M1 Max

Hello from 2024! Still doing hour-long renders that should take 10 min LOL. We've 3D modeled all of our products in-house and are using AI to create backgrounds to stage product shots and enviromental shots, it's an awesome new world. However, this M1 Ultra Mac Studio (which is actually very fast at everything else) will probably be replaced before Stager runs native on Mac. Our journey to this new, creative workflow came out of necessity, at first we thought we'd hit a wall but 6 months and 100s of renders later it's clear that 3D/AI is the new normal and we'll be doing more and more of it. Our plan is to hold as-is, skip the M2 chip generation and hope by the time M3 rolls around this is fixed. If not, it's time to consider using different hardware, and sorry Adobe.... new software as well. Adobe seems to be moving away from the creatives that made them and there's other options for 3D staging software that are much less buggy. We're already using Fusion to create our models, we'll be exploring software that more seamlessly intergrates textures used in staging into motion graphics. Right now Adobe is way behind. After effects will import your models but not your materials for instance... so as of now it's usless. We'll see, Adobe has about 1-2 years tops to sort this out before they miss their opportunity to enter this market. 

I thought for sure I would be moving from Keyshot Pro to Substance 3D because of all the resources Adobe has to put behind a product. Reading the comments it looks like Substance is a long, long way off from being useful on my maxed out M1 MacBook Pro. Looks like I'll still be on Keyshot Pro for a long time to come.

My reliable sources tell me that it won't be that long. The silence is because the entire team has been flat out for months and there isn't someone whose only job is monitoring forums and answering questions, much as we would like that. This is also going to change, however, according to my favorite grapevine, so there's a bit of light at the end of the tunnel.