Hi. I am considering buying an Apple MBP. I know Cycles perform considerably better on windows than a mac. But I am curious to know if the Octane plugin will perform similarly to its version in Windows using a mac.
I am considering the top-tier MacBook Pro. I tried to check the topic in the forum about Metal and Apple, but honestly, I find it hard to find information there. I am a user of Apple and Windows, so I am not interested in what is best as a brand. My goal is to identify if, with a top-tier Mac Book Pro using Octane for Blender, I will be able to compare a top-tier windows laptop with a 3080 using cycles, for example.
Blender user alternating macOS systems with Windows PC systems here, and alternating use of Cycles with Octane. To my knowledge, Octane X for macOS is still being developed, but progress is very slow and lags a lot behind the NVIDIA GPU version. I’ve heard different comments regarding the performance of the latest free tier of Octane for macOS. Some say it works fine, others state that it’s a mess.
If I were you, I’d focus on Cycles. It is being actively optimized for Blender macOS by both Apple engineers and Blender developers. The latest Cycles alpha builds include Path Tracing, and a new Principled shader (V2) will soon follow, which brings Cycles rendering refinement on par with Octane (with the exception of spectral rendering, but that is also under development for Cycles).
For more info, I’d suggest to ask some questions in the Octane X and Blender channels of the Octane DIscord:
Thank you so much for your detailed answer.
I am totally in for Cycles, I love it, and I work with it daily at work with a lovely 3090. I have been following the development on mac cause I miss using it as a laptop. I have a mighty MSI, but I still, miss the battery life and quality of Apple. I find it way pleasant to work remotely. My MSI is super good, but without the battery is almost useless, and the sound of the fans and quality of materials is noticeable below my old MacBook Pro. Sorry, I branched out a lot, but following the development on Apple, it feels the top-tier laptop is quite far behind a laptop with any type of RTX. Do you think they will catch up eventually?
Personally, I’m only using desktop computers, no notebooks, but Apple is coming along nicely with the Apple Silicon advancements. NVIDIA remains the GPU king for now, but when it comes to CPU performance, Apple Silicon is quite competent. And when it comes to notebook hardware build quality and battery life, I believe Apple leads the way.
You can always ask any Apple-related questions in the Apple thread over here at Blender Artists: