3D Rendering on Apple Silicon, CPU&GPU

[Xiao_Xi]

I would love to see Blender support on the iPad!

It has been requested many times. But unless Apple changes the terms of use of its App Store, Blender cannot be legally distributed on the App Store. There is a licensing conflict.

However, Blender developers are studying how to improve tablet support.

2024-03-18 Tablet Support: UX and other implications

Attendees: Dalai Felinto Francesco Siddi This meeting was an initial exploration of what needs to be discussed to design first-class support for tablets in Blender. That encompass both graphic tablets (Wacom Bamboo, Wacom Cintiq, …) and hand-held tablets (such as iPad, …). The main unique...

devtalk.blender.org

It is possible that the Blender developers will release an iPad app in the future (though perhaps not through the App Store).

 

[Xiao_Xi]

Starting with 4.3 Metal rendering will only be available on the Apple Silicon.

Cycles: Remove support of Metal with AMD/Intel GPUs for 4.3 and onwards

Hi everyone, Blender 4.2 will be the last release which supports GPU rendering using Metal with AMD and Intel on macOS. Starting with 4.3 Metal rendering will only be available on the Apple Silicon. CPU rendering on non-Apple-Silicon platforms will be kept fully supported. The reason for this...

devtalk.blender.org

I assume that more and more programmes will do the same soon.

 

[jujoje]

It is possible that the Blender developers will release an iPad app in the future (though perhaps not through the App Store).

Blender on iPad would be the thing that finally gets me to learn it There are quite a few good apps on iPad these days for 3D stuff, but the workflow is spread across a few apps; would be great to have everything in one.

As a side note been giving Valence 3D a go and it seems a pretty promising modelling app (feels a bit like Blender to me), although it's not there yet. Has anyone tried Uniform; I found the idea interesting but the interface is possibly the worst I've ever seen. Curious if anyone else had given it a shot (was on the beta, but just couldn't get the workflow to click).

Cycles: Remove support of Metal with AMD/Intel GPUs for 4.3 and onwards

Hi everyone, Blender 4.2 will be the last release which supports GPU rendering using Metal with AMD and Intel on macOS. Starting with 4.3 Metal rendering will only be available on the Apple Silicon. CPU rendering on non-Apple-Silicon platforms will be kept fully supported. The reason for this...

devtalk.blender.org

I assume that more and more programmes will do the same soon.

Was always a bit surprised that they supported AMD/Intel in the first place. Octane similarly moved away from supporting Intel Macs with AMD cards (I guess the lure of unified memory was too great).

 

[leman]

It has been requested many times. But unless Apple changes the terms of use of its App Store, Blender cannot be legally distributed on the App Store. There is a licensing conflict.

Could you speak more as to the nature of the conflict?

It is possible that the Blender developers will release an iPad app in the future (though perhaps not through the App Store).

If they want it to have an impact, App Store release is a must.

 

[Xiao_Xi]

Could you speak more as to the nature of the conflict?

Blender developers believe that the terms of the App Store conflict with Blender's licence. I think the problem lies in whether Apple allows Blender developers to distribute the source code to comply with the Blender license.

Cycles' lead developer said on Nov 18:

My understanding it’s not that the App Store forbids GPL software, rather that the GPL does not allow you to put it on the App Store with the restrictions it has.

This issue has been discussed many times, including by the FSF who have said in the past that there is a conflict.

Is Apple allowed to distribute GPLv3-licensed software through its iOS App Store?

This question is specifically about GPLv3, LGPLv3, and Apple's App Store for iOS devices. Given the additional restrictions Apple imposes on iOS users (i.e. not allowing them to modify and run GPLv3

opensource.stackexchange.com

 

[leman]

Blender developers believe that the terms of the App Store conflict with Blender's licence. I think the problem lies in whether Apple allows Blender developers to distribute the source code to comply with the Blender license.

There is a lot of open source software on App Store and as far as I am aware Apple does not put any restrictions on the developers in this regard. To me this sounds more like a restriction on GPL side, and it appears that even GPL creators are unsure about what the issues actually are.

What draw my attention is this comment from stack overflow:

But that's really a problem of people choosing to buy a closed device in the first place. You can't buy a device that has a single unconstrained gatekeeper, then expect to complain when said gatekeeper won't do what you want.

Isn't it exactly the other way around? It is the copyleft license prescribing the terms of distribution. In this, I don't see a principal difference between Apple and GNU GPL as gatekeepers. The first one is controlling access to their platforms, the second one is controling access to software and it's reusability.

 

[SteveOm]

GPL: It may be a question of few or many contributors. If a single entity holds the copyright, they’re free to ship their own code under GPL to some customers and a different license to others. This is why there are GPL-licensed apps on the App Store. So if a big project requires all contributirs to assign their copyrights to a certain org or company, that org or company’s management could put it on the App Store. But if a GPL project accepts code contributions and leaves ownership in the hands of contributors, then the protect managerial team itself only has rights under the GPL. To put the software in the App Store would require the managerial team to get written permission (legally, a second license) from every single contributor.

 

[quarkysg]

GPL: It may be a question of few or many contributors. If a single entity holds the copyright, they’re free to ship their own code under GPL to some customers and a different license to others. This is why there are GPL-licensed apps on the App Store. So if a big project requires all contributirs to assign their copyrights to a certain org or company, that org or company’s management could put it on the App Store. But if a GPL project accepts code contributions and leaves ownership in the hands of contributors, then the protect managerial team itself only has rights under the GPL. To put the software in the App Store would require the managerial team to get written permission (legally, a second license) from every single contributor.

My understanding of GPL is that whoever that submits code under GPL will have to allow free distribution of submitted code down the line. I.e. one cannot stop anyone else from using it subsequently, and the only restriction is the use of GPL codes then results in one automatically relinquishes any rights to any derived changes and it must be made publicly available for future use or derivation by anyone.

 

[iPadified]

It is possible that the Blender developers will release an iPad app in the future (though perhaps not through the App Store).

In EU, possibly. Sad if some licensing issues are hindering an iPad implementation and it sounds like a bad excuse. I use Sharpr3D (CAD) on iPad that requires a pencil. It just feels very "right" to work with a pencil in the CAD software. No clue why. Blender iPad version would be excellent as well as fun.

 

[hifimac]

Any word on what Metal improvements in macOS 15 Sequoya will bring for any rendering improvements/speed?

 

[Xiao_Xi]

Any word on what Metal improvements in macOS 15 Sequoya will bring for any rendering improvements/speed?

These are the improvements in Metal 3.2:

New in Metal 3.2
- Relaxed Math
- Intersection Result Reference
- Texture and Buffer Memory Coherency
- Global Bindings
- Logging

 

[hifimac]

I've been playing around with the Blender 4.2 beta and EEVEE Next with Raytracing and I'm really impressed. Render times on my PC with a 3090 are 5 secs/frame in EEVEE compared to 1.5 mins/frame in Cycles with pretty close results for what I need. On my M1 Max MacBook Pro the EEVEE renders are more like 22 sec/frame.

Would the M3 with Hardware Raytracing significantly speed up these renders, or is there still some dev work to do on EEVEE to take advantage of the new Metal RT features? I know they had to do some rewriting of EEVEE next for better Metal support that held the whole project up.

 

[Harry Haller]

I've been playing around with the Blender 4.2 beta and EEVEE Next with Raytracing and I'm really impressed. Render times on my PC with a 3090 are 5 secs/frame in EEVEE compared to 1.5 mins/frame in Cycles with pretty close results for what I need. On my M1 Max MacBook Pro the EEVEE renders are more like 22 sec/frame.

Would the M3 with Hardware Raytracing significantly speed up these renders, or is there still some dev work to do on EEVEE to take advantage of the new Metal RT features? I know they had to do some rewriting of EEVEE next for better Metal support that held the whole project up.

M3 Max, yes.

 

[Xiao_Xi]

Open Moon Ray with better Apple Silicon support has just been released.

• M-series macs with macOS Sonoma (macOS 14)
• MoonRay XPU mode using Metal with UMA
• Intel Open Image Denoise (OIDN) using Metal

Release openmoonray-1.6.0.0 · dreamworksanimation/openmoonray

What's new Apple silicon initial support M-series macs with macOS Sonoma (macOS 14) MoonRay XPU mode using Metal with UMA Intel Open Image Denoise (OIDN) using Metal hdMoonray Hydra render plugin ...

github.com

 

[jujoje]

Open Moon Ray with better Apple Silicon support has just been released.

Out of idle curiosity gave it a quick go. Managed to get it to build successfully on Sonoma, without any issues and ran some of the test scenes. Seemed pretty nice, and used all the CPU cores and about 75% of the GPU cores on a M2 Ultra. The resulting render was pretty nice and clean

Wanted to get it working in Houdini, and looks like it was far more complex than initially anticipated (the instructions make is seem pretty straightforwards); you have a to build Moonray against SideFX's version of USD (not Pixar's). Sounds like building it for H20.0 is a pain; 20.5 with the new version of USD and python is probably going to more involved than I'd like.

Curious if anyone else had given it a shot? Looks like it would be a nice option, at least until SideFX gives us xPU on Mac (not holding my breath on that one).

 

[singhs.apps]

For basic scenes, the M1 Max is decent fast, but slow on higher res and complex scenes.
But wow..the power consumption is low. 50W all system consumption !

Can’t wait for that rumoured m4 extreme chip!

 

[vladi]

For basic scenes, the M1 Max is decent fast, but slow on higher res and complex scenes.
But wow..the power consumption is low. 50W all system consumption !

Can’t wait for that rumoured m4 extreme chip!

Such a weird trade off honestly.

 

[leman]

Such a weird trade off honestly.

It's a first-gen chip. Apple GPU tech has improved tremendously over just a few generations. M3 has hardware raytracing and much better performance on complex shaders.

 

[sirio76]

Low power consumption is essential for everyone using a laptop, and laptops are by far the most common hardware solution. So yes, definitely not for every professional, but for many people a trade-off between power and performance is a big deal.

 

[singhs.apps]

Such a weird trade off honestly.

Well, I’ve a windows workstation for heavy 3D work, but sometimes I do basic tests while I am on the Mac.

Even a win laptop will struggle for such scenes, so the M1 MBP doing some snappy 3D work isn’t bad at all. I’m surprised by the power consumption though. If Apple’s 1st gen can perform decent at such low power, I can’t wait to see what they’ll do on a ‘proper’ desktop.

 

[leman]

Even a win laptop will struggle for such scenes, so the M1 MBP doing some snappy 3D work isn’t bad at all. I’m surprised by the power consumption though. If Apple’s 1st gen can perform decent at such low power, I can’t wait to see what they’ll do on a ‘proper’ desktop.

They have a desktop, and folks are not convinced. Apples current approach is unfortunately difficult to scale.

 

[singhs.apps]

They have a desktop, and folks are not convinced. Apples current approach is unfortunately difficult to scale.

Yes. That’s why a ‘proper’ desktop.

I always thought they could try scaling down instead of up, but let’s see. I hope those extreme chip rumours are true.

 

[jujoje]

I always thought they could try scaling down instead of up, but let’s see. I hope those extreme chip rumours are true.

Those rumoured extreme chips do sound pretty sweet, as does the idea that the new Ultra chips would be more custom than just two Max's glued together, and that Apple will start differentiating the high end to actually make it high end. Hopefully this is why there's been no updates to the high end chips for a while...

Watching Apple's various WWDC videos, they seem pretty committed to higher end 3d (Sequoia brings MaterialX and whole range of USD feature support, and they mention film vfx a fair bit so seems like they're thinking about it). At some stage feel they're going to need to hardware for it as well.

The M4 Ultra, if it improves as expected with raytracing and a reasonable speed bump would make a pretty compelling artist workstation (TBH find the M2 Ultra pretty good, the main area that it's lacking is GPU speed both from a compute and raytracing perspective).

I do wonder how large a market there is for a higher machine that would be broadly in line with PC side of things (say 64-128 core with 512-1Tb RAM? And is it a market Apple would really want to pursue? It seems like a lot of investment for not much profit (although possibly makes more sense for other fields).

Tangentially, pretty surprised at how well the M3 MBA actually does for 3D; currently noodling away in Houdini/Silo quite happily. Not running any high res sims or rendering, but otherwise both apps work pretty much flawlessly (Blender runs slow, which was unexpected). Crazy that we've reached a point where 3D software runs well enough on a fanless laptop...

 

[jujoje]

Low power consumption is essential for everyone using a laptop, and laptops are by far the most common hardware solution. So yes, definitely not for every professional, but for many people a trade-off between power and performance is a big deal

For me the main benefit is that it's almost entirely silent; can kick off a sim or render and work on something else and the pretty much forget that it's running. For a machine that sits on your desk that's pretty great (the iMac Pro it replaced sounded like a vacuum cleaner if you so much as looked at it funny )

 

[sirio76]

For me the main benefit is that it's almost entirely silent; can kick off a sim or render and work on something else and the pretty much forget that it's running. For a machine that sits on your desk that's pretty great (the iMac Pro it replaced sounded like a vacuum cleaner if you so much as looked at it funny )

When you have low power consumption a silent system is the flip side of the coin, especially if coupled with a proper design. Noise level is something that really improve user experience and should never be underestimated, every time I turn on my Threadripper system I remember how important it is.