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No Mac Pro?
- Thread starter mavericks7913
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Whoever these people you talk to are they aren't very knowledgeable.
Just because network rendering exists doesn't mean its practical for all applications. I only network render when doing animations. Render farms are expensive and home networks, while they can be fast are still slower then rendering on one machine with a lot of power for individual frames. Even when you have multiple computers connected to render one frame the computer that is the controller renders the absolute fastest.
Not to mention rendering isn't the only computationally intensive task. Sims are very expensive. Fire up Houdini or Realflow and you'll see. Adding extra nodes on Realflow costs extra money and to do it in Houdini you need to buy the big expensive version.
Its easier for many people to buy a beefier computer vs trying to cope with the expense of network rendering.
I wonder if Apple will gonna make a MODULAR computer which is not compatible with regular parts. Will it be worse?
a point about the iMac Pro - it's the only way Apple can get a GPU that's more powerful than the D700 to market, that's not in a eGPU, and which uses a form-factor they already build.
the 2013 Mac Pro isn't getting any hardware upgrades for the rest of its life for thermal reasons, the replacement isn't close to ready, the mac mini is too small, short of building an entire new class of product in a completely different case (a mythical iMac without a screen, and a slotted GPU, which is a precedent they don't want to set - if you want cheap upgrades, you're only going to get them by outlaying more for the initial computer) realistically the iMac Pro is probably the fastest way they could get something, anything, onto the market with a gpu that's more recent than one of those birds in the box with a chisel and stone tablets, that looks at camera and says "it's a living".
the 2013 Mac Pro isn't getting any hardware upgrades for the rest of its life for thermal reasons, the replacement isn't close to ready, the mac mini is too small, short of building an entire new class of product in a completely different case (a mythical iMac without a screen, and a slotted GPU, which is a precedent they don't want to set - if you want cheap upgrades, you're only going to get them by outlaying more for the initial computer) realistically the iMac Pro is probably the fastest way they could get something, anything, onto the market with a gpu that's more recent than one of those birds in the box with a chisel and stone tablets, that looks at camera and says "it's a living".
Let me start off by saying that not having a go or even disagreeing with you.
However peoples views are clouded by there own circumstances. From the post then going to gather when talk about home network that like many ( not all ) people on here, that your environment is that not only are you the User, but also the Purchaser and the IT Support etc.
For those environments then indeed single machine with everything local is definitely simpler, easier, cheaper.
On the other hand if you come an environment where you are simply the user, and have the IT Team that maintains/provides the Network Infrastructure, builds out everything for you, so you aren't paying/maintaining yourself, but are part of a large number of users, then the Network Storage/Network Rendering starts to make much more sense.
When one user isn't rendering another person can use the Network Render, Work Files are more easily available to your colleagues etc. Network Performance etc, uplinks aren't an issue in those environments.
I would make a guess that the people that talking about Network Rendering etc to the Thread Starter come from a different environment to yourself, and many of the other people on here also seem to be from that sort of smaller environment, possibly individuals as opposed to larger organisations. Doesn't make them less knowledgeable, just that there experience is going to be very different to your own.
rendering is boring.
how come nobody around here ever talks about the objects being rendered and/or what it takes to create said objects.
if all you do is sit around and render scenes created by others then, srry, i don't think it's something to brag about..
if you're the creator & renderer then, srry, i don't see how you're placing so much importance on the rendering aspects.
in car analogy world, rendering could be likened to painting the car-- but what about the rest of the process? (designing, engineering, modeling or building, etc the actual car)
when rendering is spoken of while leaving out the context of where it falls in the entirety of the process, other readers who might not be familiar with the process are completely mis-lead.. just sayin
how come nobody around here ever talks about the objects being rendered and/or what it takes to create said objects.
if all you do is sit around and render scenes created by others then, srry, i don't think it's something to brag about..
if you're the creator & renderer then, srry, i don't see how you're placing so much importance on the rendering aspects.
in car analogy world, rendering could be likened to painting the car-- but what about the rest of the process? (designing, engineering, modeling or building, etc the actual car)
when rendering is spoken of while leaving out the context of where it falls in the entirety of the process, other readers who might not be familiar with the process are completely mis-lead.. just sayin
Rehearsal ends at 11pm. Tech begins again at 8am. The faster I can get my stuff rendered, the faster I can get it on the system, the faster it can be cued into the show. Render speed is absolutely a big deal to me.
It will do that. But it is not a bandaid. It is a major new line and major new thinking on Apple's part. It shows some serious commitment to the Pro Users. Now there are going to be two form factors for those folks. Pro Users should rejoice.
that's more of a software issue now..
the hardware is ready, or nearly ready, for real time rendering. (real time ray tracing i presume)
like when apple says :
.... they're not lying. that gpu can do it.. it's going to take a little while for the software developers to catch up though.. and by the time they do, there will be capable GPUs in laptops etc too.
then everybody is going to suddenly forget how rendering used to take some time and will then sit around complaining how company A sux because only 30fps realtime where as company B can do 40.. and how it's really screwing up their work.. and how they're losing serious money over this slowdown
---
what are you rendering though, irked? don't you have to model stuff prior to rendering it? how long does that take?
for example.. here's a 2011 macBook pro with a hobbled together eGPU / Radeon 7970.. openCL based IndigoRenderer..
(this video was made ~8 months ago)
on one of these new iMacs, this will be very very close to real-time ray tracing.
but the days of processing single frame renders for hours are nearly behind us.
.
I don't have the technical expertise to contribute to a discussion of high-end rendering/simulation, but I *can* say that espresso machine analogies should immediately replace car analogies across all of MacRumors.
haven't you checked the front page yet today?
https://www.macrumors.com/2017/06/13/tim-cook-confirms-apple-autonomous-driving/
You're doing that thing that seems really popular around these parts; assuming your workflow is representative of everyone else's.
IIRC, you model 3D tables or chairs or something of the sort?
We're rendering video files. ProRes, 1080p30 at a bare minimum. Built out of layer upon layer of clips and stills in AfterEffects. We do as much compositing live at the server as possible, but even with the newer trashcans we can only get about 11 or 12 layers of ProRes comped at once, and that drops even further if we need to use the Animation codec or ProRes 4444 to get decent alpha interactions.
So we look at where we start dropping frames live, and then we go back to our sad little hotel rooms and render out new clips that can take some load off of the live machines. If we had more than a week onstage between prepro and opening, we might be able to work a little slower, but that's unlikely these days.
A big hope is that the newer mac pros are cooled well enough to actually run long render queues; a big problem with the existing trashcans is that they overheat and insert glitchy frames all willy-nilly. This introduces a bonus step into our tight workflow - we have to render out to image sequence, then root through the sequence looking for crap frames, then encode to ProRes. (A glitchy flash to white is ugly enough on a monitor - looks absolute crap at 80' wide).
I want bigger GPUs with more VRAM. I want more threads (my playback software is happy to spin up a core per layer, if the cores are available). I want frame-synced video across all outputs (not traditionally an Apple strength). I want versatile outputs, as I can be sending anything from 1400x1050@60 to 4k@60, depending on show and destinations. I have absolutely no need for a built-in monitor - the 27" iMac is about 693 inches shy of what I typically display on.
I would like a viable mac pro. Please don't tell me I can't or shouldn't have one because i don't do the same work you do.
and dont forget a bunch of peoples bosses will get the imac PRO to do emails my desk is bigger.or in a more day to day viewpoint any company that needs to use mac software and has a 3 year cycle on hardware will have to look at it over the currant macpro which it beats.
you got an editing suite of aging nMP's that are on the 3 year clock it's this you get.
if your renting out room or charging by the hour then you can afford one of these.
hmmm, yeah, except for me asking "what are you rendering?", i suppose i'm doing exactly that
again.. huh?
i told you that? or maybe you're just reading things that aren't there?
I think it is unrealistic for Apple to manage two workstation product lines when the company sells such a small number of workstations. It's just about the lowest earning market segment. Pretty sure they make more off of iPods or headphones. And purely from a Tim Cook, 'lets do it for the shareholders!' point of view. I do not see it as viable.
Not unless there is some way to make the Mac Pro share parts with the iMac Pro.
I really really want there to be a new Mac Pro. If the Cylinder Mac Pro is the last one, that would be sad. Mostly because that would mean the Cylinder Mac Pro killed the Mac Pro! And I really like it as a product.
I'd really love to see a Mac Pro with DDR4, a current Xeon cpu, and dual 10gbit NICs.
I'd personally prefer dual CPU over dual GPU. But it would be nice to have the option of both.
But again, I think the iMac Pro just blew the Mac Pro out of the water. And I'm not buying an iMac Pro.
Not unless there is some way to make the Mac Pro share parts with the iMac Pro.
I really really want there to be a new Mac Pro. If the Cylinder Mac Pro is the last one, that would be sad. Mostly because that would mean the Cylinder Mac Pro killed the Mac Pro! And I really like it as a product.
I'd really love to see a Mac Pro with DDR4, a current Xeon cpu, and dual 10gbit NICs.
I'd personally prefer dual CPU over dual GPU. But it would be nice to have the option of both.
But again, I think the iMac Pro just blew the Mac Pro out of the water. And I'm not buying an iMac Pro.
heh.. me too
this is a good hold over though:
(when/if you can)
(via autodesk cloud rendering service)
Not sure what you're getting at?
Surely such a simple scene wouldn't require a cloud service.
A guy, or was it a lady???, told me the sky was falling
Oh gosh, now I remember - It was a talking chicken
Lou