Danah_ismail
I understand that windows are better options when using 3D Softwares and I have thought about getting Razer blade but I honestly prefer Mac laptops over Windows. As for the workstation, I might get one in the future. Right now I am looking for a laptop cause I'm always on the move.

I would appreciate some suggestions for laptops windows or mac at a good price.

Thank you

Any Lenovo ThinkPad P series it may interest you.

Here's some great news for you Apple faithful and also those of you that just aren't one brained jerks looking to crap on Apple…I emailed both Redshift and Otoy, and BOTH told me that they are coming out with their beta builds to the public within 6 weeks. Otoy told Me Octane X will drop hopefully within the next 6 weeks and Redshift at first wouldn't give me anything and when I mentioned Octane's drop they told me they have a similar window of expectancy.

My immediate thoughts based on their responses is that Octane X WILL drop as they said in 6 weeks, whereas I think Redshift will just make an announcement. What I'm thinking is going to happen is the next iteration of Mac Pro is going to ship with Redshift. It is likely going to be a HUGE element in their summer conference. But I'm extremely happy that within the next 2 months we will finally be able to start playing around with Octane X and testing how powerful these things are going to be when optimized for Metal.

Good news all around.

I think March/April seems like a likely window. NAB is happening in April and Maxon typically has a booth and some new announcements. OTOY is a different beast, they seem to be much more unpredictable.

There might be a 3rd solution…looks extremely promising so far!

Midphase
There might be a 3rd solution…looks extremely promising so far!

To note, these other solutions will not use Metal. Therefore will rely on only the CPU in your Mac Pro.

goat

Midphase
There might be a 3rd solution…looks extremely promising so far!

To note, these other solutions will not use Metal. Therefore will rely on only the CPU in your Mac Pro.

What is the third solution you guys are referring to? From what Otoy and Redshift have said publicly, and told me in our email conversations, both products on Metal is going to be revolutionary…so what is the third solution you are both referring to?

@callie_btw we are referring to 3Delight. The new NSI version is extremely well written and is what Karma should have been.

In regards to Metal, it's simply another graphics language like Cuda, OpenGL, Vulkan and DirectX. Only marketing departments make it revolutionary. It's not bad but is not ahead of its contemporaries.

goat
In regards to Metal, it's simply another graphics language like Cuda, OpenGL, Vulkan and DirectX. Only marketing departments make it revolutionary. It's not bad but is not ahead of its contemporaries.

I'm admittedly ignorant on this. From my understanding, 3Delight has never worked in Cinema 4D. Only in Maya.
so for users like me “who work primarily in Cinema 4D for animation, VFX, and motion graphics intensive work”, this wouldn't be a possible solution.

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe it was announced for C4D and I missed it.

As for Metal…I would have to say that just like with our work, it's less about the tool, and more about the artist. I think we haven't seen Metal in the hands of Otoy or Redshift, so we can't really say if it's just like all other graphics languages. Maybe combined with Mac Pro hardware, or those quad GPUs, maybe the've truly done something that wasn't possible up until now. In any case, we will start to have a better look at it all in about 6 weeks or so. Exciting times in my opinion.

We already provide Metal support in the new Multiverse | USD v6 (https://multi-verse.io).
Plays exceptionally well with Solaris BTW: Maya:Multiverse<—>Solaris:Houdini all the way.

callie_btw
I'm admittedly ignorant on this. From my understanding, 3Delight has never worked in Cinema 4D. Only in Maya.

Yes, I was referring about 3Delight which seems to be a compelling new renderer with a time-to-first-pixel comparable to Redshift. My understanding is that there is a C4D beta version in the works (possibly already available?), you'll need to download the beta from their site and see for yourself.

On the RS forums, someone keeps mentioning that RS (and possibly Octane) will need to wait until OSX 10.15.5 to be released (have no idea why, but supposedly it will include some necessary Metal API updates?).

I'm testing 3Delight at the moment, but if I can achieve a reasonably fast performance out of it, I might switch because I really like what I'm seeing.


P.S.

As an aside thought…rendering (and computing) is moving to the cloud. In a few years, OS platform fights and those guys running 8 2080ti GPU's in their machines are going to look ridiculous.

Midphase does it work with Houdini? On their website I see only Maya and Katana … and Daz…

It is in Beta for Houdini.

> 3Delight has never worked in Cinema 4D. Only in Maya.
> My understanding is that there is a C4D beta version in the works (possibly already available?), you'll need to download the beta from their site and see for yourself.

Yes, it's already distributed within the package, together with Houdini.


> I'm testing 3Delight at the moment, but if I can achieve a reasonably fast performance out of it, I might switch because I really like what I'm seeing.

Glad to hear people are finally noticing


> those guys running 8 2080ti GPU's in their machines are going to look ridiculous

They are anachronistic *right now*
3Delight NSI can already beat GPU renderers in many aspects. And the performance you can get from 3DelightNSI Cloud is simply unbeatable (and zero quality compromises).

I do not agree with this everything is going into cloud. Keep hearing that for couple of years now and still not seeing it. If projects goes huge, which are usually type of projects you need more power for, you have issue with upload and security etc. It is good for small to mid size projects, but than again if you have rack with 8 1080Ti you are already real time, so what is the point? Clouds are not something new …

BTW are there any 3delight videos where I can see it working on more production ready scenes, not simple, test objects?

One thing is clear, metal is just a graphical API, it does not accelerate renders, nor does it use Nvidia technologies to visualize RT, it is like an Opengl, but Apple-style, Amd does not have real-time RT, so neither will metal be much better than OpenGL. Everything is smoke. As advice, at this time the best thing to invest is Lnx, Win and Nvidia RTX.

Cloud is being used on big production assets all the time dude. If you aren't seeing that, you're not working at one of the bigger studios.

As for 3delight and Production assets, why not download it and throw something at it? I can tell you it is currently murdering every other renderer on 2 billion voxel 4k res fire and smoke. With multi scatter btw.

Throw in no pre tesselation for displacement rubbish and it just gets funnier.

Cheers

L

Just because I do not have time at the moment, that is why I ask. Thanks for response, that is great to hear.

I am not saying they are not being used, but that it will not make GPU racks and local render farms redundant. We have been using render farms for years, clouds too, but still have local render farms, GPU racks etc …

If I got 10$ every time I heard, wow there is cloud based rendering, no one will buy high end GPUs, CPUs, workstations, it is not necessary anymore, I could have one more rack of 2080 here ..

Its because you most likely tried what I refer to as “remote render farms”. 3DelightNSI is a true cloud renderer, fully distributed. E.g you have 6000 cores rendering in parallel your very same image. On top of this you have the bet sampling, geometry analytic tessellation, ease of use in the market. But in any case its pointless to discuss without trying.

Fco Javier
One thing is clear, metal is just a graphical API, it does not accelerate renders, nor does it use Nvidia technologies to visualize RT, it is like an Opengl, but Apple-style, Amd does not have real-time RT, so neither will metal be much better than OpenGL. Everything is smoke. As advice, at this time the best thing to invest is Lnx, Win and Nvidia RTX.

I'm sorry to bother you, but were you confused about this? You realize everyone knows it doesn't use Nvidia or Nvidia tech, right? Nobody here is saying that. Thank you for sharing your advice. I will do the same in kind. Go find a different message board and stick to the echo chambers. We are here discussing Metal, and Metal/Apple timelines for Redshift, Octane, and other APPLE based rendering solutions. If you have nothing to add to this, or if you somehow don't know how to try and tell people to invest in something else like some kind of annoying/creepy salesman, then you have no reason to be here.

SreckoM
Just because I do not have time at the moment, that is why I ask. Thanks for response, that is great to hear.

I am not saying they are not being used, but that it will not make GPU racks and local render farms redundant. We have been using render farms for years, clouds too, but still have local render farms, GPU racks etc …

If I got 10$ every time I heard, wow there is cloud based rendering, no one will buy high end GPUs, CPUs, workstations, it is not necessary anymore, I could have one more rack of 2080 here ..

Are you at a studio, or run your own studio with you and 1 or 2 others? How much did your current farm cost to set up if you don't mind my asking? I saw these guys with like 20 to 30 Mac mini's as their render farm. You said 8 1080ti's puts all of your render work at near real time? That's pretty dope. I always thought it would require far more power than that to get those big complex scenes running in real time.

I'm mostly interested in what it's going to take to get a $20k Mac Pro with the maxed out GPU setup running at near realtime…that's why I'm so damn curious about the Redshift/Octane performance and how it will respond to having more GPU's thrown at it…like what's going to be the setup I need on top of this to get those things running at near real time.

I am not a seller, I just try to explain what is evident, without CUDA core, there is no redshift or any other GPU render engine for new versions of MacOS. What does this mean, that AMD / APPLE does not have the technology to offer support for GPU rendering engines at the height of Nvidia. The rest is talking by talking.

Fco Javier
I am not a seller, I just try to explain what is evident, without CUDA core, there is no redshift or any other GPU render engine for new versions of MacOS. What does this mean, that AMD / APPLE does not have the technology to offer support for GPU rendering engines at the height of Nvidia. The rest is talking by talking.

But you're talking to professionals here. Octane is launching for Mac in 6 weeks. Redshift is ready to go as well, but waiting for Apple to update Catalina OS to the next iteration (they said 4 or 5 can't remember). So literally nothing you are saying makes any sense.

It's like you don't understand that CUDA is just a graphics language, same as OpenGL and Metal. Please stop, it's weird…