(Yet another) Metal support request
I'm comfortable on Windows and Mac. I like my Mac Magic Trackpad and file browser, but I hate that Apple dropped Cuda support. I hate that Apple dropped OpenCL support. I hate that Apple started the trend of phones without headphone jacks.
I would move to PC any day for more reasons than just faster renders in Blender, but I work in a studio that's largely Mac based and motivating for a Windows workstation is tricky. As Blender is getting better and more intuitive, I'm incorporating it into my VFX workflow more and more every week. Surely I can't be the only Mac user who's been bitten by the Blender bug?
I don't have any great arguments to make other that that I'm jealous of my colleague's PC that renders Cycles scenes 3 times faster than my iMac Pro with his GTX 1080Ti, and I don't understand enough of the back-end to know why exactly Metal support is such a big no-no for Blender devs.
It would be nice to be able to do GPU renders on my mac. I like and appreciate that Eevee works as well as it does on Mac. It's great, but I want all the cookies in the jar, not just the one my Mac can hold.
That is all.
8 Comments
it is not big no-no
it is just another api that require time to develop, and workpower for maintenance that could be devoted to actual features
if i would guess it will come as MoltenVK, after Vulcan support will be developed, which itself is tricky and time consuming that blender developers dont even have for developing features
Apple could help by giving fund or developer as Nvidia do both with fund and Optix support, but instead they throw log under BF feet by deprecating all supported APIs.
Mac users are not big fraction of Blender and 3d world in general. Afaik only Cinema4d and one commercial render engine(Octane) support metal.
I think this one is done - code.blender.org/2023/01/introducing-the-blender-metal-viewport/
Another +1. And let's also attack this from the Apple point of view and request Apple join the dev fund here: apple.com/feedback/macos.html
I'm here to up this. So far, I've only been able to just toy around with some stuff, but getting serious with Blender is very difficult all because of hardware/software intergration. or lack thereof. I really do hope either the devs implement the API or someone smarter than I find a way to intergrate the Metal API with an addon.
I work on OS X too. I don't like apple either or its "we drop support to anything-anytime and you just dump it and buy another" policy. Not a bit. And I hate this whole NVIDIA/AMD/APPLE war. But I like the system. It's very well designed. And I use a lot of the "unix" features of mac (terminal). I would gladly move to linux, I tried a few distros and I have a working POP_OS in another disk. But I need the Ad*be suit, that I don't like either, but there's no true professional alternative to it. What if we create some sort of "Metal" fund to hire a developer to work on the Metal support? Just like Nvidia did, but crowdfunded? Maybe Macs will support Vulcan in the furure, I don't know, but we can't count on that. We need the ok of the development fund I guess, but I think that it's doable, I don't know how much does a Metal dev costs... or how many blender mac users are. What do you you think?
* @Pablo Gentile * a fulltime professional developer costs about 12,000 USD per month on average. for a senior level graphics programmer, it's likely far more than that since it's so specialized and the demand is high.
regarding your comment
Maybe Macs will support Vulcan in the furure, I don't know, but we can't count on that. There's no question about it- macs don't have to support Vulkan, it's the other way around. the MoltenVK api creates a vulkan->metal bridge, and it's already released. Now you simply have to wait for Blender's vulkan implementation .That's why I keep saying in every one of these threads that pops up- there is absolutely ZERO point in hiring a developer to do a 'metal port'. If you're going to pay for an engineer, pay for them to finish the Vulkan implementation and it automatically works with all platforms and is future proof.
* @testure * I didn't knew it was that easy. Thanks for pointing that out. OTOH, now with apple leaving Intel I guess I'll be leaning towards linux in the end. I have yet to solve how to run Ad*be software.
There's no point in spending a lot of time maintaining Metal when Vulkan is cross platform and does the same thing. this is discussed ad nauseum over on devtalk if you want more information, but the short answer is- it isn't happening. wait for vulkan.