Does anyone use the Mac Studio yet with Corona?
Really curious how it performs.
Well, v8 is perfectly usable on my M1 Max MBP with its 10 cores - using it every day. So I would expect more of the same with the Studio - and even more so with the Ultra!
Hi, just got a new Studio Ultra 128ram / 2tb.
Runs fine with v9. CRv9 is more buggy than I experienced before. Especially some materials are behaving weird, in the preview as well as in the renders.
I noticed that calculating displacement is a one core thing. So time to first pixel depends very much on displacement settings. CR renders at 1950% when workload is heavy but at smaller files I noticed that it renders at 1850%. Maybe it has to do with performance cores being used or not.
My previous computer was an 32Gb ram iMac from lat 2015. So this is a lot better. But I also noticed that the way models are made makes a huge difference in render and viewport response. I am now working on a rather sloppy model from a co-worker which is very slow in every way. My own models are far more efficient in terms of instances and geometry. I think this is something to consider. No matter the hardware the files need to be up to speed as well.
Well, I just got this Mac Ultra Studio so maybe more later.
Had a chance today working on a detailed high rise project (20+ stories) with the Studio Ultra 128GB.
Interactive preview was almost instant.
For about 3 hours editing the building model, cameras and lighting was ( compared to my 4 core Intel iMac from late 2015 with 32Gb ram ) a completely different experience all together. Final renders at about SL10 to 15 (exterior) took only minutes. In these 3 hours I could almost do the whole presentation with about 6 final images. We sat down with 3 architects and could just instantly follow all steps in C4D and CR. If the new Mac Pro’s (40 cores, m2 ?) are any faster I wonder really for me what the benefit would be.
I think there is a lot more to gain in properly modelling the building and properly setting up assets databases for vegatation, hdr’s and scatter techniques. At some point with this super fast rendering hardware the UI (C4D & CR) gets in the way. Its actually incredible how many repetitive mouse clicks are needed to keep the process going from start to finish. When the system gets this fast you become much more aware of it.
Thank you. Good to see that the 20 cores makes the difference it should!
yes, they are also fully involved in the interactive rendering. I noticed though that at parsing the scene calculating the displacement is a one core event and can take up most of the parsing time.
Hi frv,
thanks for sharing your experience with Studio Ultra and C4D/CR.
Remind us what “SL 10 -15” stands for? Is that noise level?
I was wondering if you create your bldg models in a CAD app and how this might see benefits using M1 Ultra.
We build our 3D models in Archicad from .dwg files and I believe vector calculations in CAD apps are largely single core. In large, very detailed plans this can slow down the line redraw by a lot. I’m not sure how much this process relies on CPU and/or GPU, but I think it’s mostly CPU.
If the M1 Ultra has access to 128GB of ultra fast ram, I imagine vector line redraws are extremely fast too?
Do you see some large “real world” improvements in CAD apps even when running in Rosetta?
For context, our CAD hack-mac uses a GTX 1080TI 8GB / I9 9900K / 32GB RAM.
Going from that 2015 iMac to the Studio is like going from a horse-drawn buggy to a Ferrari. Would be awesome if you could record your screen showing the real-time you’re seeing.
@BigAI3D
I fine tuned my workflow to be quit fast with my iMac & C4D & CR. I just avoided the kind of things I can do now with the Studio Ultra. Especially interactive preview is really something that improves the quality of my renders enormously. Also the number of finals has increased. Vegatation needs to be much less optimised. I can throw in any amount I like so far. I will see if I can make a little video. Never done that before.
@jojorender
SL stand for sampling level. I don’t actually know for sure if that’s how its named in CR. It was in Maxwellrender that I used before. But in CR you also see the amount of samples rendered. Usually my clients are totally happy with something between 10 and 20. Yesterday I rendered an image overnight with the Studio Ultra and got to 1150. I must say the image looked very crisp. The Studio Ultra was very silent venting out slightly warm air.
I model with Vectorworks which is native m1 as C4D is and haven’t been doing any work with Vectorworks yet with the new Studio Ultra. But in Vectorworks I never really get slowed down much modelling even with very large projects on my Intel iMac. But I have been working with Vectorworks since 1989. Anyhow, Vectorworks is one core or a few at most. It depends greatly on modelling techniques as well. I modelled a four building highrise project of about 15Mb in C4D. A co-worker managed to get a smaller project in at 800Mb…
I never render anything with Vectorworks even with Redshift integrated as off recently. I tried it and it was rubbish to work with. Extremely slow and I assume with the new Ultra is still is very slow. For some reason Vectorworks render features are decades behind and will probably never go anywhere. I model in Vectorworks since its very easy to model buildings with and has an excellent export to C4D. I model terrains in C4D since Vectorworks is not good at that at all. All assets are added in C4D as well. All together the workflow can be very fast once the Vectorworks model is done. Co-workers also use Lumion and Twinmotion on PC’s. Absolutely worth it going PC for these apps and fantastic results. But C4D with CR is a bit like a Leica Camera. The images that I make in C4D/CR compared with Lumion and Twinmotion still look a lot more photo real. Now with the new Studio Ultra it can also be done super fast and interactive.
Checking the benchmarks it seems that a 20core Studio Ultra matches more or less the speed of the new AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper™ PRO 5975WX with 32 cores.
I don’t understand since the 5975X is multithreaded and renders at 64 threads. How would Apple match that with a 20core cpu in a small enclosure. Maybe there is something wrong with the benchmarks. I wonder how this relates to Coronarender. Most likely the 5975X is about 3x faster with CR than the m1 studio ultra but I can not compare.
I attached the Geekbench results including my current iMac late 2015. Its seems I have gained about 6 times multicore and less than twice the single core performance with my new Studio Ultra in about 6,5 years.
( I added a benchmark that looked a little more realistic. Maybe Geekbench does not say much )
Thanks @frv for all the details! I’m planning for a new MBP in the autumn and your numbers make me quite optimistic.
I sometimes use a MBP m1 10core with 64Gb and it as well feels very fast with CR.
Good to hear! I’m on a tightish budget so one the mid models will have to do for now.
I just completed the Corona benchmark test.
There it shows that my Mac Studio Ultra with 128gB is the fastest Mac so far.
But slow compared to much cheaper Windows PC’s of even years back. A 12 core PC is about as fast as a 20 core Mac Studio. So anyone on a budget will be far better of with a PC and have the added benefit of being able to experiment with real time rendering like Unreal etc.
I have borrowed my Ultra for a few months and I might go PC after all looking at these results.
I must say as well the Mac Studio Ultra is a thrill to work with.
That’s what I was afraid of hearing : ) It seems I will have to consider a PC this time.
The Mac Studio Ultra is sold as being equal to the newest 64 core AMD but regretfully the truth is it can’t keep up with a 5 year old i7 16Gb PC…
If budget & performance is of any concern forget about Mac’s now and foreseeable future.
It needs to be said as well that the whole Mac experience remains very pleasant and with the new Studio (Ultra) feels fast for most especially if render times are not really bottlenecks in your daily workflow. Business wise a few 1000 more or less is over a period of 5 to 7 years also not huge concern and might be covered by the resale value.
Photographers buy Leica’s for the look and feel alone. I understand it. You live only once and spending year over year with tools you can’t stand the look of is not smart either.
Something I don’t know is if the Mac Studio Ultra with its ultrafast SSD and RAM is noticeably faster in editing, pasting assets and working on materials. Speed is not rendering alone. Much work in C4D is single core like displacement mapping.
Hi frv
ah ok, SL stands for passes. That makes more sense than noise level…
I saw your benchmark test but you forgot that corona benchmark runs in rosetta not M1 native - big difference.
We ran a bunch of test in the “Corona for Apple Silicon M1?” thread
The Ultra running M1 native corona would score somewhere in the 10M rays/s not 6.7M r/s as in rosetta.
If you are interested you can find test & results here. https://forum.corona-renderer.com/ Corona for Apple Silicon M1?
If someone “suffered” the last 10 years with “slow” render speeds on macOs and now that M1 (and soon M2) is out concludes that it’s time to go PC… well, that does not make a whole lot of sense to me.
For me, seeing how well M1 ultra performs was just to evaluate if it’s time to go Silicon or stick with Intel Mac just a little longer.
One thing that remains the same since forever, is that many tasks are “single core” .
Squeezing significantly more performance out of a single core is probably unrealistic on x86 or arm. Unless these processes can be converted to multi core, I don’t think we’ll see much real world workflow speedups in the foreseeable future.
Even in max, people choose the 32 core ripper over the 64 core for better single core performance.
“I must say as well the Mac Studio Ultra is a thrill to work with.” …I would say go with your gut feeling and leave the Windows BS (BS stands for amazing render speed) to others.
Well, the PC & Mac world differ on many levels. I see co-workers with Lumion, Unreal and Twinmotion doing fantastic work that is loved by our clients. Rendering fine-tuned photoreal images seems to be something of a lesser order especially when it is much more time-consuming. The difference between real time rendered images and the typical press a button and wait image is fading. Most clients don’t see it anymore. I do, but I am a photographer that would rather carry a 4x5 than a mirrorless.
But I don’t want to be stuck in the past or be a one trick pony with C4D/CR, I am afraid the future is with hardware raytracing and Apple is not going there and not planning too. Another thing to consider is an economic crisis I see developing. Subscriptions C4D & CR plus a Mac Studio Ultra will cost me over 10k euros extra over the next 5 years. Compared to a free Unreal experience and a bit cheaper PC that can be upgraded.
Whatever the choice is, the Mac Studio Ultra will be a delight to work with as I already see by my borrowed Ultra 128Gb.
I before wrote that the asset browser in C4D does not work properly or even at all. Maxon support helped me out very well and solved the problem by letting me know to delete the index file in the database and rebuild it in C4D. Now on my Studio Ultra all works really well. The assets are loaded instantly especially with the option in R26 to assign a local database to be indexed.
As I was told here on the forum my testing with the Corona benchmark is useless since it is still not native m1 and running Rosetta. So the Studio Ultra is lot faster than what I wrote here.
Benchmarked my iMac late 2015 i7 4 core 32Gb. About 3.11 minutes.
I submitted the result under frv. But can’t find it there since there is no search based on name of the poster.
Anyhow, my new Mac Studio Ultra with 128gB is about 3x as fast with the benchmark (Rosetta). Considering Rosetta the Ultra most like is about 4 to 5x times as fast.