Slow rendering on M2 macbook pro

Report · Apr 14, 2023

I just got my new Macbook Pro M2 Max, 64 gb ram etc. Compared to my 2019 intel macbook Pro I don't feel much improvement in terms of raytracing speed. It's not based on a direct head to head test but I was expecting a significant improvement. Does anyone have similar experience? Will the render engine ever natively support M-line processors?

Report · Apr 17, 2023

Hi @ClausJ!

Stager supports Apple ARM (M1 and M2) devices in emulation mode only. Emulation mode may impact the performance of the application. Stager uses CPU when rendering on Apple ARM computers.

We do not currently have a release date for native support.

https://substance3d.adobe.com/documentation/sg/system-requirements-213060284.html

Report · Apr 23, 2023

I'm afraid you can wait a very long time for that. Adobe is obviously not interested in adapting the 3D software to ARM natively, let alone making it available to Mac users. But you can pay diligently for the suite, even if it has never left beta status.

Report · Sep 27, 2023

The fact that the 3D industry runs on Windows and Linux may be an influencing factor. The world of CGI, character creation, and game development is entirely different from the 2D design industry that most of us are used to. Some of the biggest 3D authoring apps on the market have no Mac version at all, nor plans to build one. Others run on Mac, but with limited capabilities.

I know from interactions with the team that it's got nothing to do with lack of interest. A small team, with a limited budget, would have to devote almost all of its engineering time to a port, neglecting everything else, to do it in a short time-frame. Stager isn't Painter, which is a decade old industry leader with a considerably larger engineering team.

Report · Apr 29, 2023

Out of curiosity, @AEllard ... how much faster is rendering on a PC (for example a "high-performance Z brand" HP as described in Adobe's Recommended hardware for the best 3D experience), than on a non-GPU supported iMac M1 or M2?

If the simplicity of Stager is best for our production needs... would an investment in an HP for rendering purposes, improve rendering by much? 2x, 5x, 10x?

Has anyone seen a test/comparison on Adobe Stager rendering times between Macs/PCs, using the same file?

Thank you!

Report · May 22, 2023

I can tell you the firstSteps_Skate, with Raytracing and the High Prest takes 30 min on the M1 Max.

Considering this, if you have a decent GPU probably 10x or more faster.

https://i0.wp.com/cdnssl.ubergizmo.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/auto-reframe-substance-stager-rtx-...

Report · Sep 23, 2023

Just seeing this reply after such a long time, @steveh89717860 . Thank you!

Out of curiosity... what what a PC with a decent GPU cost? I've been a pure Apple user for 3 decades... but 10x or more would definitely make me want to look into a PC solution for renders.

Report · Sep 24, 2023

I brought the skate into Stager directly from Painter. A full-resolution PSD with the High setting rendered in 53 seconds. I don't have the latest and greatest equipment. My system is a Dell XPS 8950, i7-12700K (not overclocked) with an Nvidia RTX 3090 GPU and 32GB of memory. A year ago, it cost me about $3,000 US, with a 1TB NVMe SSD. I tricked it out with an additional 2TB NVMe drive (new), 2TB HDD (old), and 1TB SATA SSD (old). The older drives came from my previous desktop machine.

It's worth pointing out that the CPU was running at about 4% throughout the process, while the GPU was flat out. The same render with the GPU disabled took 4 min 23 seconds.

Report · Sep 27, 2023

Hi everyone, i made few test on a Mac PRo 2019 with two W5700( i know ) and on my brand new laptop with I7, windows 11, a RTX4070 and with the GPU rendering it's time saving. As i know GPU rendering on Mac is not for now.

Report · Sep 27, 2023

I pray almost every day that Apple will finally give up its car and invest the money in Adobe. What was not possible in the past would currently no longer be a problem. and then Adobe could finally put money in hand and optimize for Apple Silicon. In the last 10 years Adobe has gone downhill and downhill on the Apple platform. Adobe doesn't care about Apple users anymore, just rakes in the money and the development takes place at NVIDIA. I don't know why it's so attractive to Adobe. I figure NVIDIA makes it easier for developers than other GPU manufacturers. If I make money in the future with Substance from Adobe, I'll have to buy a PC with an NVIDIA GPU. Otherwise, I won't be able to compete. For me, this is pure horror.

Report · Sep 28, 2023

@Patrick Lankau I'm a designer and long-time beta tester for CS and CC design products. None of the pros I talk to and correspond with are suggesting Adobe's support for Mac has waned. Mac users are around half their customers, after all! I do see reports of problems created by new OS versions, like the infamous Helvetica Neue system font debacle in Big Sur that really messed up professional designers and typographers, but those are on Apple, not Adobe. OS-specific bugs are about evenly divided across the two platforms. Nothing suggests that "Adobe has gone downhill on the Apple platform."

In the 3D market, Apple has never been strong. Back in the day, when graphics hardware became powerful enough to tackle light CGI and graphical game development, Apple did nothing to attract 3D software and hardware developers, whereas Commodore, Atari, and Microsoft did.

Nvidia may or may not be more developer-friendly, but it's very suitable hardware for 3D. (On the current Unigine Superposition benchmark leaderboard, the top 221 are Nvidia.) Apple's refusal to support Nvidia GPUs meant that people (especially game developers) had that much less incentive to move to Mac. Some of the biggest apps in 3D and CAD software have never supported Mac and have no plans to do so; others offer only scaled-back versions for Mac.

Even so, Stager -- the only Substance 3D app, afaik, developed completely in-house by Adobe -- fully supported Mac OS until Apple, unilaterally and without warning, switched to new silicon.

Stager can't be ported to M1/M2. It will have to be built from the ground up as a completely new app. That means finding, hiring, onboarding, and managing a whole team of ARM- and 3D-experienced engineers as contractors or employees, to work in parallel with the existing team.

Would Apple be interested in financing such an effort? The vast majority of 3D creators aren't on Mac anyway, so why would Apple care?

For well under $2k, you can get a new high-performance Windows machine with a 40-series RTX GPU that will render a complex Stager scene 20 to >50 times faster than M1. If you're a pro, that is a no-brainer. And Windows is neither worse nor better than Mac OS. It's just different. Any "pure horror" is showmanship.

Report · Sep 29, 2023

Good info... thanks, Alan!

Report · Jul 28, 2024

Dear Alan,

Thank you very much for the many explanations. With a giant like Adobe, I could also use it as an apology attempt. You know how much we pay for Substance every year. Adobe still has the money machines Illustrator, Photoshop and Indesign. There is hardly any investment here (apart from AI interfaces) and still a lot of money is made via the subscription system. Money is not the problem with Adobe.

It is also no problem for me to buy a PC with a usable graphics card for 2000 euros. What is annoying for me is the result of twice the maintenance costs. We don't have to talk about electricity and annoying update scenarios on the PC.

I have been working on the Mac since 1988 and since then also with products from Adobe. When I say that Adobe no longer takes Mac users seriously, I feel quite able to judge that. There is a difference between "want" and actually do. It may be that Adobe does not do it voluntarily. In fact, I get less and less performance for my subscription.

The topic "New Helvetica" is nothing compared to "no more PS Type-1 fonts".

I realize that the change of platform from Intel to Apple Silicon with a few months in advance was a surprise for Adobe. But why was that? Because they no longer work with Apple. Not like 20 years ago. It was clear to all analysts that Apple had to leave Intel. Adobe also noticed how little its single processor applications (Adobe Acrobat) still benefit from new processors. To be clear: Adobe changed direction after the success of InDesign. Previously, the goal was to offer the best software, after that it was mainly about the share value. That's not reprehensible. Money rules the world. That's why I've long wanted Adobe to be bought out of the quarterly valuation. Then they can do what's fun again. Programming new things.
At least one more thing. It is not true, that rendering never happened on Macs. My first rendering was on a Quadra 650. 3D started on every system that was capable. And now we have hardware raytracing on our Apple Silicons. It might not be the performance wonder. But if Adobe would invest 2 Mio. in stager, it could run on every Macbook Air in schools or highschools, on iPads and so on. With very good performance and without the need to study an awful GUI as the other programs offer. Stager is easy to understand. That means also "easy to sell".

Alan, thank you. Without your reply to my post, I would never have posted my opinion.

Slow rendering on M2 macbook pro

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