A Cycles worthy Mac setup

Hey all! I have been pretty inactive lately, looking for a job mostly. I finally landed one that is in print-production, but there is some 3D involved as well. At my boss’ request, I was given the challenge of creating a photo-realistic studio render of this object I shall not mention. All I can say is, Cycles is production-ready as far as I’m concerned. Anyway, to make a long story short, I need to do some research about a Mac system that can take full advantage of Cycles. Of couse this would be a MacPro. My question is, what GPU config should I be looking at? Any help or insights would be more than welcome. My Mac mini would appreciate it as well :slight_smile: Thanks!

Andreu

PS:To the admin: thx for moving it! :slight_smile:

Any particular reason why it needs to be a Mac? They are such a rip off and so limiting. Unless you put Windows on it you are pretty much stuck with Quadro cards as the only decent Cycles ready options. And if you plan to put Windows or Linux on it then you really would do better to get a real PC.

Ok, we get it, you don’t like Macs…

I suggested a souped-up gaming Windows PC (by the way, a Mac is a PC too—personal computer) but the boss says it needs to be a Mac. I just need to come up with a configuration that will speed up Cycles as much as possible. This means, I guess, having the right graphics card(s). I haven’t done much research yet, but if anyone has a machine all set up with the right stuff, I’d like to know what that setup is.

As an off-topic question, I noticed the CPU option in the drop-down menu is gone from recent Cycles builds. Still, I have an AMD card on my Mac, which I thought were not supported yet. I am guessing that I’m still doing CPU renders even though it is not specified as so?

I still use an old Mac Pro 1.1 from early 2007 and have upgraded it with a SSD disk and a standard GTX 570 2,5GB and it took some fiddling to get it going right but it now runs cycles perfect.
Though i would recommend buying a patched card from macvidcards since the standard GTX card don’t have a boot screen.
It also runs windows perfectly if i need to reboot into it.
Personally i’m just holding out for the next Mac Pro and my GTX 570 runs just fine until then.

Also if you haven’t tested YafaRay you really should check it out, it does photo realistic renders beautifully, especially interior renders.
Another option is the commercial V-Ray which works great in Blender through Andrey (bdancer’s) work with the Blender to V-Ray exporter http://vray.cgdo.ru/The YafaRay and V-Ray option works very well on my new quad i7 mac mini.

Please don’t let this get to yet another PC vs Mac thread.
Use the system you like.

Cheers

I have a macbook pro(2010) and a hp workstation (gtx 470/linux). For me the setup of having a workstation and a mbp to have with me when I travel works really well. And it lets me use all the Adobe stuff. For a while I did dual boot with the mbp, but after my Lion upgrade I just didn’t bother. And I really like OSX. If I can afford it I might buy a MacPro once it gets out, or I’ll build myself a “hackintosh”.

Anyhow… the current lineup of mac computers aren’t that Cycles friendly in terms of GPU speed. And since Apple is comming out with a new MacPro next year I would suggest that you wait and see what the come up with. Or use a combo with a kvm switch (macmini and pc workstation).
I’m not a big fan of Cycles, so I rather use Vray or Yafaray as a renderer. Vray doesn’t cost that much and is a really really good renderer.

my thoughts. I would vote for a dual setup which would cost just about the same amount of money as a MacPro :slight_smile:

best regards
stefan andersson

Mac Pro is kinda shitty production computer imo, and I don’t say this lightly. The direction apple is going is more away from production, towards media consumtion only. I used to run macs, had a 1.3 Mac Pro with SSD + extra gigs of ram. and a iMac. I sold both went back to linux and pc.

my recommendation buy a pc instead, and start transition from osx to ubuntu. it’s not a huge step. and a much better workstation for 3d.

IMO, ask your boss, why it must be a mac.

Does he seriously want to pay more for it to do what he wants? Linux or windows are much more viable alternatives.

Times are hard - spending money where it’s not needed seems like a waste. Is he a fanboy?

Thanks for all those useful suggestions and insights!

That’s an interesting idea. Might be worth condidering it… Thanks!

That has been my feeling a out Apple for a while as well. Maybe I’ll transition to Linux PC at home and experience it there first… Thanks!

LOL I don’t think I wanna question my boss just now. But you make some good points. Thanks!

Yeh, ‘are you a fanboy’, wouldn’t perhaps be the best question to ask.

He’s asked you to perform a job; point out to him that you are trying to do it to the best of you ability, and with a view of getting the best deal and the best product for your/his company.

Show him figures £, $ euros, whatever it is - dollars in your case.

Machine running windows/linux will cost x; machine running mac os will cost x. He can then take the decision and you (hopefully) avoid getting blamed for wasting money.

File transfers across platforms are straightforward, I believe? :slight_smile:

I would guess previous software investments or possibly it is a mac design house?

Yes, that’s more or less the kind of research I had in mnd. I don’t have direct experience with file transfer, but from what I’ve seen, it seems it goes pretty smoothly—a big ‘selling’ point for Blender. Thanks!

Yes, you are correct. From what I hear, the equipment is pretty expensive—the workstations are just a small part of it, it seems.