64-Bit A:M for Mac?

[largento]

I opened A:M at work for the first time since I'd updated the OS to High Sierra 10.13.4. When I did, I got this message box:

 

 

Clicking on the "Learn More" button takes you this this page.

 

It basically warns that macOS is transitioning to 64-bit applications only. They aren't saying when, but they've made it so that if you open a 32-bit app, you get a one-time alert.

 

Is porting A:M to macOS as a 64-bit app possible?

 

 

[robcat2075]

My novice understanding is that it would mean rewriting a lot of Hash code the recreates numerous Windows Interface functionalities that a Mac lacks.

As Martin says, it's possible like going to Mars is possible.

[Rodney]

Apple reportedly is also dropping support for OpenGL and OpenCL... moving to Metal.

 

(A:M should already be 64bit on the Mac)

[robcat2075]

What do you get when you do the "How do I check if an app is 32-bit or 64-bit?" test?

[largento]

What do you get when you do the "How do I check if an app is 32-bit or 64-bit?" test?

 

I get a "No."

[Rodney]

Steffen probably explained before how A:M on the Mac had to be 32bit or somesuch but it didn't appear long enough on my radar to sink into memory.

[Fuchur]

As far as I am aware of there is no version of A:M for Mac which is 64bit. Only the Windows version is 64bit.

My understanding is, that A:M can not be ported to 64bit on the Mac, because it uses a lot of porting-software and helpers from Apple which have never been updated by them to 64bit.

Steffen can explain it better than me, but in short: It is very hard to do, since A:M is a Windows port to Mac and the software used for porting is not supported by Apple for 64bit.

 

I highly recommend to have a look at Parallels Desktop for Mac or Bootcamp if you are a Mac user.

 

Best regards

*Fuchur*

[largento]

Does make you wonder if the porting software will be updated given it won't be useful after the transition otherwise.

[robcat2075]

My understanding is that Apple stopped supporting the porting software a long time ago and Hash has been band-aiding as time went to keep the Mac version possible.

I think Apple's commitment to "Desktop" computing is low these days anyway so assisting ports from Windows is even lower.

[largento]

Apple would disagree with you on that last point (and basically said so at the keynote of the Developer's conference last month.) They are putting out a new version of the macOS about every 18 months and after coming out with the iMac Pro are promising the new Mac Pro in the near future. Windows 10 came out in 2015? Since 2015, we've had El Capitan, Sierra, High Sierra and Mojave is coming out later this year. If they weren't continuing to develop the MacOS, I wouldn't be running into this problem. :-)

 

I tried doing some stuff on A:M under High Sierra and I can unfortunately report that it's not for the faint of heart. Importing models was dicey. The only reliable way to get them in was to double-click the model file's icon. Importing it was hit and miss and mostly miss. It would go through the motions, but the file wouldn't appear. It also seemed to ignore that I was right clicking on Objects in the PWS and import the model into an open model. The UI breaks for asking for linked files (materials, decals, etc.) It gives you the import window, but doesn't tell you what it is looking for. In my case, I was trying to finish up some rigging and setting my CP weights. This seemed to work fine, but I couldn't complete the process because the MirroBones plug-in didn't work as expected (it seemed to ignore fan bones.)

 

I haven't done much else with it, yet, but I'm glad I've kept my home computer on Sierra.

 

I wonder if this CrossOver app would work... I don't know how I could test it with the licensing for A:M.

[EDIT: Downloaded the trial of Crossover. It would install the 32-bit version of A:M, but couldn't launch it.]

[robcat2075]

I'm glad that Apple hasn't given up on desktop computing. I recall comments several years ago that people were beginning to wonder.


What are the deal-breakers about the conventional means of running windows on a Mac?

[largento]

Right now, the $150 for Windows X plus $50 for Parallels (assuming I can upgrade from my old license, otherwise $80). :-)

 

I'll keep my Mac on Sierra until I finish this movie project I've got going on and then evaluate what to do once it's finished. I've used the parallels thing before, and it's a lot of hoop-jumping. Sharing files between the two wasn't great.

[robcat2075]

 

I wonder if this CrossOver app would work... I don't know how I could test it with the licensing for A:M.

[EDIT: Downloaded the trial of Crossover. It would install the 32-bit version of A:M, but couldn't launch it.]

 

This sounds a bit like the experience of people using a Windows emulator on Linux.

 

Are there any "compatibility settings" in Crossover that might make it work?

[largento]

Not that I could tell. I believe it uses the Wine emulator and it states on their website that they have not written enough code to handle every windows os command.

[robcat2075]

I guess you'll need real Windows for A:M.

 

I'm still on Windows 7 because it still works with my 18 year old Adobe software and my 15 year old Cintiq monitor.

[largento]

I don't really have the option of staying too far behind, because I do a lot of freelance work that uses the current Adobe apps.

 

As much as I love doing this animation stuff, it's just a hobby and even though I put more work hours into it than I do the freelance stuff, it always costs me money instead of making me money. :-)

 

Maybe by the time I need to do something, my situation will have improved.

[largento]

I bit the bullet and updated my Parallels and downloaded Windows X. Crossing my fingers that this will work better than it has in the past. :-)

 

I'll have to wait for an activation code from Hash, but once I've got that, I'm going to give it a go.

[largento]

Well, I got A:M running and it's unfortunately, a mixed bag. The application runs perfectly well with no lag. The only downside is that Parallels uses a virtualization of the graphics card and it makes viewing realtime shaded view unusable. I can work in wireframe and just do lots of quick renders to see what things look like, but if I switch to shaded or shaded-wireframe, I get artifact on top of artifact and it all becomes pixelated static.

 

It seems to me that I ran into this problem before and that's why I abandoned it before.

 

On the positive side, interaction with my Mac files is seamless. I don't have to make copies of files and put them in the virtualization. Windows' desktop mirrors my Mac desktop and I can access my Mac directory via Windows to open a file.

 

It handles the retina display very well, too.

[robcat2075]

Are OpenGL/OpenGL3 still options in the Options tab?

[largento]

Yes, but switching it didn't fix the problem. There's also an option in Parallels to switch between DirectX 10 or 9 and that didn't fix it, either.

 

According to the company:

 

Parallels Desktop has no access to Mac's physical graphics cards. Instead, Parallels Display Adapter driver (which is part of Parallels Tools installation) interfaces with virtual hardware and provides 3D acceleration features. The actual acceleration is achieved by translating DirectX commands from guest OS to OpenGL API on macOS side.

Most of Macs have an integrated graphics, which is built-in to motherboard and shares memory with the CPU, it provides a more economical alternative to the stand-alone card, known as "discrete graphics" or "dedicated graphics". In this case Parallels Desktop will use the resources of Mac's built-in graphics.

[robcat2075]

Sounds like you need a cheaper Mac.

 

Is there a way to run Windows on the machine that uses the hardware like any other Windows box?

[itsjustme]

Is there a way for you to use a dedicated video card?

[robcat2075]

What CPU does your mac have?

[largento]

The only other option is BootCamp, which would require me to partition my hard drive and restart my computer every time I wanted to use Windows. It's definitely in the "as a last resort" category.

 

David, I do have a graphics card (it's an AMD Radeon R9 M390 with 2GB of VRAM), but for whatever reason, Parallels doesn't use it and there's no way to make it use it.

 

They explain it this way:

 

A virtual machine is isolated from its host system. Although the virtual machine runs on a physical host computer (in the case of Parallels Desktop, a Mac computer) and ultimately relies on its hardware capabilities, it nevertheless has its own set of virtualized hardware and works as a separate "software computer.” In other words, the guest Operating System (be it Windows, Linux or OS X) installed in a virtual machine is not “aware” it is running on a Mac, it does not use and in most cases is unaware of the real hardware installed on the Mac.

[Simon Edmondson]

Mark

Have you noticed a big change in render times using 64 bit AM ?

Apologies if that sounds nieve.

I'm having long times on the scenes presently underway, working on my Imac and Mac mini.

I'm typing this on a PC laptop and wondered if it was worth getting a subscription for this and using it to run 64bit and nothing else ?

Regards

Simon

[robcat2075]

64-bit won't be much faster unless the CPU is faster. 64-bit is mostly about RAM access.

Here is a benchmark thread with some feedback from Mark and his Mac. His fast Mac is comparable to a fast PC...

https://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=48325

[largento]

I would expect the Windows app running on Windows to be the fastest version.

 

Just on a couple of rudimentary tests, I didn't notice a large difference between the Windows version running Parallels and the Mac version. I haven't attempted a very large render on it, though.

[largento]

Just to test, I followed Rob's link to that benchmark and just ran it on the 64-bit version of the Windows A:M (v19f) on Parallels and the small test rendered in 17:58. It says when I ran it on the Mac version, it took 21:51.

 

That was using the version of A:M from May of 2017, so it's not quite a direct-to-direct, but it does seem like the Windows version renders faster ...even under emulation.

[Simon Edmondson]

Robert, Mark

 

Thank you both for your replies.

Beyond basic number watching my tech abilities are very limited.Slightly ironic in that the rest of my family are ardent techies.

 

The Imac is 3.1Ghz with *Gb of RAM, running an i5 processor.

The Mini is an i7, 2.3ghz with 4gb of RAM.

The render speed seems to vary with the camera angle, even though the scene and all within it stay the same. The Imac is faster one one angle and slower on the other. I tried it on an i5 mini but that wasn't happy at all.

 

I moved over to Macs about 12 years ago because the last three PC's had all given such a large amount of trouble and proved very unreliable. Don't wish to start a flame war,but that has not really been the case since the shift. I'm reluctant to get a PC because I don't want to make things too complex with different platforms and OS's. Its just the render times I'd like to improve. Robert has developed a way to do that so I will try them next week. when the current renders go through.

Thank you.

regards

simon

 

PS

I have noticed a very big difference in the render times of V17 and V18 with the same chor. Can't quantify it at the moment but, previously it had seemed to be at least 30% faster.

 

[largento]

I'm just as tech unsavvy, Simon. :-)

 

I want to say that I've had situations where the renders have gone unnaturally long. I usually turn off reflections and particles. For some reason particles seems to turn itself back on, so I check it each time.

 

There also used to be a situation where something would be missing that would cause it to try to render forever without getting anywhere. Unfortunately, I no longer remember what it was specifically that caused it. [EDIT Now that I've thought about it, I think it might have been a missing image in a material.]

 

I like to keep my render times down, so I also usually resort to rendering the background separate (unless there's a camera move) so that I can just render the figure(s) solo in the foreground.

 

I do believe that there's a lot you can accomplish between lighting and post-effects to make a render look good without excessive render times.

[Simon Edmondson]

Mark

Thank you for your reply. I think the render times are down to the reflections and the size of resolution, UHD. Initially it was only one light source and shadow maps but, I was getting shadows that were too dark under wall cupboards, so turned on AO. Thats when the times stretched to 7-11 hours, on current scenes.. Does allow me to get on with other things though. Next up, testing Robert's solution for reducing the time to minutes !

regards

simon