I work in Broadcast TV in the US. The principal content house for talent shows I’ve worked on over the last two years is a company in Berlin that has a 100% Mac pipeline.
VFX in film has tons of PC and Linux, sure.
I’ve definitely noticed a bias in broadcast and feature film types that makes them assume their particular segment of the industry are somehow more pro than other segments.
For clarity’s sake, I do vfx work for TV, Concerts/Touring, Corporate and Arts/Installation.
If I’m on a project where I have a dedicated seat at a workstation, it’s almost always a PC. My traveling laptop is a Macbook Pro which I like because it actually hits a great sweetspot for power, ergonomics and battery life. Tons of projects get started or tweaked on it, though nothing really ever gets finished on it.
Metal support for cycles would be lovely, but not having it isn’t a deal breaker. There are many other features that blender already brings to osx that are easy to overlook. For example, I think blender has one of the most intuitive mac trackpad implementations of any 3d app. You can navigate blender’s 3d viewport, including pinch-zoom, pan, orbit using trackpad gestures, and everything pretty much behaves as expected. Blender’s support of the touchpad on my Razer laptop is third-rate by comparison.
Using mac is highly popular in design industry. People coming from graphic design, media design or even furniture design they prefer Apple computers. Blender was a game changer for me on MAC since the new UI. As a graphic designer I used Cinema 4D to extend my graphical toolset. C4D is the most user friendly 3D software in my opinion with great effectors and particle stuff. Sadly it lacks of good UV tools, materials logic hard to understand, and the rendering was pain on the ass (some of them changed I know but I’m not looking back). Yes, C4D is user friendly but so hard to reach professional level. Blender’s community is much better and much more easy to create very good looking materials, renders etc. Now I’m stuck on High Sierra, using Blender LTS (which is kinda great so far) since Blender getting new features like better denoising, editing properties on multiple objects, SEARCH BAR on properties bar.
I think Blender is the best tool for designers nowadays. I have the best hopes.
This was a really cool watch. It’s a mini doc (20 mins) on the beginnings of ARM and it’s difference from x86, and how both have become what they are now.
I’m adding it here, in the Developer’s forum, to add weight to the voices wanting a full functioning version of Blender native for MacOS on the M1 and it’s successor.
Let’s be proactive with this new tech.
An interesting quote about “disruptive innovations” that was mentioned in the video had me also thinking of Blender’s rise to popularity.
Quote from “The Innovator’s Dilemma” written by Clay Christensen
“…involve no new technologies; rather they consist of components built around proven technologies that are put together in novel architectures, offering the consumer a set of attributes never before available.” “… initially used by the unsophisticated customers at the low end of markets.”
Steering back on-topic: what is the current status of all things Mac and Blender? I grabbed an unofficial Arm64 build of Blender which works fine, but I do not know of any official roadmap or plans. Or, how Cycles fits into the picture. Is there any more information?
So if the ARM64 Blender works, you’re all set up for modelling in Blender. Cycles is only needed when you want to render in Blender, and Cycles can use the CPU for rendering or be GPU accelerated.
If you don’t render big scenes you might be fine without GPU acceleration entirelly. Usually the GPU is faster though, so for those with an NVIDIA card we can use CUDA or OPTIX as the libraries that drive the GPU rendering. For AMD cards I believe OpenCL can be used.
On Apple/macOS computers none of these options are available, because the GPU is mostly accessed using Metal (in lay mans terms, Metal is Apples replacement for OpenGL, GameEngines like Unity or Unreal also use Metal on macOS where they use DirectX on Windows).
So if Blender could talk to Metal, it could use GPU acceleration on all the apple computers.
On Apple/macOS computers none of these options are available, because the GPU is mostly accessed using Metal (in lay mans terms, Metal is Apples replacement for OpenGL, GameEngines like Unity or Unreal also use Metal on macOS where they use DirectX on Windows).
So if Blender could talk to Metal, it could use GPU acceleration on all the apple computers.
In addition (addressed to readers in general), there are already a few alternatives available that make use of Metal and therefore the GPU on macOS:
Octane X (No Blender integration for macOS at the time of writing though, only the stand-alone version).
There are no plans for a Metal version of Cycles. Regarding pretty much everything else in Blender, it is planned to support Metal through MoltenVK, after Vulkan has been implemented.
I would be very happy to see cycles support for the Mac. Doing it negatively with metal would be really cool but I would totally settle for it working through Vulcan, as long as Vulcan itself is maintained.
Please remember that this is a forum for Cycles development. If you want to get advice on how to use Cycles or any other renderer as a user, please use the community websites:
Off topic discussion on this forum will be deleted or hidden.
Great. So what is the status of Cycles Metal development? Especially in the context of the new revolutionary Apple Mx processors. I’m sure Blender Institute developers are so open minded that they certainly didn’t ignore such a wonderful piece of technology.
I not agreeing or disagreeing with the point you are trying to make, but the way you are making it …ooof… surely you can be more civil than this? lighten up a little!
The new Apple hardware is fantastic, that’s for sure! Unfortunately, Apple decided to only make it accessible through their own APIs and not supporting open standards at all. It is very clear that Apple wasn’t open minded when making those decisions.
This closed mindset means that every company who wants to use Metal needs to make a huge investment. For the viewport, there might be a workaround to indirectly use Metal through the Vulkan implementation which is currently in progress via MoltenVK. This leaves Cycles behind though.
Other companies like Nvidia introduces new APIs too (OptiX). Other companies like AMD rely on OpenCL. Those two companies have one thing in common: They are directly funding the development.
As far as I know, Apple doesn’t even provide the Blender Institute with hardware to test Blender.
Such a wonderful piece of technology and marketing…
Apple is more and more a completely closed ecosystem which is the polar opposite of what blender is.
And you can’t expect the few paid developers that blender has to keep up with everything apple throws out into the world with a complete disregard of non apple softwares.
Besides they have said that they would help to port blender to their new architecture so it should be done anyways.
Is it easily accessible/useable for devs? Don’t know, but I guess Yes. Feel free to fill me in here.
Are there developers who know Blender and Metal? I know of two, and I am not a coder. There might be many more.
Does the Blender Foundation have the money to fund development on all three platforms? Yes, more than ever.
Are there artists who use Macs? Yes.
Would those artists benefit from Metal optimised apps? Yes, very much.
Is Blender a commercial company, forced to prioritise OS segments purely by user numbers? No. Never was, and I hope it stays this way.
Also, I don’t see how Windows, or CUDA, is more open, or less proprietary, than Apple/Metal. Or how Nvidia is less interested in selling their hardware and having software run on their hardware only. But again, maybe I am missing something here.
Blender is relying on proprietary tech anyway. It is running great on Windows, and using CUDA extensively, and that is totally fine, because artists benefit from it. But so they would, too, from proper support for Apple hardware and Metal.
Nvidia is interested enough in Blender that they are a Patron of the development fund. I assume they understand that by having really good Blender support for their GPUs, they may sell more or better GPUs.
To the Foundation, it shouldn’t matter why anyone is a Blender patron, or not. The app has been around long enough without big tech patrons, and support was equally great for all major platforms. It would be lame if they now made their commitment dependent on how much a particular company is paying, or not.
Cycles started out with CUDA and CPU support initially. CUDA was pretty much the only choice at that time. Both additional backends which were added later, meaning OpenCL and OptiX have literally been sponsored by AMD or Nvidia to support their hardware. Those are very specialized solutions, just like Metal for Cycles would be. From my point of view there is not really a difference, except that it seems less likely Apple would sponsor it. This kind of sponsorship would be the easiest way to get Metal for Cycles.
