Mac Compatibility Specs with new Advanced 3D Renderer

[ConstantinMaier]

Hey,

I was wondering whether you could tell me specifically what type of Mac is needed to run the new Advanced 3D renderer which was just released in AE 24.1?

I have two machines: a Windows machine I do most of my work at and a MacBook which I mainly just use to test my AE scripts. On my Windows machine, the new Advanced 3D renderer works perfectly, however, on my MacBook it tells me that the Advanced 3D renderer is not available and I also cannot access it. Other than that, AE runs fine on my MacBook. It's a fairly old MacBook Pro from 2017 (macOS Monterey, 3.5GHz, 16GB Ram). Now, since the Advanced 3D renderer isn't working, I'm looking to buy a new MacBook. Can you let me know what exactly is needed to run the Advanced 3D renderer? I was looking at a MacBook Pro M1 from 2021 (8-core CPU, 16GB Ram). Certainly not the best specs but since I mainly just use it to test my AE scripts, so I don't need the best specs. However, at minimum it should run the Advanced 3D renderer since this would be the only reason why I'm updating. Just looking at the system requirements it seems that it should be sufficient but before I go out and spend all that money, I wanted to be sure that it'll actually work.

I'd be grateful for an answer!

Thanks,
Constantin

[Olea europaea]

Hi Constantin,

On an x86 Mac, Advanced 3D requires a discrete GPU with a minimum of 4 GB of VRAM.  The only 2017 MacBook Pros capable of running Advanced 3D would be those containing an AMD Radeon Pro GPU with 4 GB of VRAM.

On an arm64 Mac, Advanced 3D will run on any such machine with at least 16 GB of system RAM, so the 2021 MacBook Pro M1 Pro with 16 GB of RAM will be able to run it.

-Olivier

[ConstantinMaier]

Hey Olivier,

thanks so much for the info! Alright, then I can buy the MacBook without worries. 🙂

Best wishes,

Constantin