mac for 3d modeling? can it do vray cuda rendering, nv egpu in bootcamp, etc?

[applesaucePro]

Hello, I use PC but I'm thinking of getting the imacPro or upcoming supposedly modular macPro for 3d modelling & rendering. The apple chat support people are useless so I'm here to see if you guys can tell me about using a mac for this type of work. I used apples from 1984-1996, but I know nothing about current macs or macOS, so I have a ton of questions!

The software I use the most is zbrush, maya, and photoshop. I also have a wacom cintiq 21UX. Do all these work fine in macOS and run the exact same as a windows PC?

Do I really need an apple keyboard & mouse? I really like my corsair K70 mechanical keyboard and logitech G5 mouse and would like to use them in macOS and win10 enterprise under bootcamp if its possible.

I use lots of various windows programs that won't run on mac, I expect to run some of those in vmware emulator which I assume would work fine on mac, but some would need to run in bootcamp mode...

Are there any gotchas to using bootcamp? Such as: Is this a true native windows environment running at fullspeed, or is it emulated/gimped in any way? Does hardware under bootcamp use commonplace drivers or only special ones provided by apple? Are there any compatibility problems?

I noticed someone saying an nvidia GPU cannot run fullspeed in bootcamp without a mac EFI? Is it true, and where do you obtain this special EFI, can you flash it as a firmware to any card by yourself?

Is it possible to run one or two nvidia cards such as the 1080ti or upcoming 1180gtx in both macOS and bootcamp mode on imacPro using an egpu box? I would not need SLI mode.

I haven't done any cuda rendering before but I definitely want to try it, so I want to make sure the mac can do it either in macOS or bootcamp, or both. So for example: can I put two 1080ti into a egpu box and render a scene with vray or mental ray using cuda only rendering mode or a hybrid rendering mode of say 10 to 18 cpu cores plus the cuda cores?

can you do these things with an nvidia egpu under OSX, bootcamp, or both?:
run games from steam?
run unreal engine games, and the UE4 SDK development tools used to make such games?
run VR games on htc vive or oculus rift?

I am aware that imac pro may not be entirely repairable at the moment due to it being new. Also the vesa adapter kit isn't using real metal screws which is causing horrible problems... are there any other problems that have come up with the imac pro?

Is 5k too high res for everyday work, will everything look like crap if i have to use a non-native lower res?

How does not having any updates for a long time affect the usefulness of the mac? According to this site it appears some macs have had no updates for months or years? Does this mean mac is not getting any OS patches to prevent viruses and exploits? On windows the security patches happen at least once a month...

What do you use for antivirus on mac? Does kaspersky or bitdefender work?

Anything else I should know about macs/macOS?

 

[expede]

That is a lot of questions. That was 17 question marks! I will strait some out. I have done some 3D modeling myself on my mac since 2012 and AFIK know i had no or little problem with Zbrush, Maya, Photoshop. I do some 3D medical treatment plans in Windows 10 with CT-files (Computer Tomography) up to 1GB with no problem. All Materialise progams runs smooth and with no hick-ups (Mimics, 3-Shape, Magics). I switch between AMD Radeon 7950 and GTX GeForce 1060 3G and Cuda + webdriver from NVIDIA runs fine on OSX. Wacom was difficult for me so I threw that one out. But it was doable. But the keyboard you have to ask others. Bootcamp is something that does not work on OSX 10.13.5 APFS and Mac Pro 5.1. But I have Win 10 on a separate SSD, so I just switch during boot up or with BootChamp. Steam games I do not do. The other questions I leave to others.

/Per

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

The software I use the most is zbrush, maya, and photoshop. I also have a wacom cintiq 21UX. Do all these work fine in macOS and run the exact same as a windows PC?

Yes they work exactly the same.

Do I really need an apple keyboard & mouse? I really like my corsair K70 mechanical keyboard and logitech G5 mouse and would like to use them in macOS and win10 enterprise under bootcamp if its possible.

Yes, you can use these except there isn't a macOS version of Corsair's LED utility.

I use lots of various windows programs that won't run on mac, I expect to run some of those in vmware emulator which I assume would work fine on mac, but some would need to run in bootcamp mode...

Are there any gotchas to using bootcamp? Such as: Is this a true native windows environment running at fullspeed, or is it emulated/gimped in any way? Does hardware under bootcamp use commonplace drivers or only special ones provided by apple? Are there any compatibility problems?

It's a native environment. An Intel Mac is a PC. Just modified in design.

I noticed someone saying an nvidia GPU cannot run fullspeed in bootcamp without a mac EFI? Is it true, and where do you obtain this special EFI, can you flash it as a firmware to any card by yourself?

You don't need this and macOS is moving towards using normal PC graphics cards. EFI is now on the motherboard, not the GPU.

Is it possible to run one or two nvidia cards such as the 1080ti or upcoming 1180gtx in both macOS and bootcamp mode on imacPro using an egpu box? I would not need SLI mode.


I haven't done any cuda rendering before but I definitely want to try it, so I want to make sure the mac can do it either in macOS or bootcamp, or both. So for example: can I put two 1080ti into a egpu box and render a scene with vray or mental ray using cuda only rendering mode or a hybrid rendering mode of say 10 to 18 cpu cores plus the cuda cores?

Yes to both. All the CUDA cores will be active for rendering.

can you do these things with an nvidia egpu under OSX, bootcamp, or both?:
run games from steam?
run unreal engine games, and the UE4 SDK development tools used to make such games?
run VR games on htc vive or oculus rift?

You can do all of those in Bootcamp and some on macOS.

I am aware that imac pro may not be entirely repairable at the moment due to it being new. Also the vesa adapter kit isn't using real metal screws which is causing horrible problems... are there any other problems that have come up with the imac pro?

It's expensive but if you're a pro just expense it.

Is 5k too high res for everyday work, will everything look like crap if i have to use a non-native lower res?

In the Displays preferences choose how much you want to scale the interface. It will remain sharp.

How does not having any updates for a long time affect the usefulness of the mac? According to this site it appears some macs have had no updates for months or years? Does this mean mac is not getting any OS patches to prevent viruses and exploits? On windows the security patches happen at least once a month...

Macs get the same important security updates everyone else gets.

What do you use for antivirus on mac? Does kaspersky or bitdefender work?

Stay away from warez, pirate movies, creeptocurrency forums, and all the other illegal crap on the web and you should be fine.

 

[applesaucePro]

thanks for your reply expede, sorry for so many questions! so there can be problems with the file system or sharing files between apple and windows computers? APFS/HFS vs NTFS... maybe someone can clarify it more.
[doublepost=1529442349][/doublepost]thanks soy, can you recommend a particular egpu box that works with win10 and two nvidia cards? apples opinion is that nvidia egpu doesn't work at all under bootcamp.

macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 doesn't support eGPUs in Windows using Boot Camp

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208544

is there really nothing for antivirus on mac? one of the worst virus outbreaks ever was due to a java exploit on mac

 

[expede]

Hi, there. I do not have any problem regarding the transfer between APFS and NTFS. There are software solution for that. One example is "NTFS for Mac" by Paragon. Another free solution is Tuxera.

/Per

thanks for your reply expede, sorry for so many questions! so there can be problems with the file system or sharing files between apple and windows computers? APFS/HFS vs NTFS... maybe someone can clarify it more.

 

[chrfr]

is there really nothing for antivirus on mac? one of the worst virus outbreaks ever was due to a java exploit on mac

I'm not sure where you're getting that. There are antivirus options for Mac but in general they're all pretty terrible. Also for the vast majority of users, regardless of platform, there's no need to have Java on a computer.