As in WTF am I supposed to do now? I’ve been looking forward to the new 2.8. I heard some rumblings about OpenCL and what not but the beta had been working so I figured I was good for now. The latest builds (as of 6/25) have been crashing and showing odd artifacts in the viewport. Apparently OpenCL support has been removed?
I have an older iMac from 2011 running Sierra 10.12.6, 24GB of Ram and an i5 processor. AMD Radeon HD 6750M 512 MB.
So is Blender effectively dead on the Mac? Can an upgrade solve my problem? Why is a Mac version still available for download if it’s not supported?
2.80 is fully supported on the Mac. Apple is dropping support for OpenCL and has not been able to address issues that it has with Blender so the Blender developers were forced to drop support for it, which means no use of AMD cards under MacOS for GPU accelerated Cycles. You can of course continue to use CPU rendering or CUDA if you have Nvidia hardware and a MacOS version that supports it.
Eevee should be fully supported both interactively and as a final renderer on your AMD hardware. Of course Apple is dropping support for OpenGL too and Blender will require a major re-write to deal with that, so the future is not certain in the long term.
If you have specific issues then by all means put in bug reports (Help->Report a Bug). Any MacOS system 10.12 or later should be supported along with whatever graphics hardware is supported on machines that support the OS.
Edit: per the official system requirements, I think your graphics card is not technically supported being older than GCN 1st Gen, but at the same time I was under the impression that on MacOS it was the OS that mattered mode than the hardware. Let me see what I can find out…
Alright, the answer seems to most likely be that Blender 2.80 is supported on MacOS 10.12 and later with video cards supported by that Mac model and OS version, and for AMD cards they need to be GCN 1st Gen or later. The HD 6750M 512 MB is the older TerraScale 2 architecture and thus not officially supported.
Thanks Zoot. I’ve been using CPU rendering but still having issues. Thought it might be related to lack of Open CL. Obviously I don’t know much about it but expected 2.8 to get less buggy rather than more. It’s getting towards my unusable. If a newer Mac (graphics card) could fix the issue that might be doable. I certainly need one. Let me look into submitting a bug report.
Actually, it sounds like your saying I need Mac hardware that coincided with the 10.12 release (about 2016) or later. Since a Mac Pro is out of the question that leaves some version of iMac. Since the graphic card is not replaceable I need to be sure it has the right one. Where do you suppose I could find more information? Thanks again.
@dcrosby I’ve been running 2.8 Beta on this humble hardware setup…
• iMac (27-inch, Mid 2010), 10.12.6
• 2,93 GHz Intel Core i7
• 16 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
• ATI Radeon HD 5750 1024 MB
…and offhand the only instability I’ve encountered is opening pre-2.8 projects sometimes crashing, usually because of the “Load UI” setting. I’m using CPU rendering with no CUDA/OpenCL because, as already mentioned, it’s just not supported on this hardware.
Admittedly, I’m not creating hardcore, 100-million-pixel projects in 8K with seven different particle modifiers, etc., but for a machine that’s 10 years old, I’m actually really happy with how well Blender in general runs! Functional 3D on a fossil of a machine like mine…INCREDIBLE!
I can’t imagine why 2.8 is not running smoothly on your machine. I hate to lean on a cliché but have you already tried File > Defaults > Load Factory Settings?
Hi gtomorrow, thanks for replying. Yeah my old arse machine was handling things OK until one of the more recent upgrades. I haven’t tried the Load Factory Setting bit yet but will. My issues are generally when trying to Texture Paint and objects in view port displaying oddly. Same issue on my 2013 work computer with NVIDIA GeForce GT 755M. Could it be my file. Please let it be my file. More testing required.
In any case, I’m not averse to upgrading my rig. It’s certainly overdue, but where can I inquire as to precisely what is supported?
With that information, I’m inclined to think it is your file, although I can’t think of why it would have been corrupted. Then again, I haven’t been over your shoulder the entire time you created and worked on it Does the crashy happen on all of your .blends or just that one?
Regarding your adventure on a Windows VM, if I were insane I’d say to create a Linux-based VM and see how that goes…but I’m not insane.
Unfortunately I don’t know much about the software (VMWare Fusion) and less about Windows. Whatever the problem it can only find a slow processor and old Radeon Card. I don’t think I’ll spend much time pursuing that option.
What I really need is to be pointed towards the developers who can let me know exactly which Mac installed cards are known to work or perhaps a Mac Blender users group I can ask directly.
Glad you’re not insane. I’ve pretty much got that area covered, lol. I’m testing some different files, new and previously created. Maybe I jumped the gun. I’ll let you know what I find.
Linux mint is a solid debian alternative to ubuntu.
I my opinion “cinamon” version ll do the trick.
Good luck . You ve got to read about the way to make your formated key with your os.
Seriously, @skuax , what possible good would DLing a GB-and-a-half of some Linux distro and creating a live USB key do for @dcrosby in this situation?
dcrosby: my 10-year-old car’s engine is making knocking noises and it’s hard to start.
sane person: sounds like you need new spark plugs.
insane person: WHY DON’T YOU PUT A NEW SEMI MOTOR IN YOUR CAR?!? AND A SPOILER?!?
It would do a lot of things, it would pretty much verify if it’s software or hardware causing the problem. However, you are correct to suggest testing simple fixes first (i always end up assuming the worst possible problem ), and if OP experienced the same problem on a different computer i would agree that it might be some issue with the data in the file, but i’m not equally sure the mentioned crashes are related.
On the other hand, i wouldn’t recommend downloading/updating beta software for normal use when running unsupported hardware issues are bound to happen.
Oh, dear @Osares , you are working your way towards the officially insane! Good work!
I don’t know if you had read the entire thread, but as I said before I’m running 2.8 on hardware one generation earlier than his and so far so good. If @dcrosby is having troubles it’s most likely his file and not 2.8.
He did say that he hadn’t tested against other hardware yet and had possibly jumped the gun. He also mentioned that he’d tried it on the same hardware in a Windows VM…and that’s where the insane came out, proselytizing which flavor of Linux to use etc etc.
So, until now, we know NOTHING. And we can assume NOTHING.
It’s not the smartphone that won’t hold a charge nor the battery’s dead, it’s the USB cable that’s broken, you follow?
@dcrosby I humbly apologize if it seems I’ve hijacked your thread and PLEASE let us know how this turns out for you…PEACE!
Hi folks. Sorry I didn’t get back before this little dust up occurred. I tried the file on my Mac at work: 2013 iMac, Sierra, NVIDIA GeForce GT 755M. Same issues. But when I opened different some different files or created new ones I didn’t get strange rendering issues. It still crashed on occasion though, usually when selecting Rendered shading in the viewport in Cycles.
I haven’t been able to test my home computer much so I can’t say anything for sure. it still seems unstable in general even with a brand new file. And obviously slow, slow, slow.
Hard to know what’s a bug, a file, or hardware so I can’t test in earnest until the final version. I’m hoping to find some info on which specific Mac graphics cards are known to work in 2.8. Thanks to all for your help.