Apple Pledges Support for 3D Graphics Tool Blender

[Amazing Iceman]

Unpopular opinion but Motion integration with blender would be amazing!

Very welcomed! 🎉🥳

 

[G4DPII]

Ah fantastic, they where worried about how to support macOS with Apple planning on dropping OpenGL.

That's odd as Blender 3.0 is dropping OpenCL.

 

[mook]

GPU rendering on M1! Excellent news.

 

[bn-7bc]

Unpopular opinion but Motion integration with blender would be amazing. And why would that be an unpopular opinion here? I see no problem with that, ok I'm not a user of any of these products, but I fin't see why people would object to more options and better co existence , unless ofc they fear that de resources spent on this will either raise the price of motion or push their $favorite_roadmap_feature diwn/off the prioreties lust. But I might be missing something

 

[mw360]

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! 🤞

I cannot forget how Apple pumped Mari up for the Trashcan reveal, like Mac and Mari were kissing in a tree, then never mentioned Mari again, and then...

"After much consideration, Mari 4.7 will be the last version of Mari compatible with macOS. ... This was a decision based on Apple’s move to deprecate OpenGL in favor of Apple Metal. While a great move for Apple users, spending the required time to convert Mari to Metal would impact its momentum and roadmap for all customers."

 

[Lone Deranger]

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

There was also the IL+M Rebel Unit. Who were named thus because they were using Macs, and (I believe) were using a little known 3D app called 'Electric Image'. In defiance of the rest of the company who were using Softimage on Silicon Graphics hardware.

 

[960design]

Been a blender fanboy for a bit over 15 years. Happy to see Apple throwing a bit of their trillions at such a great group of developers!

 

[ellsworth]

With that said, Apple is probably priming Blender to be purchased later down the road.

 

[topdrawer]

With that said, Apple is probably priming Blender to be purchased later down the road.

how does that work for open source software?

 

[jmpcodes]

Wow this is even better news once I've preorder a maxed out M1X Macbook Pro. No longer have to justify and struggle to find an RTX GPU for my PC.

Dito. Ordering the same (except for SSD, I'll maybe stop at 2TB, or 4TB) as soon as apple provides the opportunity. I've played some with Blender on my M1 Mini and though 2.9.3, I think had native M1 support, there was limited GPU support. Even so, Blender was one of several reasons I was getting the new MacBook, so I'm happy that Apple will be working with Blender to provide better Metal support

 

[jmpcodes]

Ok, so all my money, then.

Hopefully, there will be flexibility on the SSD size option, even if we max out the GPU and Memory. Hopefully.

 

[PBG4 Dude]

With that said, Apple is probably priming Blender to be purchased later down the road.

The beautiful thing about open source software is that this isn’t possible.

It does seem to be that many people have forgotten that Apple specifically called out their intent to support Blender when they announced the M1-based computers last year.

 

[960design]

With that said, Apple is probably priming Blender to be purchased later down the road.

No "one" will ever own Blender...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1135229214607773696

 

[BootLoxes]

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

Oh yeah i have been visiting that page for nearly a year now lol. I hope that they announce apple silicon support at this years zbrush summit which is in a week or so.

 

[Sankel]

Local GPU renders for development (yes, even with cycles) is part of an artist workflow that doesn't require extended rendering times. Even 3D Artists working on beefy RTX Windows machines will use cloud render farms for long batch renders. Mac is perfectly competitive in the 3D modelling space; Blender, Maya, Zbrush, etc all run great on Mac. I think it's unlikely that Mac will be looking to challenge high-end GeForce GPUs, but I'd love to be wrong about that.

Nah, not even close. Live rendering + Editing is not possible without the use of Optix/Cuda and Viewport Denoising. The M1(X) is not going to do this for us, yet.

Also, the Apple developer just started with working on Blender since 14 October, so no Blender benchmark/announcements on the next event.

 

[00001000bit]

i would use blender if they supported a trackpad only mode. i can do this in maya, why not in blender? having to plug in a 3 button mouse on the go is a no go for me.

Have you gone into Preferences > Input > Mouse > Emulate 3 Button Mouse
and toggled it?

It remaps MMB to be LeftClick + a modifier key

 

[huge_apple_fangirl]

Hopefully this is the beginning of Apple taking 3D on the Mac seriously. The current situation is a disgrace. Between this and the much-improved graphics of the A15, I have high hopes for the new MacBook Pros’ graphics abilities!

 

[jefhai]

cheetah, rhino, formz, zbrush, coat 3d, daz, marvelous designer, … there are so many

Yeah but who’s using Mac for 3D stuff… barely nobody. Pick game design or movies- they design those huge models on Windows with Graphics cards

 

[topdrawer]

Have you gone into Preferences > Input > Mouse > Emulate 3 Button Mouse
and toggled it?

It remaps MMB to be LeftClick + a modifier key

yeah that works mostly. i'd just need to go in and customize some keybindings.

it's a good program, but i'm so used to maya. there is no point in switching for now.

 

[matrix07]

Alternate interpretation - Apple has to pay popular open source 3D program to support Apple's technologies, and to maintain a macOS port of their "I will buy whatever platform necessary to run this app" application.

Reminds me of when Microsoft was trying to pay iOS developers companies to port their mobile apps to Windows Mobile.

Interpretation 🤣. Like QAnon guys interpret everything?

 

[mattspace]

Interpretation 🤣. Like QAnon guys interpret everything?

All perspectives on events are interpretations. The most correct, concise-to-the-facts-of-the-matter interpretation of this story, is that Apple is having to pay for / buy support for their hardware and software from an independent development group, because that group is not going to do it themselves.

QAnon just make up stuff out of literal whole cloth, so no, not like them at all.

 

[Billrey]

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.

That's not true - you *can* keep the vertical axis locked, and in fact it does work this way by default. It's a toggle set in Preferences > Navigation > Orbit & Pan > Orbit Method. Make sure it's set to Turntable to make it behave the way you want.

 

[flottenheimer]

Just awesome, Apple.
Real support for Pro software, bravo.

 

[Steve19711222]

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

Max doesn't. You have to use Boot Camp.

 

[Mr.PT]

This is very good news.

I was thinking there was no point in upgrading the GPU on the new MBP because Blender couldn't use Metal, but now maybe I should. I need to spec the machine primarily for video production (FCPX, Resolve, Motion, Compressor), Blender 3D, and photography/graphics (Affinity suite, etc.). Anyone have advice on spending money on more RAM vs more GPU now that it looks like Blender will be able to make use the latter?

Very promissing news. I’m in same limbo and was going just for RAM, but now seems wise to get both.