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Blender a totally viable solution for Mac users

rsharprsharp Posts: 45
in Blender Discussion

DazStudio is so rough around the edges in terms of Mac support.

And while Blender doesn't offer GPU rendering for macOS users (tsk tsk), I am finding that rendering with Cycles is far superior to IRay in Daz Studio.  Far less memory, has a very nice denoiser leading to really clean results, and faster (some initial timings show around 90% or faster).

I'm using Blender 2.39.4, DazStudio 4.15 and the Daz to Blender Bridge (latest version from the store as of this writing).

For a 4096 x 4096 render of a full body shot of Cleopatra 8.1, Daz will use between 4 to 5 GB whereas as Blender hovers around 1.5 GB.  Not a problem on my Mac that has 128 GB RAM, but still, this is really nice.

Daz timings.

  • default render settings (5000 max iterations; quality 1) - 463 secs
  • 15,000 max iterations; quality 1 - 463 secs
  • 15,000 max iterations; quality 2 - 656 secs

Blender:

  • Only did one here with default Cycles settings (just the higher output resolution of 4096 x 4096) - 243 secs

 

Other notes; posing in Blender is so much nicer too.  Though I cannot yet get Rigify to work.  For my initial needs, the default rig is a-ok.

System:

18-Core iMac Pro, 128 GB RAM, Radeon Pro Vega 64X (though this GPU was moot for these tests).

Comments

  • brainmuffinbrainmuffin Posts: 1,204

    I'm on an older Mac, but had a similar reason to try Blender with DAZ content. I now use my iMac to setup a scene in Studio, use Diffeo to export, then push it over to my newer Linux rig to run Blender there. I do have to agree with Studio on macOS, but it also crashes quite a bit in Windows.

  • rsharprsharp Posts: 45

    Blender will be getting GPU support on Macs thanks to Apple.  Just announced today.  Both funding and engineering expertise provided by Apple to move Cycles to Metal.

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