Yeah too late for that one…
I upgraded almost 6 months ago to Mohave. I did not notice the missing CUDA drivers because I do not use GPU with CUDA , 1 GB ram is too small and I end up relying mostly on CPU. It’s a moot point anyway with OpenCL no longer supported and Apple using mostly AMD cards. Good thing I have a weak GPU card 
You can always install Linux and give your Mac a second life 
I am developing a commercial version of Blender, for some time now, has taken me forever to release it , but I am close
My iMac is tripple boot , it runs Windows 10 , MacOS 10.14 and latest Ubuntu. All natively, each one with its own partition. I am huge fan of open source but my relationship with Linux has been one hellish rocky ride with a ton of driver issues and weird problems. Linux is improving, although the shock is that I start to like Windows 10. I cannot believe I am saying that but Linux is my 3rd most favorite. I used to hate Windows, go figure
Nowadays I mostly hate web dev technologies
But MacOS is still king in my world. My only major complain was the lack of a dark theme which was sorted with the latest version which was the only version I upgraded to the moment it was released. All the other ones the past 7 years I am using iMacs I installed them 6 months after their release. Mojave has been rock stable so far , have no complains apart of course the problem of OpenGL and OpenCL.
Ironically I spend most of time on Win10 because its what 80-85% of users still use. So I cannot afford not to make thorough tests on that platform.
Of course we developers don’t like windows so much according to stackoveflow 50% use windows, 30% macos and 20% linux . Not that is not obvious.
So I won’t be abandoning MacOS any century now.
u can’t do this anymore because all new macs come with T2 chip that prevent this.
you can disable it and still install linux
This also not a new thing, my 2013 iMac comes with SIP a security feature which limits hack on the boot loader but again it can be disabled. You can do a lot crazy hacks on MacOS like Linux is mostly driven by the command line, to keep the GUI simple and user friendly. Also the core of MacOS is called Darwin and like Linux is open source, MacOS is build on top of it and iOS in build on top of MacOS. Darwin includes most of the essential OS features, like filesystem, WiFi, security, driver support etc. While more user orientated high level systems like the GUI are closed source but those are not part of Darwin. .
A lesson that the big companies do not want to learn yet … is that when they make these crap by blind the hardware or sabotage the standards … then the users (and developers) get angry, the word spreads, companies start to get a bad reputation and then are fired through stock options. … microsoft did not want to believe … and was about to risk the failure … now it’s up to Apple … ops … lately their i-smartphones-by-vip no longer pull the wagon … ops … bad news … ops … ops … …
idiots.
Steve Jobs had learned the lesson and had not done any more rubbing … but now it seems that Apple, in his absence have forgotten this lesson.
I’d love to see Cycles support Metal but in the meantime AMD’s ProRender is using Metal already and now has a Blender 2.8 plug-in in testing.
It uses Blender’s own shader nodes. So you can model and begin texture work in EEVEE then switch to ProRender when you’re ready. You can even switch to Cycles and use CPU rendering then switch over to ProRender.
ProRender has it’s own Uber node available too which obviously isn’t compatible with the other engines but it’s optional if you want to use that. Uber is particularly good at Glass and SSS though.
Hello,
Mac user here, I am also a VFX artist working on linux.
I believe supporting metal is more important than we could think in the first place.
Firstable, all available render engine using GPU acceleration or native gpu, are using NVIDIA cuda and or optix ( except AMD pro render that I am starting to use just for this reason )
We are starting to see a monopoly toward NVIDIA cards in our industry. This is very bad for multiple reasons, but here is one :
Imagine that CPU render engines were the same with intel ? We would not be able to swtitch to AMD ryzen that are faster and cheaper than intel bi xeon that split the ram in half and need RDIM ram that cost twice the price of UDIM.
So it is the same for AMD gpu that may become cheaper and more powerful than nvidia if we support them properly.
Unfortunally AMD is too nice compare to NVIDIA and they don’t force you to use proprietary code to use their card to the best of their capacity.
So apple is giving us an opportunity to “easly” support AMD gpu at the best of their capacity ( metal is lower level than openCL and openGL as far as I understand ).
So I know that Mac is not the biggest user base, however we are more dedicated towars developers.
Unfortunately I am not a developer myself and can’t help on this matter, this is really too complexe, I am just a Python script guy and I am not even good at it XD.
Thanks to any develloper passing by this message to let me know if I am totally wrong or not.
Is GPU rendering even faster than CPU rendering on any actual Mac hardware? On my Mac laptop (tested under win10), it is slower. And we’re not likely to see mixed CPU/Metal-GPU rendering.
I just tested on my 2015 Macbook Pro (Geforce 750M), under windows 10, using both Blender 2.79b and 2.80, and CPU rendering was the same or faster on the three simple scenes I tested. In one of the scenes, CPU rendering was almost twice as fast (2m:35s GPU, 1m:35s CPU). None of the three test scenes rendered faster on the GPU.
On my Win10 desktop, with 7820X and GTX 1080TI, results are more mixed. Some scenes render faster on CPU some on GPU. I’m not sure why that is.
Can anyone post actual data (using win10 or linux dual boot on Mac hardware) that justifies exactly what end-user benefit Metal-GPU rendering would provide? As in… how much rendering time will it potentially save you? Because nobody needs to code and maintain this just so you can pull the pulldown and choose “GPU”, if it provides only a minor benefit.
Especially when CPU rendering is functionally the same, and those who need much faster rendering can use cloud rendering.
in these periods things evolve quickly
I’ve been beta testing ProRender on macOS since November 2017 now and the Metal support has come on a long way. It’s now very reliable. There are bugs in the Blender plug-in but that’s extremely new and 2.8’s API changes aren’t helping. It’s looking great though.
ProRender on a 2017 MacBook Pro 15 inch with 560 GPU only rendering is faster than the i7 3.1GHz CPU rendering by a good margin. No fans get spun up either when using the GPU. CPU+GPU rendering works as well but it offers little benefit at the moment, but it works just fine.
Then plug in an eGPU with a full size GPU and the macOS version of ProRender (a beta, running on beta blender) is as quick as it’s Windows counterparts running ProRender. I run two eGPUs and using the command line rendering in Blender 2.8 ProRender is rather impressive because you can continue working on the Mac while the eGPUs are run at 100%.
We’re eagerly awaiting the next update from AMD. We’ve submitted all the bugs we can find for the current release. I think Blender changed the API again recently and that’s caused a delay.
I think in a month or two it’ll be very good for AMD GPUs on macOS with ProRender using Metal 2 and Blender 2.8.
Check out the system requirements for ProRender on AMDs site. Because it uses Metal 2 there are no NVIDIA cards on macOS that will work. That is not AMDs fault though. So don’t hate on them. On Windows the OpenCL version of ProRender works very well on RTX cards.
After sadly scouring the internet for the past hour, I was so thrilled to find your response, Gelert, that I felt compelled to register here just to leave a reply! Although I have two powerful PC workstations, one a Windows 10/Linux dual boot and the other a Hacintosh (windows 10 /Mac OSX dual boot), I bought a iMac Pro to add to my arsenal. Mac OSX is still very popular in the film/tv world… especially in editing, and color/post-finishing. Given its popularity in post-production, its lack of options for 3D work is a shame. Even if many Mac users have migrated to the PC for 3D work, many of us are hoping that the future would look rosier for 3D work on the Mac.
As for the future of GPU rendering on the Mac, so far, PRORENDER USING METAL IS THE ONLY SOLUTION. I have 2 1080’s inside my Threadripper x399 system and it rendered the Wanderer scene in 1 minute 26 seconds (dual Gpu’s + 8-core CPU) vs the iMac Pro’s 10-core CPU-only rendering time of 5 minutes 19 seconds (Prorender couldn’t access the Vega 56 and eGPU with Frontier Edition 64 - maybe I am doing something wrong and someone can help me).
That is a huge difference - the Threadripper is about 2.5 times faster! And the iMac pro cost 2.5 times as much.
I am 100% behind what previous responder Julian said… we need to have another viable alternative to the NVIDIA/CUDA monopoly. Even if the Metal/AMD/Apple users numbers are currently small, it will grow if the performance surpasses CUDA. More Importantly, it will revitalize the entire industry and increase competition which will benefit all users in the long run. We need to end this chicken-and-the-egg situation in which developers develop for Nvidia because the users are buying the products, but the users are also buying the stuff that the developers are supporting more.
I would love to help out in the Cycles/Prorender/Metal development for Blender but alas I am not a developer. I dream of the day that the AMD/Metal/Prorender combo will beat Prorender with NVIDIA. If you need an iMac Pro and a beta-tester, I am game! Seriously, any developer out there, please don’t hesitate to reach out!
i feel like if u want to be really developing for apple platform u should make blender run on iOS/ their ARM CPU’s that are in ipad pros etc… as i think this is the direction that whole company will go… since 2020 they will drop intel CPU’s and probably replace it entirly with their own design CPU that are ARM. currently ipad pro is as fast and even faster in some stuff compared to current macbook pro… and considering that ipad pro is passive and macbook pro is 2 fans…
Here’s the link to the Beta Discord Server.
https://community.amd.com/external-link.jspa?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdiscordapp.com%2Finvite%2FXy9wUFj
The more the merrier.
However… at the moment Blender has broken the API again and until it is stable there will be no more ProRender releases at all. There is no working build available, sadly. We’re looking at another week or two at least before we get an update.
Once we have a working build we’ll get you up and running on the eGPU as well. The Discord server is full of very helpful people.
Thank you! Will be following any developments closely.
On my late 2013 iMac 27’’ the render times with GPU cycles on Macos back in 2.79 was 3 times faster. Unfortunately did not use much because 1gb GPU ram was proven too low.
So yes the difference is massive.
Metal vs Cuda won’t be much but Metal vs OpenGL which what Eevee depends on should be massive with Apple reporting up to 10 times acceleration.
It’s a moot point though with Vulkan pushing support with running on top of Metal through Valve’s need to run Vulkan dependent Dota 2 on MacOS. Apple is interested a lot in bringing support for Vulkan on MacOS making it easier to port windows apps and games. Only issue is that Vulkan is very new technology so those things take time because it’s API is still in a state of flux.
With Apple’s surprising official support for eGPUs on MacOS it’s clear that Vulkan will play a very prominent role in the future of MacOS, judging from the fact that Apple is still involved in the development of the Vulkan spec.
I still have two MacPro towers at work, with old Xeon E5 and 2x FirePro D500 what dont work with RadeonProRender (I can’t install it), now I have a laptop behind the apple screens to build and use exclusively Blender with CUDA.
There is a new build out:
https://community.amd.com/docs/DOC-2183
Let’s keep this thread on the topic of Cycles, for updates on the ProRender you can go to the AMD forum.
I’m just a normal macOS Blender user and beta tester for Pro Render on macOS.
Is there a plan for Metal support in Cycles for macOS? Obviously not for Blender 2.80 release but how soon afterwards might there be some plan announced?
With no Cycles GPU rendering support on macOS at all now Pro Render is needed and lots of people don’t know about it.
I agree this is the wrong forum but people do ask questions about macOS GPU rendering and they deserve pointing to it.
Great job with Blender 2.80 it really is amazing. Thank you.