Mac: M2 Ultra - *VR (Part 2)

The first AS native Unreal build was only 5.2 if I’m not mistaken. I think they have a while to go before every inch of performance of squeezed from Apple Silicon. It was the same with Metal in Blender :slight_smile:

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Isn’t it still like that? If you want to use Unreal in the industry whether game or cinema Nvidia still provides the best performance for UE.

Even in virtual productions servers that run UE use Nvidia, for real time stuff. For rendered video playback AMD too.

Moreover what Unreal needs is ton of storage. I mean 2TB ssd just doesn’t cut it for megascans, animated alembic, props or multilayer EXRs.

I am thinking more like 6-8Tb or even 10Tb NVMe ssd for 4-6K rendered productions.

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I have been thinking about the same thing. A couple of years ago I put in a serious effort to learn Unreal, and ultimately came out with the realization that, for my needs, Blender with EEVEE made more sense.

Now I’m hoping for EEVEE Next to finally happen, ideally sooner rather than later.

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My Blender learning curve is steep too :slight_smile:

I think the possibilities and quality of UE would be absolutely great.
But I think overall (monster (bloat) software, game loader, …)
it won’t be an App that I would really like to use.

Blenders capabilities and AddOns seems also endless and the way to go.
I also hope for Eevee Next as a suitable realtime solution for my work.
But for me in Blender there is also still so much I need to learn and
get used too.
At least it is easier to get an overview vs UE.
But there are also a lot of things and workflows that aren’t really pleasant
for how my brain works. Mainly the extra abstraction of Node System
or the C4D-like “add Cube anywhere and then relocate and dimension”
vs a CAD-like “draw/create Cube at position in final size”.

At the time, when switching to Modo, it also worked completely different
to everything else I used before. But in that case I immediately had
a feeling this works different but it makes so much more sense
this way …
Something I do not really experience with Blender so far.

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I think, despite of the Unreal vs App Store war,
AFAIK Apple just continued Unreal collaboration on Software and API
in a similar way as they lately started for Blender.
So that first AS native support in 5.2 was great of course.
But I think finally Apple RT support
(when missing UE always took as an excuse for support in the past)
should better arrive relatively soon (forced by Apple ?) and allow
Pathtracer and Raytracing.

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They already included Vision os in 5.4 preview and I vaguely remember someone mentioning support for pathtracer being worked on. I don’t think epic has anything to gain from not supporting apple hw. I do find it however somewhat odd that vision os is already in and mesh shaders and raytracing not.

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Off-Topic: Affinity has been sold!

I will now do everything with Inkscape, Blender and GIMP :slight_smile:

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Isn’t it too early to panic and shoot yourself in the knee?

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Why? I changed everything years ago so that I can switch to any system. Tested all programs. Guess why I no longer use Cinema 4D? :slight_smile: Everything works if you want it to!

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Well, a good aviator will fly even on a barn door.

AffinityCanva

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You’re welcome in this thread if you’d like to spill your guts about the Affinity drama…

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4.1 is out! Finally something good! :slight_smile:

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weirdly i’ve barely touched the 4.0 release let alone 4.1. and i’m usually the person who’s using beta features in productions at my own peril.

i do appreciate some things like the gpu denoising stuff (hooray for apple support there too!), but overall these releases feel like a lot of breaking changes that i’d need to adapt to without any major new feature carrots to entice me to take the plunge.

also blender has gotten more crashy than ever for me in the past year or so. most often when making shader updates (which makes me wonder if its from the metal viewport backend - and i worry whether eevee next will make things even worse). i might wait for 4.2 which will at least be an LTS. hopefully gets bugs patched without having to constantly chase the next version and deal with other parts of a project breaking.

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My plan too. I too have noticed a lot of crashing whatever I do on my Mac.

:slightly_frowning_face:

Still waiting for that succulent carrot that will lure me back to Mac. Reading things like this doesn’t reassure.

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Apple is moving further and further away from me. I have an Amiga emulator on the HP PC. I start it now and dream :-). Amiga rulez!

Now bring Linux and Windows to 4.1 after the Mac…

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Perhaps this will?

i’d take anything from max tech with a healthy dose of skepticism.

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Blender-Test 4.1

4096 Samples. Classroom.

M1 Max: 12:21.75 minutes

HP-PC, Windows. i7, RTX2080: 4:20.64 Minutes

:smiley:

The HP PC cost 1,599 euros in 2018. The RTX2080 2020 730 euros.

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Interesting to see, mac 4.1 opendata results are faster than 4.0, which were faster than 3.6; M3 max 40 cores is particularly impressive.
Nvidia is the opposite: from the top of the range to the lower cards, my 2060S, sadly, too.

from:
Apple M3 Max (GPU - 40 cores) METAL macOS 3.6.0 3029.23
to:
Apple M3 Max (GPU - 40 cores) METAL macOS 4.1.0 3743.32

I mean:

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