iMAcPro, Blender and stuff

Meanwhile on another planet in another galaxy. For (an astonishingly huge) community of Blender users, 2018 marks the beginning of a revolution: realtime rendering.

Some background (Wikipedia):
"Blender is a professional, free and open-source 3D computer graphics software toolset used for creating animated films, visual effects, art, 3D printed models, interactive 3D applications and video games. Blender's features include 3D modeling, UV unwrapping, texturing, raster graphics editing, rigging and skinning, fluid and smoke simulation, particle simulation, soft body simulation, sculpting, animating, match moving, camera tracking, rendering, motion graphics, video editing and compositing. It also features an integrated game engine."

Blender also runs on Linux, Windows and MacOS. The status quo is that you need sheer horsepower to preview an animation even in much reduced complexity. The final render in full quality takes at least hours (for, say, the typical 250 frames). And that's on a (mostly) custom-built workstation with brutally high specs, further accelerated with render networks (>"render farm").

joema's scenario with many TBs of footage that could be transcoded to proxy in two days instead of five makes the purchase of the iMacPro a no-brainer (if it wasn't for the MP 2018, perhaps).

But 3D rendering is really where render benchmarks make sense. Blender provides complete 3D projects, scenes. People download them and compare the render times on their systems. You'd guess right if you expected an iMac to compare favorably to laptops. As a workstation, it's ridiculously lame.

The upcoming render engine EEVEE (Extra Easy Virtual Environment Engine) is revolutionary insofar as it will allow* (*on fast computers) realtime preview with 60fps HD and around 6 bounces of light (the more reflection cycles/instances are rendered, the more photorealistic the scene will look). It will also dramatically shorten final render times. Hours become minutes, minutes become seconds. On a reasonably fast machine a completely computer generated scene could render as fast (or slow) as Neat.

How would the iMacPro handle EEVEE? You can top the specs (and they'd be essential for the contemporary cycles render engine), but not with just a gaming PC. You'd start at $3500 for a custom built PC (sans monitor), and you'll go way over $10,000 if you buy a special CAD workstation.

For many, including myself, the current iMac handles UHD editing just fine. This is such an easy task compared to CGI, I don't experience many shortcomings. For me, the iMacPro would be overkill.

Axel wrote: Meanwhile on another planet in another galaxy. For (an astonishingly huge) community of Blender users, 2018 marks the beginning of a revolution: realtime rendering. ….

Thanks, Axel, for sharing that impressive view beyond owns plate edges << lame translation intended, I know you love my Germanisms

Fought my fight with Blender, years ago, lost, tried again, gave up … no, that's beyond me. And I'm always impressed how people invest 'years' of their life for … a flying Trabbi …

Real time? umph!
Actually tinkering a super-simple UFO in Motion (the latest 21st cent types are easy triangles, not this 40ies saucers…), so, I have an eye on Volumetrics … funny, in that awesome demo, the 'shines' in front of the cars lights are 'blocky'- but surprisingly doesn't care Zac … hmm, maybe YTcompression failure …

My latest ' RubberTwist '-plugin needs up to 3min rendering for 2secs of action… HAHAHA! …

… now, some good Samatarian should create a BlenderSE/elements/light for stupidos like me (alone 'mouse-click' on the right … arrghgh)

Excellent finding, Axel, thanks again.

Karsten Schlüter wrote: Fought my fight with Blender, years ago, lost, tried again, gave up … no, that's beyond me. And I'm always impressed how people invest 'years' of their life for … a flying Trabbi …

To cite one Blender guru: "I became a nerd to become a better artist."

Karsten Schlüter wrote: My latest ' RubberTwist '-plugin needs up to 3min rendering for 2secs of action… HAHAHA! …

Not much difference on maxxed-out 2015 iMac: 2 minutes 15 seconds. Enough time to brush my teeth. Or, with a Mini, to brush them thoroughly.

Karsten Schlüter wrote: … now, some good Samatarian should create a BlenderSE/elements/light for stupidos like me (alone 'mouse-click' on the right … arrghgh)

There a many Blender tutorials on how to pick the right Blender tutorials. Their essence: this is about diligence and patience. I allow myself one year for the basics (bought an extensive training on Black Friday), an hour a day. Should Apple come up with their own version of Hitfilm, I should then be ahead of others nonetheless, who just throw in some model or world templates. BTW: you can buy many Blender templates already.

Axel wrote: … Not much difference on maxxed-out 2015 iMac: 2 minutes 15 seconds. … .

on risking of getting completely off-topic and threadjacking … but, hey, I'm a Mod, so anyhow:

now, that is an interesting info! … hmm, do 700 replicated glyphs with bazillion of triangles do really need that much of computation?

Axel wrote: … … you can buy many Blender templates already.

… and I purchased mObjects to import a few (free) ones (you get awesome models - for zero!)… no, I'm way too hasty to handle 3D. Blender is incredible mighty tool, I like that physics and fog and liquids and stuff … but, to be honest - no real need for actual projects. Same story for gimbals, drones and an iMacPro … :silly:

Karsten Schlüter wrote: ... on risking of getting completely off-topic and threadjacking …

The topic is iMacPro specs. In an FCP forum. I'd realistically expect only small advantages, no matter how many cores or RAM. If editing is all the device must do.

I'd love to own one. I also really think that the space grey color will improve the experience. To justify the purchase, I need to look for something that might really exhaust it. Pure luxury, I don't have a fancy car.

With all due respect, do you mind not hijacking my thread??? It is very entertaining to read your private little discussion about Blender, but perhaps you could continue this elsewhere, as I would prefer this thread instead, to discuss what I originally asked. Wakata?

pszilard wrote: With all due respect, do you mind not hijacking my thread??? …

SOOOORRY! …
better now?

Axel wrote: ....joema's scenario with many TBs of footage that could be transcoded to proxy in two days instead of five makes the purchase of the iMacPro a no-brainer (if it wasn't for the MP 2018, perhaps)...

The two days on a hypothetical iMac Pro vs five days on a top-spec 2015 iMac 27 was my number based on a large transcoding job on my 2015 iMac. Since then I switched to a 2017 iMac 27, and it is 2x faster than the 2015. I suspect this is due to the improved Kaby Lake Quick Sync logic. So that one change reduced it from five days to 2.5 days.

It remains to be seen if the base-level iMac Pro can improve meaningfully on that. The 2017 iMac is so fast on FCPX, I tend to doubt it. Even if an 18-core iMac Pro is 2x faster on FCPX than a 2017 iMac, it may cost 4x as much.

You are right that outside FCPX there may be better cost justification for an iMac Pro, and ultimately Apple needs to sell to the broader market. However pszilard's question was about the iMac Pro vs iMac on FCPX workloads, and in that domain the upcoming iMac Pro has some challenges. It will be interesting to see how it performs. Fortunately we don't have long to wait.

IF Apple has convinced Intel to shoe-horn Quick Sync into the special Xeon-W variants used in the iMac Pro, and IF a 10-core/Vega64 version is less than $8k, and IF that translates to about 1.8x or 2x improvement on FCPX, and IF there is similar improvement in non-Apple apps like Premiere, Blender, etc -- then there will be a good market for it.

From the number of cores in the iMP, it would seem logical that it's Xeon processor is basically the i9 in Xeon format.

Another BIG question is, what will happen to the iMac? Will it be upgraded and/or price dropped? Am not aware of any rumours. Has anyone heard anything?

The 2017 iMac 5k already dropped in price, namely $300 compared to the 2015 iMac. It also had 8 GB GPU instead of 4. That happened almost exactly half a year after I bought the older model, ignoring a warning on an Apple specific site on product life-cycle management, predicting that a new model was overdue.

The same site says for TODAY, the average iMac lifecycle is 262 days, the current one is with us since 190 days, and a new one would statistically be released on 02/28/2018.

Will it also offer much more for less? 12 GB VRAM? Who knows?

BTW: Now YOU are in the wrong thread, pszilard

Thanks for your nice post to teach us more in this topic. After reading the whole post, we can catch several useful tips about how to fix the same issue in simple way.

T3 magazine has just published an interview with Phil Schiller stating that "the iMacPro is just days away from release'.

Just thought... wouldn't it be nice if Apple pre-installed their 'Pro' apps on the new iMacPro's... just saying. :whistle:

iMac Pro - Available 12.14

I started a hardware thread as appropriate here.
www.fcp.co/forum/new-mac-pro/28294-apple...-pro-available-12-14

Posted on the above hardware thread, Newsshooter already published a hands on and with FCPX 10.4

Cool, not long to wait.

If I am editing 4k and 1080p but not higher, and not VR or 360, would 64GB ram be sufficient or is there any benefit in going to 128GB? (just trying to soften the blow to my wallet).