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vel0city

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 23, 2017
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Best news for ages! This could be a game changer on Mac, especially with more powerful AMD GPUs on their way. My PCIe slots are waiting!

Another notable quote from the interview was that whilst Octane X obviously doesn't support RTX, he'd be surprised if AMD weren't working on a similar technology (or another method of acceleration) for their GPUs.

I'm really excited about the possibilities of Octane X on the iPad and how touch will be integrated into the workflow and tools like Sculptron. 3D is the missing aspect of working on the iPad for me, the idea of a complete working version of Octane definitely fills a gap in its lineup of creative tools and more will follow.

2020 is going to be a great year for creativity on the Mac and Apple devices.
 

Alan Wynn

macrumors 68020
Sep 13, 2017
2,385
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I ordered my 2019 Mac Pro, but I'm going to wait until redshift or octane are out before I get beefy GPUs to go with it.

After much deliberation I went with 16C / 96GB / 580X / 1TB / Nano XDR VESA + AppleCare.

My boyfriend got the 12 core / 96GB / Vega II Duo / 4TB / Afterburner with AppleCare+. He will add XDRs after his next project.

My thinking for the time being is to get a system for After Effects + Cinema4D CPU rendering. Then later when Octane and Redshift are out get VEGA II or Radeon VII cards depending on GPU performance with those GPU renderers.

He was a Premiere Pro / After Effects guy, who has mostly switched to DaVinci Resolve and Fusion. He has also been working with Cinema4D and Blender so those are likely to be part of his workflow as well. He switched because AE has become unstable and he found that once he figured out the new model, he can do more with Fusion without needs a million third party extensions.

Curious if you have looked at Fusion at all? Blackmagic has Fusion classes here in LA that are free (not sure about other places). If you are interested in his experiences, I can connect you two (send me a PM).

I kinda ran out of money to get a VEGA II, so all good to start saving up for one and upgrade later.

He spent his $5,000 on the Duo, rather than the monitor but for about the same reason did not want to spend it all at once.

Is this Mac Pro just going to be a money pit for us though!?

Given how expandable it is, I would guess he will be upgrading it for a while. :)
 
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shuto

macrumors regular
Oct 5, 2016
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My boyfriend got the 12 core / 96GB / Vega II Duo / 4TB / Afterburner with AppleCare+. He will add XDRs after his next project.



He was a Premiere Pro / After Effects guy, who has mostly switched to DaVinci Resolve and Fusion. He has also been working with Cinema4D and Blender so those are likely to be part of his workflow as well. He switched because AE has become unstable and he found that once he figured out the new model, he can do more with Fusion without needs a million third party extensions.

Curious if you have looked at Fusion at all? Blackmagic has Fusion classes here in LA that are free (not sure about other places). If you are interested in his experiences, I can connect you two (send me a PM).



He spent his $5,000 on the Duo, rather than the monitor but for about the same reason did not want to spend it all at once.



Given how expandable it is, I would guess he will be upgrading it for a while. :)
After finding out my main freelance client is planning to move to PC I cancelled my order. Damn it!

I’ve challenged myself to see if I can work on PC for one week to see if I can make it work. As much as I love Mac, I don’t want to be dinosaur left behind that can only use Macs.

I would still love to get a Mac Pro, but it feels until Octane or Redshift benchmarks are out it is hard to know if Mac Pro would be great system for my work.

it’s seems like industry spoke people are doing the same - nick from grey scale gorilla and E.J.Hassenfratz, each waiting for the other to buy one to see if it’s a good idea to buy one.

And thanks for your tip about fusion, it probably is much better than after effects. I should look into that, but think I want to learn more character 3D animation stuff at the moment. So much to learn so little time!
 

skippermonkey

macrumors 6502a
Jun 23, 2003
649
1,644
Bath, UK
I've moved over to Apple Motion, so my new Mac is Adobe-free (with the exception of Substance Painter). Motion doesn't quite have the plugin ecosystem of AE, but for most other tasks it's a decent, affordable alternative.
 

LymeChips

macrumors newbie
Jan 3, 2020
27
16
Thanks for making this thread Vel0city! I’ve been lurking for a long time here after recently starting using 3D on my iMac Pro.

That Mograph Podcast you linked to has me very excited for the future of the industry and how passionate Otoy is about the Mac. I also think they want everyone to be able to contribute to their render network RNDR.

For me Octane X doesn’t have to have every new feature in parity but it sounds like they’re going for speed and hopefully stability which would be perfect. And if I can send renders out to a more powerful headless PC but work off of my Mac I’d be happy as a clam!

For now I’m running with 2 5700xt eGPUs for working in Blender and using Radeon ProRender
 
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Alan Wynn

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Sep 13, 2017
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I've moved over to Apple Motion, so my new Mac is Adobe-free (with the exception of Substance Painter). Motion doesn't quite have the plugin ecosystem of AE, but for most other tasks it's a decent, affordable alternative.

You should really consider Fusion. It is free in DaVinci Resolve, or $300 gets you the studio versions of both DaVinci Resolve and stand alone Fusion. There is no subscription fee (at some point there may be an upgrade cost, but there has not been one so far). It is a full featured compositing system, closer in capability to Nuke, but pretty easy to learn. Motion is nice, but Fusion is more powerful.
 

LymeChips

macrumors newbie
Jan 3, 2020
27
16
+1 for Fusion in regards to compositing. The ability to edit, color inside Resolve and have Fusion to composite has been great. I hope BMD continue developing Fusion as it's far from perfect but has the chance to be a game changer.

However I wouldn't consider it for 3D rendering and not sure it fits in this thread.
 

vinegarshots

macrumors 6502a
Sep 24, 2018
983
1,349
Fusion seems interesting, but it really is not ideal for motion graphics work. The extra time involved in setting up nodes for basic things versus using layers in AE is not good for projects that need to be done fast.
 

tommy chen

macrumors 6502a
Oct 1, 2018
907
390
You should really consider Fusion. It is free in DaVinci Resolve, or $300 gets you the studio versions of both DaVinci Resolve and stand alone Fusion. There is no subscription fee (at some point there may be an upgrade cost, but there has not been one so far). It is a full featured compositing system, closer in capability to Nuke, but pretty easy to learn. Motion is nice, but Fusion is more powerful.

attention! - only the dongle resolve version allows to start the stand alone fusion studio - not the key version!
 
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vel0city

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 23, 2017
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Thanks for making this thread Vel0city! I’ve been lurking for a long time here after recently starting using 3D on my iMac Pro.

That Mograph Podcast you linked to has me very excited for the future of the industry and how passionate Otoy is about the Mac. I also think they want everyone to be able to contribute to their render network RNDR.

For me Octane X doesn’t have to have every new feature in parity but it sounds like they’re going for speed and hopefully stability which would be perfect. And if I can send renders out to a more powerful headless PC but work off of my Mac I’d be happy as a clam!

For now I’m running with 2 5700xt eGPUs for working in Blender and using Radeon ProRender

Thanks for joining the conversation and welcome to the forum!

It definitely sounds like Octane X will be capable of rendering to a headless network PC, as well as services like Pixel Plow and OTOY's own cloud render service. With that and the iPad Pro support there's a lot to look forward to.

I'm really looking forward to a more stable rendering experience with Octane X than the current Mac version, but still, total credit to OTOY for continuing to support what they must have known was a dead end with CUDA on the Mac. As much as I love Redshift there's just something a bit more pleasing and aesthetically beautiful about Octane's look, especially its daylight.

I wonder if ProRedner will be EOL's when Redshift is fully integrated into C4D, or if it will take the place of Standard Render? Interesting times ahead for sure!
 

Alan Wynn

macrumors 68020
Sep 13, 2017
2,385
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After finding out my main freelance client is planning to move to PC I cancelled my order. Damn it!

Curious if you work on your own hardware for them or at their location using their systems.

Also curious (if you know) what made them switch?

I’ve challenged myself to see if I can work on PC for one week to see if I can make it work. As much as I love Mac, I don’t want to be dinosaur left behind that can only use Macs.

If you are using Premiere Pro and After Effects, you will have no problem using Windows, you are just likely not to like it as much.

And thanks for your tip about fusion, it probably is much better than after effects. I should look into that, but think I want to learn more character 3D animation stuff at the moment. So much to learn so little time!

No problem, happy to help. Where are you located? My BF said he would be happy to answer questions if you have any. Also, as I mentioned, Blackmagic offers free training in Burbank (maybe other places as well). Just FYI, they include a really nice lunch with it. :)

One last resource I will mention is the SteakUnderwater.com forum. It is a pretty nice community of Fusion users.
 
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LymeChips

macrumors newbie
Jan 3, 2020
27
16
...
It definitely sounds like Octane X will be capable of rendering to a headless network PC, as well as services like Pixel Plow and OTOY's own cloud render service. With that and the iPad Pro support there's a lot to look forward to.
...

I'm interested in your and anyone else's opinion on this: I'm looking at adding 2 eGPU (rx 5700 xt about 1080ti equivalent) into my standard iMacPro setup. With never working with a headless network PC for rendering in Octane would it be better to get a modest RTX headless PC instead of the additional eGPU?

Sorry it's not MacPro related but this is one of the only spots I can ask this right now(I'm new to the 3D community). But anything Octane X related is really exciting!
 
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skippermonkey

macrumors 6502a
Jun 23, 2003
649
1,644
Bath, UK
I agree about the look of Octane. When using it with a GTX980Ti, the daylight renders were beautiful, but it was bugged to hell and totally unstable. I really hope with the Mac's limited model range, Otoy and (C4D dev) Ahmet Oktar can make Octane X much more stable and usable. I still see lots of comments about stability on the forums.

I did download Black Magic DaVinci Resolve/Fusion, but it's too much for my meagre needs. I don't need yet another app to learn!
 

vel0city

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 23, 2017
347
510
I'm interested in your and anyone else's opinion on this: I'm looking at adding 2 eGPU (rx 5700 xt about 1080ti equivalent) into my standard iMacPro setup. With never working with a headless network PC for rendering in Octane would it be better to get a modest RTX headless PC instead of the additional eGPU?

Sorry it's not MacPro related but this is one of the only spots I can ask this right now(I'm new to the 3D community). But anything Octane X related is really exciting!

Depends what you're aiming to achieve with the extra GPUs. If you used an eGPU solution with the iMac the additional GPUs would be able to power the Octane Live Viewer, which the headless PC wouldn't, going the the headless PC route its GPUs would only be used for final render output. For me, Live Viewer performance is way more important than final render speed as final renders can always be offloaded to the cloud with a service like Pixel Plow or OTOY's own cloud service. I want maximum VRAM behind the Live Viewer for as close to realtime lookdev as I can get - that is the whole selling point of GPU renderers in my opinion.

But before spending any money I would suggest waiting to see how Octane X performs and what hardware is recommended after it's settled in for a few months. You might get better performance and features from hooking up an iPad Pro as a render slave, we have to wait and see.
 
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MarkC426

macrumors 68040
May 14, 2008
3,699
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UK
I'm interested in your and anyone else's opinion on this: I'm looking at adding 2 eGPU (rx 5700 xt about 1080ti equivalent) into my standard iMacPro setup. With never working with a headless network PC for rendering in Octane would it be better to get a modest RTX headless PC instead of the additional eGPU?

Sorry it's not MacPro related but this is one of the only spots I can ask this right now(I'm new to the 3D community). But anything Octane X related is really exciting!
Have Otoy announced which gpu’s are supported in Octane X?
It may be prudent to hang on until confirmation is available.
 
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ETN3

macrumors member
Oct 26, 2016
79
74
Earth
Here is some news on the Octane X
 
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MarkC426

macrumors 68040
May 14, 2008
3,699
2,097
UK
I just read the cgchannel article, it actually says MacOS 10.15 and metal supported gpu.
Well that‘s me out of the game until I upgrade then..... ?
 

skippermonkey

macrumors 6502a
Jun 23, 2003
649
1,644
Bath, UK
Well I just swapped out my second (non-MPX) RX580 for an RX5700XT and I've had no end of problems. ProRender was unusable in C4D (regularly crashed the app) and even just playing Hearthsthone the performance was terrible. No idea what was going on. Any ideas?
 

bsbeamer

macrumors 601
Sep 19, 2012
4,313
2,713
Well I just swapped out my second (non-MPX) RX580 for an RX5700XT and I've had no end of problems. ProRender was unusable in C4D (regularly crashed the app) and even just playing Hearthsthone the performance was terrible. No idea what was going on. Any ideas?

What model RX 5700 XT? What ports are you using?
 

bsbeamer

macrumors 601
Sep 19, 2012
4,313
2,713
Using in combo with any other GPUs and/or MPX or 100% solo as only GPU? Have you tested solo?

Sapphire Pulse RX 5700 XT 8GB in eGPU has an issue with DP3 (DisplayPort #3) in macOS 10.15.2 and basically forcing the machine connected to auto reboot and cycle unless it's disconnected. GPU performs better with DP1, DP2 and HDMI connected vs. solo any. Picked up several headless adapters to test and verify. The drivers need to be fixed/addressed and not expecting until 10.15.3 or 10.15.4, hopefully trickledown from W5700X.
 

skippermonkey

macrumors 6502a
Jun 23, 2003
649
1,644
Bath, UK
It was used to drive the display, with the RX580X left for compute. Didn't have any major issues with boot up and display, but it's clearly not working right. Maybe it's just worth waiting for improved drivers... I should have just waited for the W5700X MPX!
 

bsbeamer

macrumors 601
Sep 19, 2012
4,313
2,713
Have seen two reports on other forums that the RX 5700 XT outperforms 580X ONLY when it's used as the only GPU in the machine, or with multiple RX 5700 XT present. I have not been able to personally test this. Not sure if you're able to at least attempt that setup at this time.
 
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