinda why I only got the M1Pro. Lets see were blender goes that might change my opinion but we might not really know till mid next year.
Also it is cheaper for Apple to back Blender and give them a technician as help
I think Blender will get good after a year or so, but Mac is always going to be a secondary platform playing catch-up.
Blender will always have their weird non-standard UI that needs a PC-style mouse and a keyboard with a numpad, and the viewport and EEVEE will always be built around the feature sets of discrete immediate mode GPUs. Plus the Blender devs have also said that they don't want multiple viewport backends, which means MoltenVK not native Metal.
I really think the only solution is for Apple to make their own software that can 100% utilise their hardware.
Nothing stopping Apple from forking Blender and making their own version (like they did for khtml and WebKit).
khtml and webkit are on the lesser GPL license which allows Apple to use them without releasing their own source code.
Blender is on the full GPL license which means that if Apple did use any part of Blender they'd also have to open source everything.
It's possible I guess, but I don't think Apple would ever do that.
Seems macOS is secondary (almost an afterthought) to a lot of 3D/DCC software, sad...
I have a 3DConnexion CAD wired mouse & Hexgears X1 low-profile mechanical keyboard with numpad (wired or Bluetooth, I use it wired), just waiting on a M1 Max-powered Mac mini to hook them up to...! ;^p
Boo...!
That does seem like the most sensible thing to do, and would really show what can be done with the hardware if the software is designed to work with it, not work around parts of it...?
I thought the same in the past, but see below...
Would be interesting to see a fully integrated DCC suite of software from Apple; hey, maybe they call it Phenomenon...?!? ;^p
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Actually for the numpad there is an ok away around it in blender and who uses a magic mouse anyway
It really is super close. My pc is getting old and with the rise of expensive cpu and gpu parts I have been exploring the possibility of 3D character design on mac.
Zbrush runs well. I do not see much of a difference between my 5 year old pc and the m1 air.
Substance painter works well but its slower than on pc
Marmoset runs alright too but it runs much faster on an rtx gpu. The UI is clearly windows because they have a close, minimize, and maximize button on the upper right which really looks out of place.
Blender is native and will get better, but I dont use blender as much as the other three.
Id go all in on mac if more 3d programs updated with proper support
Zbrush runs well. I do not see much of a difference between my 5 year old pc and the m1 air.
Substance painter works well but its slower than on pc
Marmoset runs alright too but it runs much faster on an rtx gpu. The UI is clearly windows because they have a close, minimize, and maximize button on the upper right which really looks out of place.
Blender is native and will get better, but I dont use blender as much as the other three.
Id go all in on mac if more 3d programs updated with proper support
Anyone here use Cinema4D? Maxon seem to have been one of the best Mac supporters in the 3D world.
I find ZBrush and Substance Painter work fine on my old iMac so expect them to be fine for me on a new M1 Max too.
For ZBrush I use an iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil.
I really dislike the Blender UI - nearly as ghastly as 3DS Max 2.5 was lol
I find ZBrush and Substance Painter work fine on my old iMac so expect them to be fine for me on a new M1 Max too.
For ZBrush I use an iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil.
I really dislike the Blender UI - nearly as ghastly as 3DS Max 2.5 was lol
I agree with your assessment somewhat.
Though I think Apple is doubling down on 3D and it is for a larger strategy for wider market/s …else you wouldn’t be hearing about its VR/AR ambitions, the potential 128core GPU (considering the chips include dedicated encoders/decoders) as also native finder support for common 3D file formats.
It’s upto the developers to support Apple’s hardware. Apple is giving some support to Blender to run natively on AS and Maxon already is AS ready.
Of course there are other 3D software companies but if Autodesk ends up supporting the new chips, Sidefx May follow (or vice versa)
Renderers who built their GPU solutions on Nvidia hardware may drag their feet. Apple would do well to entice them to support the new AS solutions.
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But at the same time they publish a benchmark that severely underperforms on Apple Silicon Macs...
Not a fan of the eternal subscription model for software usage...
I believe I read somewhere in these various threads that an Apple silicon specific variant of the benchmark was being developed...?
Cinema4D is indeed one of the few successful examples of third-party pro apps on the Mac. But then again, once you go deeper, you start to understand where it fails. For example, even though Cinema4D keeps up with the feature parity on the platform, the rendering engines aren’t.
Good luck putting that Vega II Duo to good use with a GPU renderer like Octane X — on rare occasions when it works, it mostly crashes
Everyone on the Mac Pro Octane X offer has been waiting months between builds to get a barely working GPU renderer. As a matter of fact, the latest built for this tier wasn’t updated since April and doesn’t work under Monterey atm. Don’t just take my word for it; check their forums — so many complaints, frustrations, and overall dissatisfaction.
Arnold has been pretty solid for me, but you don’t buy a Mac Pro if you plan to render with the CPU.
I’m curious if anyone uses an RTX 3090 or RTX A6000 under Bootcamp in their Mac Pro as a workaround for 3D. If so, mind sharing your thoughts?
Yes. Having a great time with C4D, Redshift and X-Particles all running natively. Viewport performance is incredible and Redshift flies on the M1 Max/64GB. Couldn't be happier with it. Photoshop runs beautifully as well.