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Will Daz Studio play nice on a Mac Studio?

EportsBladeEportsBlade Posts: 71
in Daz Studio Discussion

Has anyone had the chance to play with Daz Studio on the new Mac Studio? If this question has being asked before, could you point me to the discussion.

Is there any issue? With rendering? Hardware? With the current macOS? Bugs with Daz Studio, limits, missing options, plug-ins not working? Not playing nice with other apps?

I know some use Mac with Daz studio. How do you like it over all? If you had a choice, PC or Mac Studio? Or, do you use both in your workflow?

It looks and sounds like it works with every other program/app I own. Except for Daz Studio, there seems to be little solid user info.

It would be major expense for me if I invested in it, I need a Mac user knowledge, people who work with a Mac and Daz Studio and know its in and outs/pros-cons and work arounds.

Should I invest in it, the new Mac Studio?

Thanks guys for any info you can share. 

Comments

  • MasterstrokeMasterstroke Posts: 1,983

    In order to make full use of DAZ Studio's IRAY renderer, you will need a Nvidia GPU with 8GB Vram minimum.
    As far as I know, those are not available with Macs.
    If DAZ Studio is your main application, don't go for a Mac.

  • juliano.cruz_97bea1265ejuliano.cruz_97bea1265e Posts: 76

    Hi EportBlades,

    I used to run Daz Studio in an old iMac late 2012 with SSD, it wasn't fast, but with a little patience you could do your work.
    Machines with NVidia cards are arguably faster, undoubtedly they are better.

    Now I've bought a brand new Mac Studio also, mine is the one with M1 Pro Max with 32GB of RAM. Daz Studio runs in Rosetta 2, it's not a M1 native program, but it works fine here. The rendering process is very fast comparing with my old iMac, but it uses only the CPU to this processes. the M1's graphics resources are not used. Daz Central doesn't work well, it freezes and breaks all the time, so you need to use DIM to install your assets.

    The only thing I thought is strange, is in the retina display screens... I have a Studio Display with 5K and retina, the application screen seens like a kind of upscaling in its user interface.

    In short, it works fine, it's fast (not as fast as an NVidia PC would be), but it runs smoothly.

  • bytescapesbytescapes Posts: 1,841

    To labor the point a little: if you don't have an Nvidia GPU, Iray will use the CPU to render. Fast as the CPU in a Mac Studio is, it's not as fast at this particular task as an Nvidia GPU. And you will never be able to use an Nvidia GPU with a Mac Studio (in a GPU breakout box, for example) because Apple and Nvidia had a fight and aren't speaking to each other any more.

    One option that you do have as a Mac user is to send your files to an external rendering service running Iray Server for rendering. This can be done from within DAZ Studio itself. I've used Jack Tomalin's rendering service successfully in the past, and DAZ are now promoting a new partnership with an outfit called Infinite Compute who offer a DAZ-friendly rendering service.

    There's some overhead to using a rendering service -- you have to upload your scene file, geometry and textures and all -- over the Internet, which can take a while (although Iray Server uses caching to try to lighten the load a bit). It also comes at a price. But it's an option.

  • EportsBladeEportsBlade Posts: 71

    Thanks guys for the info! I had a look around the forums and found bits of info on my questions? It looks like I will be waiting a bit before I buy Apple's new dream machine. Maybe in the future us Studio users will be able to play with it. A dream turned into reality would be nice! Come on DAZ, Apple and Nvidia and the others, my hard earned cash is waiting for you to catch up!

  • alan bard newcomeralan bard newcomer Posts: 2,174

    I started Macs in 87 with DTP (am generally credited with laying out and producing the first SF books to be done with DTP) and later in the 2000s for a while I ran dual daz .. mac and pc. 
    ---
    but windows is willing to be all things to all programs ... mac wants all programs to do what it want's to do. 
    ---
    around 2015 or so I built a new machine. 
    The uber Mac Pro at the time about $2000 a xeon 1630 v2 (16m ddr3 in four slots) and 4g of video card and a harddrive bay (maybe but don't think so you were supposed to thunder all other drives)
    my build: asus dual server board, $400, two xeons  2630 v3 (a new one would have been $800 but I got a pair on the bay for $700*) 64g of ddr4 filling only 4 of 16 slots) and a 980ti 6g card ... six internal bay 
    ===
    do I regret building my machine instead of buying the Mac. 
    hmm, since than mac dropped all emulation for powerpc prgs .. had a fight with adobe...so folks who couldn't afford to update to cs5 had to run there cs4 in an alt boot. etc etc
    ---
    any upgrades I would make to my machine? I did get a used titanX 12g four years ago or so... so I would upgrade that but that requires a jump to the really pricy cards.. because only the top couple 30 series have more cudas. 
    with the switch from 3delight to iray haven't even considered updating the processors because I haven't needed too. 
    ---
    I have owned over 30 different macs over the years.. with systems starting at 6, and pc since 2000 or so. 
    So it's not just a comment based on experiences with one machine. 
    ---
    *figured that even if one of the processors died I still have the same machine as if I'd just bought one new one. 
    And they're still running... and this machine has basically been on for seven years? 


     

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