Running Blender 2.80 on a Hackintosh?

Hi there, I was thinking to build an Hackintosh just to use it with blender but according to this article https://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-committers/2018-December/049695.html it seems that the support on macOS for blender 2.80 is at an end point unless you want to render on CPU instead of taking advantage of modern and faster GPU. For what I’m seeing there are only two choices: Windows or Linux is that right? Can someone share with me their thoughts?

Just openCL support was dropped due to driver bugs, CUDA should still work

I think running on a Mac will be just as good (maybe) better (other renderers switching to metal) than Windows.
Ive been in Bootcamp mode for my Mac just for Open Cl, but with other renders starting to implement Metal versions (Radeon Pro Render, suppose to be a drop in replacement for Cycles once it’s done) and (Octane X) I think us Mac user will be in the better boat. :grin:

As for Cycles switching to Metal I don’t think it’s as easy as we think.
A thing to take away from the article I posted:
The Octane devs said it was a multi year collaboration with Apple to convert their render to Metal.

“Like so many Octane users, we care about the Mac, passionately. OTOY has been working with Apple to perfect Octane on Metal. We couldn’t be prouder to have Apple reveal the results of this multi-year collaboration to the world today at WWDC.” said Jules Urbach, CEO of OTOY.

“Octane X is built on the industry’s first and fastest unbiased GPU render engine, following the laws of physics and light precisely. This makes photoreal CG as in real time is as easy as pointing and shooting a real camera. That means that artists are rendering final frames as fast as they can create them.”

Here’s to Blender working with a Mac for years to come.

Good news is that if you buy a Mac Pro you get a free license of Octane X :rofl:

I’m not so sure about that. I mean all of us (Apple users) we know that apple it’s really picky about technology to implement and the one to drop and I think they have their reasons to do that so I’m not criticising them. But it’s a shame that the only option that I have are:

  • Keep using macOS but switching to another render engine compatible with macOS (Metal) and drop Cycle which I’m used to.
  • Keep using Cycle as render engine but switching to another OS (Win, Linux)

I’m not sure what to do. I own a really powerful MacBook Pro 15 2017 with Radeon Pro 560 4 GB and I can’t take advantage of the GPU with Cycle unless if I switch to Radeon ProRender, which is still a good choice, don’t get me wrong, but I have to learn a new render engine. Maybe I just have to wait the final release of blender 2.80 and see apple’s future development. :blush:

What do you think about it?

It’s the price you pay for being an Apple user.

Sent from my Mac

Yeah it can be a little “switch back and forth” with a Mac for Blender.
But RPR really looks like it going to be the replacement for Cycles for us Mac users. The nodes are cross compatible now( minus a few that need to be added) plus you also get to use RPR nodes.
Deformation motion blur isn’t working yet, but it’s on its way.
SSS isn’t working for me in certain situations, but once again it’s not a finished product yet.

One of the developers from AMD is on here frequently, I’m sure @bsavery could tell you more about it.

And being that it’s AMD I’m sure they have the Apple developers on speed dial helping with any issues they encounter. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Thank you for your help. By the way I can’t activate RPR 2.0.94 on B3D 2.80 RC1 :sob:

Glad I can help.
I haven’t downloaded the RC yet. I’ve still been working with the nightly builds.

https://download.blender.org/ftp/brecht/builds/blender-2.80rc1-macOS.dmg Brecht fixed an issue with the macOS builds.

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