The Mac Pro - a year in the studio

Interesting write up about using the Mac Pro in a 3d studio for a full year. They start testing it with Redshift and Octane at the end which is interesting. The USD previews are cool as well. The biggest thing for me is when they are caching a Houdini sim and can continue working in another program. My computer could not handle that for sure. But after being burned by the trash can mac, I don’t trust them to continue support for it. Interesting though.

The Mac Pro has given us stability in complex workflows and enabled us to create larger, more detailed worlds than we have ever attempted before. We can animate more characters, paint larger textures and simulate more realistic effects. It allows us to work seamlessly across multiple applications simultaneously and we can continue to work while waiting for heavy tasks to process.

There is now more support than ever from developers. It’s great to see support for new technologies that take full advantage of the hardware like the Redshift and Octane GPU renderers and game engines like Unreal. Apple’s dedication to professionals and studio workflows is apparent with the integration of USD in the core of macOS.

The Pro Display XDR has given us the ability to work in the P3-DCI colour space for feature films and develop workflows for HDR which is something we can now offer to our clients with confidence.

We must address the elephant in the room, Apple silicon. We feel reassured that Apple has aided the transition with Rosetta 2 and noticed the cheeky inclusion of Maya already running on it in the announcement keynote. It’s also great to see the developers of the software we use announce support, like Chaos Group noting plans to support ARM based architectures with their V-Ray rendering engine later this year.”

Man, that is is freaking UGLY though……