Apple Pledges Support for 3D Graphics Tool Blender

[Lone Deranger]

Gosh... news/proof of Apple's best attempt at a high-end AppleSilicon GPU can't come soon enough.
Seeing my Windows based Blender Brethren churn out renders on their dual RTX-30x0 workstations has had me seriously spec out non Mac workstations (albeit with pain in my soul).

 

[skippermonkey]

Been wanting this to happen for a while, so kudos to Apple for joining in with the fun. I've been a C4D user for years with Blender as a bit of fun on the side, but with R25 being a total crock and that ex-Adobe shill ruining Maxon, I think it's time I properly started to migrate.

 

[jayducharme]

I've been using Blender since its early days when it tried to be a media Swiss army knife, and I've contributed to it. I'm glad the Blender team has refocused on making it just an animation tool. And I'm glad Apple is investing in it. Blender has a pretty steep learning curve, but it's an amazingly powerful app.

 

[johnmarki]

This has thrown gas onto the burning fire that is my hope Apple goes ALL-IN on the Macintosh sector, especially for creatives and pros! 🤞

 

[TD540]

I hope this means Blender on iPadOS will some day be reality.

 

[Mick-Mac]

I wish Apple would give some love to the X11 project for scientists using Macs. That project is in just awful, awful shape.

 

[rs-mac]

as Maxon grimaces

No doubt this will put pressure on Maxon for sure. When I last used that product, even RedShift didn't yet have GPU support for my iMac Pro. And the new subscription costs ultimately priced me out (I wish they still had the cheaper "Broadcast" product). At one time I could use ProRender, but they dropped support of that. And it really never worked well anyhow.

Both tools have their place. Personally, Cinema 4D is still my all time favorite tool. And should the need arise, I will license Cinema 4D for a month or two to knock out work more suited for it. i.e. should I find that a project would go quicker in C4D, will go that route.

Don't get me wrong, this is a huge move. As one of the things I was hesitant in taking Blender seriously was that they had no roadmap to get off of OpenGL.

 

[Bonte]

I'm expecting Blender to be part of the show on Monday, Blender Benchmark would be perfect to showcase the M1x.

 

[skippermonkey]

As a sidenote, I also hope Apple and AMD give some love to Mac users running AMD GPUs (I currently have one W6800 Duo, aiming to get a second). Hopefully, the work on Metal will be directly beneficial.

 

[tubular]

Sure, but if Nvidia wasn't providing that support, Blender would still be targeting Nvidia GPUs (and probably Nvidia-exclusive). The price differential of the sort of machine you can host a high end Nvidia GPU in, vs the Mac you have to buy to approach that GPU power simply doesn't favour a free application putting time into the Mac version.

Blender would have continued to support the Mac via OpenGL, which is what it currently does. Apple's deprecation of OpenGL, its failure to embrace Vulkan, and its apparent insistence on making Metal the one and only way to do graphics on the platform has painted it into a corner -- necessitating this kind of contribution.

As I understand it, Blender has rewritten its GUI (rendering aside) to Vulkan.

I think Apple's fundamental mistake was not deprecating OpenGL -- which was created for a different world -- but in failing to embrace Vulkan, leaving compatibility in the hands of a third-party project.

 

[tubular]

Indeed. Right now, in my opinion, the Blender GUI is vastly better than say Maya's. Blender's feels smoother and much more configurable.

I used to feel like the Blender interface was a car that could only be driven at 70MPH. It's great if you know how to drive it. Until you do, though, you crash and burn and crash and burn and crash and burn -- and if you complain, the Blender user community would say "You must not want to drive very much. Have you considered the possibility that you're too stupid to drive?"

I'm very happy about the change in interface *and* the change in attitude.

 

[batmanofvietnam]

Unpopular opinion but Motion integration with blender would be amazing!

I love Motion, I wish it natively supported .obj, alembic files, etc.

 

[januarydrive7]

Where are the forum members claiming that today's Apple doesn't care about or work with open source?

 

[MallardDuck]

Holy crap this is huge! Now I just need native zbrush and substance painter with m1 gpu rendering and i am set

I think Zbrush is coming: https://support.pixologic.com/article/447-support-for-apple-silicon

 

[IamTimCook]

Use it daily, I couldn’t be more excited to have Metal support coming to Blender.
It was already a beast while running the native ARM version on an M1

 

[ApplesAreSweet&Sour]

Best announcement from Apple in all of 2021.

This is amazing.

 

[weazer2k]

Don't forget Cinema4D, LightWave, Terragen, Nuke, Clarisse, modo, Marvellous Designer, World Creator, SpeedTree, RizomUV, SynthEyes, MetaShape, etc.

also don't forget that when pixar was under Steve Jobs, they were mostly using Macs. Renderman worked way better under a mac than on windows.

See How Pixar Uses Apple's $3,000 Mac To Make Beautiful Movies

An example of how the company's expensive desktop is being used in the real world.

www.businessinsider.com

 

[JDGwf]

HECK YES!

I've been wondering why Apple hasn't put a few cents in to help Metal driver development in Eevee.

Every other Graphics device manufacturer provides some sort of support

#faithrenewed

 

[The Cappy]

Blender has a feature which prevents me from using it: that you cannot lock the vertical axis. Seeing the horizon rotate like if it was a flight simulator is really a showstopper for me. I need the horizon to be always horizontal (except on very rare occasions, in which I would unlock it). All 3D apps I know of let you lock the horizon.

I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about but go into Preferences > Navigation and switch between trackball and turntable. I suspect what you're wanting is turntable — which is what I use.

 

[ajmas42]

I am curious if Apple has been secretly working on M1X improvements for Blender, that they'll announce at their 18th October event? That would be a great way of showcasing what the new computers are capable of.

 

[mw360]

Yes they are. Maya, Houdini, Zbrush, Mari, Substance, and more all have Mac versions.

I don’t want to defend the boneheaded post you’re responding to but Mari on the Mac is dead.

 

[ChrisA]

So apple plans to pivot MacBook as GPU rendering machine now? Not to say it’s a bad thing but I guess gaming on Mac will never catch up with Windows PC.

No. A Mac's GPU will never compete with the likes of an Nvidia A100. At best Apple might choose to build an RTX3080 class GPU for use in an upcoming Mac Pro. But Apple is not going to build data-center class GPUs.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

Huh - is this the new iLife? Apple decided Macs needed to come with 3D modeling software, so they decided to support Blender instead of making their own thing from scratch (or acquiring something like they did with iTunes and Garage Band.)

Lower cost for Apple since they don't have to do everything from scratch, but the fact it's all open source means some of Apple's improvements will end up helping the Linux and Windows versions of Blender, too... which as a fan of FOSS I love, but this will reduce potential for Apple to have a competitive edge.

I guess maybe I should look at it from the opposite perspective, though... if Apple doesn't do this, then everyone else has the competitive edge that they have a supperior version of Blender vs the Mac.

 

[sfkeepay]

If only this meant the Blender interface was getting a Apple-level usability overhaul. But then, even Apple clarity isn’t (cough) i-tunes (cough) what it used to be.

 

[asiga]

I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about but go into Preferences > Navigation and switch between trackball and turntable. I suspect what you're wanting is turntable — which is what I use.

Wow!! I googled in the past for locking the horizon and never found this!! Thanks a lot!! With this, I can use Blender!!