3D Rendering on Apple Silicon, CPU&GPU

[jujoje]

I also know someone who used to be on the Maya beta-test program with me who I think is now in the Pro Apps team. He got hired by Apple back in 2014.

Didn't realise it had started so early; I guess it probably takes a while to get the good ship Apple moving in a particular direction.

That was an odd choice. So by v502 or so I was out. I heard that as they kept adding features it started to suffer from a lot of slowdown/bottleneck issues, around the time Foundry picked it up. And with Foundry seemingly not investing all that much R&D into it, I wonder if it has gotten any better.

I think I stopped using Modo around 401, although that was more due to a shift in career than anything. I feel with Modo they nailed the modelling part really well off the bat, but a lot of things they started adding just made the program slower, confusing and more expensive (also never liked the layered shading).

Since the Foundry bought it it's pretty much stagnated as far as I can tell; every year they add a few flavour of month features, but it's pretty much on maintenance these days. If they released just the modelling part for a £150 one off license I'd grab it, but as it is its a £30 a month subscription...

 

[jujoje]

Apple making their own 3D software would be amazing! Just seeing what they have done with Logic and FCP shows what they can do when the software is specifically made for the hardware. Realistically Apple probably won’t go that route but maybe there’s hope for a company like Affinity.

I think you're right there; I suspect Apple will go with developing the tools that support basic 3D authoring, manipulation and scene layout (think a more fleshed out version of Reality Creator / Convertor), but leave the complex stuff to dedicated DCC apps. I don't see them making anything to rival Maya / Blender etc, although would be interesting (and brink back Shake already 😛).

 

[Boil]

I think you're right there; I suspect Apple will go with developing the tools that support basic 3D authoring, manipulation and scene layout (think a more fleshed out version of Reality Creator / Convertor), but leave the complex stuff to dedicated DCC apps. I don't see them making anything to rival Maya / Blender etc, although would be interesting (and brink back Shake already 😛).

You mean Phenomenon...? ;^p

 

[Xiao_Xi]

Just wait for the first round of optimizations 40% faster 😉

Blender Archive - developer.blender.org

developer.blender.org

I wonder what would have happened if Apple had started working with Blender before Blender's Cycles rewrite.

 

[Xiao_Xi]

It seems that Apple has also started working on Blender's Viewport.

18 April 2022

18 April 2022 Notes for weekly communication of ongoing projects and modules. Announcements The submission deadline for Google Summer of Code projects is tomorrow, 19 April 18h UTC. Modules & Projects Animation / Rigging 2022-04-14 Animation & Rigging module meeting Sculpt / Texture /...

devtalk.blender.org

 

[singhs.apps]

Holy crap! Brad's at Apple now? Awesome! And what a steal for Apple. I was under the impression he had left the industry

When he sold off Modo to foundry, he had said he was looking into the AR/VR side of things.Back then I didn’t know he with Apple. Now it makes sense. All the ‘pro’ 3D peeps will be into the Apple ‘glasses’ project…so expect a VR authoring device that hooks into the Mac Pro….

 

[vel0city]

Redshift CPU for C4D with improved viewport display is getting announced today at the Maxon conference. Potentially great news for us.

 

[sirio76]

Redshift CPU? Am I missing something?

 

[vel0city]

Redshift CPU? Am I missing something?

Announcement today. "Redshift Everywhere" - it will replace C4Ds physical renderer in R26.

 

[sirio76]

Thanks I've just seen it😉 it seems it can be used also in "Hybrid" mode(I mean CPU+GPU), if that's the case it can have a big advantage on AS heterogeneous memory architecture.

 

[TSE]

As far as I know, any serious rendering professionals are still on x86. That's where the program support still is. That's where the maximum GPU support is.

Really, I think it's still going to stay that way for the forseeable future. The two giants in the industry, love them or hate them, Solidworks and Keyshot, have either no m1 support, or limited m1 support.

Can you use Apple Silicone for a hobby and get what you need done? Sure. Can you use it as a tool for professional use? Absolutely not. Guarantee you Apple uses PC for whatever renderings and 3D CAD work they do.

 

[sirio76]

No offense but this is ridiculous 🙂 Keyshot a giant of the industry???? I'm not sure where you get your information from..
This was done on an Apple machine, is it missing something compared to what you can do on a PC?

 

[TSE]

No offense but this is ridiculous 🙂 Keyshot a giant of the industry???? I'm not sure where you get your information from..
This was done on an Apple machine, is it missing something compared to what you can do on a PC?

View attachment 1994129

I'm sorry, but that's not a great rendering. Maybe to somebody that isn't in the industry, it looks great. But to somebody that has done it professionally, continues to do it professionally, and somebody whose renderings have hit 15k+ hits on a single major website alone plus countless others, I'm telling you this. It's not a great rendering. The chrome specifically is oversaturated, lacking details to describe the form visually, and not anything near the quality an Apple or Microsoft would pick up.

It's not because Apple Silicone CAN'T render. For hobbyists, it's great. But there are better tools out there solely for the purpose of 3D CAD and Rendering. I guarantee you. GUARANTEE you. Apple themselves does all their 3D CAD work and Renderings on PC.

The process of making a single good rendering (think the ones that cost $5k+ per render on the low end) takes a LOT of CAD work between adjusting distances and positioning of components for exploded views, creating artificial environments for the products, etc. and after that about 50 - 100 quick sketch renderings testing different positions and lighting in the rendering environment.

Now imagine Apple Silicone, which doesn't have GPU support, or has been proven to render slower in 3D CAD programs in Blender than it does for a well specced PC counterpart, taking, let's say 5 minutes per render vs. 3 minutes. That means those sketch renders are going to take 250 minutes vs. 150 minutes. It only gets worse as the scaling gets bigger, so that's a gigantic profit sink.

Imagine losing that much money nearly everyday. Not to mention most 3D CAD software can't even be run on Apple Silicone, or the ones that do have less features and plugins (Rhino3D, etc.) so you are going to need to use a PC anyways. If you're willing to sacrifice this much money and time for the sole purpose of "doing it all on one device" or for your love of Apple, and this coming from a HUGE fan of Apple, then nothings going to change your mind.

Again, for a hobbyist, it isn't about what tools you use, but the artist behind them. You can absolutely make drop dead sexy renderings with Apple Silicone. But for a business, absolutely not.

And yeah, Keyshot IS a giant in the industry, specifically for industrial design.

 

[sirio76]

can you show an example of your work? maybe the one with 15k hits?
Keyshot is not an industry giant, is used only for specific stuff but anything from archiviz, to VFX, to Hollywood movies(just to name a few big industries) is done on other engine and KS is basically non existent.
About Apple rendering, I can tell you for sure (like 100% sure) that most of their product are rendered on Mac, manufacturing is a totally different story and is probable that some process are done on Linux/Windows workstation.
The render speed comparison is pointless, for quick render I use local computing (on both Mac and PC), and everything that I do on Mac is quick enough (especially because I do not spend all the day rendering), when I need more speed I can use an online farm and render much faster than any Windows workstation (guess what, at Pixar they do exactly the same😉 ). As a matter of fact most 3D workflows maximize CPU usage only for a fraction of the time (just for render and simulation), anything else use only one or a few CPU cores and Apple machine are plenty fast in that regard.

 

[Boil]

Silicon, not Silicone...

One is for computer chips, the other is for breast implants...

 

[vladi]

No offense but this is ridiculous 🙂 Keyshot a giant of the industry???? I'm not sure where you get your information from..
This was done on an Apple machine, is it missing something compared to what you can do on a PC?

View attachment 1994129

That's a great rendering. Shiny metal is really hard to do within a scene where it's not the focus subject cause light will just kill it. Maybe next time do two renderings, one for the subject and one for the secondary chrome bits with slightly adjusted light setup. Then export just the pieces you need (in Keyshot they are called layers and yes Keyshot is super big in product design sans vehicles) and slap them together in Photoshop.

 

[Lone Deranger]

On another note, that 'Maxon Spring Event – ZBrush Feature Presentation', that's live right now on Twitch & YT, looks... bad. 😵

The workflow looks atrocious. Anybody watching this?

 

[vel0city]

On another note, that 'Maxon Spring Event – ZBrush Feature Presentation', that's live right now on Twitch & YT, looks... bad. 😵

The workflow looks atrocious. Anybody watching this?

Didn't catch this, what was wrong with it? I'll be disappointed if it's not completely seamless.

 

[Lone Deranger]

Didn't catch this, what was wrong with it? I'll be disappointed if it's not completely seamless.

Seamless? Well...I'm not sure I would call it that. It sure took an awful lot of manual steps just to get the models rendering in C4D/Redshift. The workflow looked slow and tedious.

For a company that now has the three main components in-house. (ZB, C4D and RedShift), I'm amazed they weren't able to show a 1 click push to render workflow. I mean nothing about that particular part in the pipeline requires artist intervention. It's not a creative step and can and should be fully automated.

ie. Take a finished model in ZBrush. *Press 'ZB -> C4D/RS' export button*. This should give you a renderable asset with all it's associated maps (be it Displacement, Vector displacement, Color, etc.) already connected to a shader and applied to the meshes with all the required render tags/settings added. Ready to start look-development. But it looks like they are far from that.

This was not a Zbrush Feature Presentation as it was advertised to be. It was basically a "how to render your ZB model inside C4D.

 

[TSE]

can you show an example of your work? maybe the one with 15k hits?
Keyshot is not an industry giant, is used only for specific stuff but anything from archiviz, to VFX, to Hollywood movies(just to name a few big industries) is done on other engine and KS is basically non existent.
About Apple rendering, I can tell you for sure (like 100% sure) that most of their product are rendered on Mac, manufacturing is a totally different story and is probable that some process are done on Linux/Windows workstation.
The render speed comparison is pointless, for quick render I use local computing (on both Mac and PC), and everything that I do on Mac is quick enough (especially because I do not spend all the day rendering), when I need more speed I can use an online farm and render much faster than any Windows workstation (guess what, at Pixar they do exactly the same😉 ). As a matter of fact most 3D workflows maximize CPU usage only for a fraction of the time (just for render and simulation), anything else use only one or a few CPU cores and Apple machine are plenty fast in that regard.

Hey, just want to say I am absolutely sorry. I read my last post back and I come off as a complete pretentious *******.

I want to clarify: That Mac Pro Rendering you sent is fantastic. If that is yours, great job. I don't want to discourage you or anyone else for making something of that quality.

I would love to show you some of my work, but I don't want to tie this account to my professional career. I've been posting here since I was 15 and I'm sure there's stuff I've posted in my teenage years that's bonkers.


I might be wrong then, but what CAD suite software besides Fusion3D and Blender are what Apple users use? I know Rhino3D doesn't have nearly the number of plugins that the PC version has. Solidworks isn't available for Mac.

And from what I know, Keyshot is the industry standard for industrial design renderings. Maybe I'm wrong, but please let me know where I'm wrong. I'm all ears.


And sorry again - keep up the renderings and let me know how I can help.

 

[sirio76]

@TSE
To be honest the MP rendering was not meant to be fantastic and I'm fine with that since I've done it just for fun in the spare time and running an alpha software. I do other things for living: https://3drenderandbeyond.com (old website).
I only posted it because you said that on Mac you can not produce professional 3D works and that is plainly false.
I know for sure that many Apple product are rendered on Mac using traditional DCC apps(probably importing CAD data from other softwares, possibly on Windows/Linux), other marketing stuff is done using traditional photography.
I totally agree that manufacturing industry uses specific tools and some of them are not even available on MacOS, but that is only a fraction of the 3D industry, you should not consider that niche as the "whole thing".
I'm still curious to see some of your works, if you don't feel to post it here in public maybe send me a private message, don't get me wrong but here there are plenty of users that can barely use a 3D software but have their say on what Mac can or can not do 🙂

 

[TSE]

@TSE
To be honest the MP rendering was not meant to be fantastic and I'm fine with that since I've done it just for fun in the spare time and running an alpha software. I do other things for living: https://3drenderandbeyond.com (old website).
I only posted it because you said that on Mac you can not produce professional 3D works and that is plainly false.
I know for sure that many Apple product are rendered on Mac using traditional DCC apps(probably importing CAD data from other softwares, possibly on Windows/Linux), other marketing stuff is done using traditional photography.
I totally agree that manufacturing industry uses specific tools and some of them are not even available on MacOS, but that is only a fraction of the 3D industry, you should not consider that niche as the "whole thing".
I'm still curious to see some of your works, if you don't feel to post it here in public maybe send me a private message, don't get me wrong but here there are plenty of users that can barely use a 3D software but have their say on what Mac can or can not do 🙂

Fantastic work, I can tell you're a cool person. I think we'll just have to agree to disagree. 🙂 Keep making awesome work.

And I wish I could tell you, honestly... I just can't risk it.

 

[vinegarshots]

Hey, just want to say I am absolutely sorry. I read my last post back and I come off as a complete pretentious *******.

I want to clarify: That Mac Pro Rendering you sent is fantastic. If that is yours, great job. I don't want to discourage you or anyone else for making something of that quality.

I would love to show you some of my work, but I don't want to tie this account to my professional career. I've been posting here since I was 15 and I'm sure there's stuff I've posted in my teenage years that's bonkers.


I might be wrong then, but what CAD suite software besides Fusion3D and Blender are what Apple users use? I know Rhino3D doesn't have nearly the number of plugins that the PC version has. Solidworks isn't available for Mac.

And from what I know, Keyshot is the industry standard for industrial design renderings. Maybe I'm wrong, but please let me know where I'm wrong. I'm all ears.


And sorry again - keep up the renderings and let me know how I can help.

Blender isn't a CAD suite.

 

[Lone Deranger]

@TSE
To be honest the MP rendering was not meant to be fantastic and I'm fine with that since I've done it just for fun in the spare time and running an alpha software. I do other things for living: https://3drenderandbeyond.com (old website).
I only posted it because you said that on Mac you can not produce professional 3D works and that is plainly false.
I know for sure that many Apple product are rendered on Mac using traditional DCC apps(probably importing CAD data from other softwares, possibly on Windows/Linux), other marketing stuff is done using traditional photography.
I totally agree that manufacturing industry uses specific tools and some of them are not even available on MacOS, but that is only a fraction of the 3D industry, you should not consider that niche as the "whole thing".
I'm still curious to see some of your works, if you don't feel to post it here in public maybe send me a private message, don't get me wrong but here there are plenty of users that can barely use a 3D software but have their say on what Mac can or can not do 🙂

For what it's worth, I think your render looks great! A bit of noise in some areas, but nothing that can't be resolved with further sampling.
Thanks for posting it.

The whole debate about "Pro's using Windows because blah blah/Macs are only for hobbyists", etc. is tiresome to me. It's such a beaten to death topic it really has no place here in this thread. Ultimately it's for each artist/studio to decide what works best for them, at a professional level or a hobbyist level.

 

[ader42]

On another note, that 'Maxon Spring Event – ZBrush Feature Presentation', that's live right now on Twitch & YT, looks... bad. 😵

The workflow looks atrocious. Anybody watching this?

I didn't think it was too bad when I realised he was showing different options.

He did show a GoZ which took the model and all the poly maps in one click into C4D, but it's a shame he didn't show that rendering in the Redshift window (you did see the model with it's maps in the C4D viewport) but instead went straight to a different scene/model using UDIMs and setting that up manually with displacement maps - my take was that there are a myriad of options and means. Maybe the GoZ option doesn't work with UDIMs just yet - so he showed the manual process for that to cover the bases?

I thought the wonky way of supposedly taking the Redshift lighting (really a rendered material/map) into ZBrush was rather "off" and looked somewhat amateur - I guess that approach could look ok for look-dev and work in progress and more likely he was just showing yet another option - most folks won't be doing final rendering inside ZBrush anyway.

Thanks for posting the link, I enjoyed it.