Ray tracing on a Mac? It's coming!

[DefinedDesign]

Beyond thrilled to learn this!!!!

 

(Excerpts from Tech Radar)

The most important thing to know about what Apple is doing with its A17 Pro chip is that the ray tracing hardware in it won't be limited to that chip.

With the Apple M3 chip due out next year, it will almost certainly have a ray tracing-capable GPU built in. This has a lot of potential, not just for the best Mac games, but also for all kinds of creative workloads the Mac brand has long been known for.

…..Apple's hardware is rock solid when it comes to the technical aspects, especially if it adds ray tracing into the mix. It's also the kind of hardware that would be much easier for game developers to optimize for, so it has a lot of things in its favor. As always with Apple, though, it remains to be seen if developers will start to bite on the hook Apple's throwing their way.

 

[Renerabbitt]

On 9/16/2023 at 10:30 AM, DefinedDesign said:

Beyond thrilled to learn this!!!!

Gonna be a couple years likely… games moving to pathtracing now… hopefully they find a way to catch up.

in the meantime, just remotely rent a machine when you need an rtrt

[rgardner]

It’s possible with the M1 chip with another company that sounds like fector works…

 

But a lot to be said for renting a machine to ray trace with if that is something you need.

[DefinedDesign]

On 10/12/2023 at 8:45 PM, Renerabbitt said:

Gonna be a couple years likely… games moving to pathtracing now… hopefully they find a way to catch up.

in the meantime, just remotely rent a machine when you need an rtrt

Rene, I highly value your insights and expertise! I'm wondering, what are your thoughts on the recently released M3 MacBook Pro Max with RTRT capabilities? I'm not well-versed in path tracing; could you enlighten me on whether it's typically done with CPU, GPU, or both? I'm also curious about why achieving this on a Mac might be challenging. Lastly, could you explain the distinction between path tracing and RTRT and whether it makes a significant difference in Chief Architect Premier rendering?

[Renerabbitt]

4 hours ago, DefinedDesign said:

Rene, I highly value your insights and expertise! I'm wondering, what are your thoughts on the recently released M3 MacBook Pro Max with RTRT capabilities? I'm not well-versed in path tracing; could you enlighten me on whether it's typically done with CPU, GPU, or both? I'm also curious about why achieving this on a Mac might be challenging. Lastly, could you explain the distinction between path tracing and RTRT and whether it makes a significant difference in Chief Architect Premier rendering?

Im not going to be using the correct terms as I am not a developer, but, even if the hardware was up to snuff, its still running on metal, which from what ive heard, apple doesnt offer dev support like microsoft, metal is hard to work with, their sdk is a moving target, and its all just difficult to code for, and you cant just reach out to apple like you can to nvidia or amd
I don't know if you remember this, but M1 was supposed to be a huge game changer for graphics. In fact it was a huge let down. 
M2 was also supposed to be a huge game changer for graphics.
Here's the jist....Microsoft and nvidia and AMD have billions into the gaming industry...in this regard, think of mac as a homebrew application. They dont care to enter this market for the rendering artist or game developers...because frankly, you couldnt convince a game developer to switch pllatforms no way no how. 

I don't mean to be offensive, but I have never understood the desire to keep trying to make a mac work in our industry, its just not the right tool for the job to me, so after so many years of discussing this, I imagine I am a bit biased at this point. I try to stay subjective, but subjectively mac does not make sense at all to me.
I have tried Mac, in fact I've used it as my machine for a full year, and its benefits never outweighed its cons for me...I often times wonder if mac peeps every dip their toe into microsoft. Its better hardware, for less, and open source, and infinetely customizable, and supported by a great deal more engineers and developers and peripherals. security is an old wives tale. 
Not to oust the devs at Chief, but you should see their actual faces when you push mac...I can't speak for them, but I bet you they wish that everyone would switch to PC as well.
I teach a class called Power Users in chief and I was going through a bunch of workflow things I do to create some of my best models and visuals and Kevin Transue had a brand new Mac. I swear I'm a nice guy, I wasn't mac shaming him out of spot but we did do a lot of teasing back and forth, but ultimately he did question his purchase becase we kept finiding limitations in the mac. To be fair though, my workflows are specific, but they are fun and cool and playful , and I know its fun to be around that energy.

[KTransue]

1 hour ago, Renerabbitt said:

... and Kevin Transue had a brand new Mac. I swear I'm a nice guy, I wasn't mac shaming him out of spite but we did do a lot of teasing back and forth, but ultimately he did question his purchase ...

Don't let him kid you ... It was spite, pure and simple.  Hahaha!  I had high hopes that I could use RTRT on my new killer 16" M2 Max MacBook Pro (12 CPU cores, 38 GPU cores, and 96GB RAM!).  So, last February, I took it with me to our Chief Experts Total Immersion Summit to try it out with Rene's new state-of-the-art external GPU ... but the GPU didn't have Mac support.  And I had already exceeded my return window.  Still love my Macs but -- I have to admit -- I did cry a little.

[Rich_Winsor]

7 hours ago, Renerabbitt said:

I don't mean to be offensive, but I have never understood the desire to keep trying to make a mac work in our industry,

I'll probably get lambasted for this but I have never

understood why Chief insists in devoting  so many

resources catering to such a small market share. 

Doesn't make sense on any level to me. 

 

[Steve-C]

On 11/15/2023 at 2:41 AM, Rich_Winsor said:

I'll probably get lambasted for this but I have never

understood why Chief insists in devoting  so many

resources catering to such a small market share. 

Doesn't make sense on any level to me. 

 

 

I used Windows machines for the first 10 or 12 years that I used CA (started at version 10). For the last 8 or 9 years I have moved back and forth between Windows and Mac mostly staying with Mac. For my workflow if has proven to be the best option. I don't use RTR and likely never will. I'm solely focused on construction docs because I do a lot of them. I do send exterior 3D images to clients but that is the extent of my dive into that realm, and the MacBook does an exceptional job with those. Editing in 3D is smooth as well. I don't have time to do high end interior or exterior images and I prefer it that way.

 

I have a MacBook Pro with an M1 Pro chip. I originally purchased it for travel and meetings, but it has proven to be a very reliable full-time machine, even with two 32" monitors connected to it (one is 4k). I'm considering an upgrade to the Mac Studio M2 Ultra mainly because I want to add a 3rd monitor for my library (M1 Pro only supports 2 external monitors). I currently use the laptop monitor for that but find myself squinting to find items. Plus it's about time to upsize my storage (yes I know this can easily be done with a Windows desktop). I may hold out for the M3 Ultra but I doubt it will provide a huge advantage over the M2 in my workflow.

 

As for the Mac OS, in my opinion it is light years ahead of Windows because of it's integration with my phone, iPads and other devices, and support is outstanding. iCloud storage has been the most reliable of the cloud storage services I have used (and I have tried several) which adds even more value to the integration aspects of Mac. The annoyance of Windows software updates is legendary, not to mention graphics card updates, crashes and other Windows annoyances that left me feeling alone when problems arose. The fact that it is open source sometimes creates grey areas when it comes to support. With AppleCare you call one person (in this country) and get the problem resolved quickly. If they can't resolve it remotely, they will pay to have the device shipped overnight to repair it. The last time I had to do that the turnaround time was literally 2 days. They repaired it the day they received it and shipped it back that same day. That is a huge value to me.