GazzaMataz

Thank you very much for your help Mash! My pockets are reasonable, I am quite nerdy and I don't need probably more than 4TB so I think I might go with one of the Synergy options. BUT! Whilst I am am enjoying the much faster real-time playback speeds on my Mac for animation (don't mention Redshift GPU speeds) I have noticed something which I though was to do with network speeds. I thought that when I was working on my Mac from my PC that the lag in loading the texture maps was due to my network, but then I opened a couple of Mac only projects and experienced the same lag in loading the texture files. So now I am wondering if the problem I am getting is nothing to do with files being on my PC but something to do with my Mac? Is this a Metal thing? Should I update my OS from 13 to 14 or 15? I have found that every time I quite C4D on my Mac that I get an error saying that C4D has unexpectedly quit. The peeps at Maxon told me that it looks like graphics drivers and said upgrade to the latest Mac OS. I always get twitchy about the latest and greatest especially whilst in the middle of a BIG project.

I am currently working on a large project and and using both my Mac and PC to create files and render them. Now what is driving me mad is files being on my PC can be rather slow to load on my Mac. So I thought get a NAS drive and put all your files on there in one place and the networking would be straight forwards. Now I have used NAS drives in the past and they do seem to be SLOW… So I was looking at a NAS with an SSD drive. So my question is does anyone here use a NAS drive to do their work and do you still find then slow? I can imagine they are fine for M$ Office stuff or DTP but 3D and video might be more taxing...

When you say parallel installation do you mean as in having both 2024 and 2025 installed? I currently have R17, R19, R24, R25, R26, R2023 and R2024 installed. I keep the real old versions since I get sent a lot old C4D files LOL!

I am in the middel of big project and am using C4D 2024.5.1 and I am experiencing some quirkyness with my old friend xRefs... Basically I am finding when xrefing characters constrints sometime play silly. But the latest is when I render through Team Render onto my Mac only (only one machine being used so no need to make the xRefs editable) I am finding that the render works fine but the xRef dissappears in the scene. I have been told by one of the Maxon programmers that there are lots of xRef fixes in 2025 but I am nervous about jumping into a new version of the software half way through a big project. So I thought I would ask if anyone has had problems with 2025 especially when using xRefs or anything else for that matter. I suppose if things go wrong with the new version I can just jump back to the older version again. I think I should be fine, but thought I would ask first...

Oh wot a doughnut! I should have realised it was the shadows that was causing the problem! Cos I ain't done any Redshift stuff for a while innit 🙂 Thanks very much Jeff for pointing out such an obvious overlook on my side - mucho appreciated 😉

Thanks for replying peeps. I have attached the C4D file with textures. My refraction and reflection settings are fine. It seems that I only get the blackness when the transparent objects intersect. But my eye lens does not intersect so it should be transparent? Eye Transparency.zip

I am trying to make a lens for an eyeball that is transparent using a glass material. However when I place it on the eye lens everything behind it goes black... When I did this using standard renderer and materials I never had a problem but Red is playing silly or I am doing something wrong? It seems that if I create a glass item you can see through it but when you have it intersecting everything turns black. Tried looking in the setting but nothing jumps out at me.

OK can someone answer me this: when using standard renderer and materials if I create a glass object and render it as a pass if I drop it into AE it has transparency. However, when I create a glass object using Redshift and drop it into AE it has no transparency and treats the object as a solid matte. I am sure that I need to use AOVs or Puzzle Mattes but not sure how? I am rendering out as PNGs with alphas BTW. Any tips greatly appreciated 😀

Actually on the render front I find that some animations I work on render only a few seconds slower on my Mac mini M2 Pro compared to my PC with two RTX 2800ti GPUs. And yet others, which usually include glass and reflective materials are way quicker on my PC. Is this because my Mac mini does not support ray tracing wheras my two RTX 2800ti do? Would love to know.

@Kingcoma Thanks for those bench mark results on the M2 Ultra, the CPU scores on those machines is still impressive and I was surprised by the GPU being that high - is your Ultra a 76 GPU System? My little M2 Pro gets these results: GPU: 2800 CPU (single core): 122 CPU (multicore) 800 A trick that I have learned using C4D especially when using newer versions of the software with older files is to open the scene, select everything in that scene and paste it into a new one. I have found that otherwise control handles, HUD items and such disappear. I think it is all to do with drivers? But this was on PC but it still applies to Mac. I also have found that when rendering previews on my Mac a lot of my scenes render out at 11 secs per frame at a res of 720p with the sampling at 4 and 16 (default), whereas my PC with two RTX2800ti GPUs renders at 9 secs. But when I render at a res of 1080p with sampling at 16 and 128, my Mac will take 40 secs per frame whereas my PC takes on secs? Not sure why there is such a speed increase? But my Mac is fine for the low res rendering for now and I haven't had problems with fur. But I am using OS 13.7.2 Ventura, I have been told to upgrade to the newer version but I am always twitchy about updating software. I have been using Macs and PCs since 1990 so that's 35 years - god I feel old… 🙂

@Kingcoma Just out of curiosity m8 how do you find Redshift rendering on that M2 Ultra machine? Fast? Slow? Reasonable? I know PC is the way to go with Redshift but I do like working on my Mac more than my PC.

Actually I managed to find a video on YouTube where a Swedish chap was reviewing a Mac mini M4 Pro with the 20 GPU configuration and finally managed to get a Cinebench result - it was over 9,000. Comparable to an Nvidia RTX 3700ti and faster than my single RTX 2800ti - not bad. Especially considering my M2 Pro only scores 2800 with 16 GPU cores. Very tempting to get one of those new M4 Pros but I would like to see if they are going to bring out an M4 Studio later this year, I have a feeling that they won't... And by then a new range of PC parts will be available perhaps?

Hi All I have been working on a few game characters that need to be imported into the PlayCanvas game engine that have been exported as GLB files from Blender. Now I am pretty much a newbie with Blender so don't know my way around it like I do C4D. Play Canvas is saying for some reason the model files are not recognized by the root Armature node and therefore cannot infer the root bone for the model meshes. So none of the model meshes animate properly. This is gobble-de-gook to me being a Blender newbie so if anyone can shed some light I would be most grateful.

Hrvoje You wouldn't mind running a Cinebench R24 on your Mac mini Pro or if you already have done can you tell the results? I most interested in the GPU results on this machine. I have searched the internet but only get M4 results and the Pro version is much more enticing 🙂

Latest version of C4D?

Hi All For the past few months I have been using C4D 2024 on my Mac mini M2 Pro since my PC was playing silly buggers. I am running Mac OS Ventura 13.7.2 and most things run fine. However, I have noticed that things like controllers disappear in the viewport or textures go wonky. Normally the fix it to open another document and then flick back and it fixes the issue. I also notice that when I quit the app I get an error message saying that C4D has crashed unexpectedly. Now when I asked Maxon Support about this they said upgrade to macOS 14 but it seems the only one I can upgrade to is macOS 15 (I know that if I hunt around I could get macOS 14). I would be quite happy to do this but I always wonder that I will inherit a new load of bugs. So anyone out there using macOS 15 with any problems that I should be aware of? I am also wondering whether to upgrade to the latest version of C4D…

OK… My PC hasn't restarted once so I think this was what the problem was, I hope so! If this really was the problem then I think I need a new PC case or perhaps take a close look at the reset jumper to see if it has gone rust or there is a loose connection - happy as Larry now even thought I don't know any Larry's 🙂

Well it has been two days with my PC on with no spontaneous restarts since I disconnected the Reset Jumper. I won't hold my breath but if this is what has caused the problem I will be amazed… Doesn't quite explain why my computer would not boot at all until I replaced the thermal past but there's nothing weirder than computer problems!

If you want any tips on rigging and animating the horse I can give you a bit of guidance since I have been doing this sort of thing for years. I can seem to see the model? Where is the link?

Thanks for the reply Mash! I have updated the BIOS and it didn’t make any difference. Unplugging the reset switch doesn’t sound that silly since when the machine spontaneously reboots it is almost like it is sparking out and then back on again. Some else suggested this so I will give it a try. I am intending on using the machine as a render node in the mean time so if it does conk out occasionally it won’t hurt. My Mac mini is fine for modelling and animating on but yhe rendering is pants.

OK. When the problem first started I cleaned all the insides of the computer and fans using compressed air and a hoover - so no dust. Next I checked the power supply and Scan sent me a replacement since it was under warranty. So it’s not the PSU. Then I tested each of the four memory chips on their own in the appropriate slots and still got the same problem. I have two identical GPUs so I tested with each one individually and in different slots - same problem, so I doubt it was either GPU. I also had all drives apart from the OS one disconnected during all tests. The machine also rebooted when just running in BIOS so it’s not Windows either and I did update the BIOS. The computer then developed the problem of not booting up at all and the warning light was stuck on the CPU. So I took the cooler off and removed the CPU which looked fine and then applied new thermal paste and put it back together again and it worked fine… for a while… Now it is rebooting just occasionally so that is why I suspect the motherboard. It is tempting to buy a second hand mobo to see if stability comes back but I am thinking why throw money at a seven year old system but it renders real fast and I can use it as a render machine. I would love to know what the problem is.

I’m still dithering on buying a new PC since I am sure I can fix my wobbly Threadripper PC. I have asked on a lot of forums about what could be causing the fault but nothing seems to work. Can anyone here suggest a place where I might get a solution? Or am I flogging a dead horse. The machine makes a very faint noise when it reboots. I am pretty certain it is the motherboard, a circuit on it?

Glad to see some nice character work done in C4D! I was beginning to think I was one of the only ones who uses C4D for characters. Merry Christmas and happy holidays peeps 😀

Funny you should say that Mash. Four years ago when I bought my two RTX 2800ti GPUs I bought one of them there power gadgets that you plug into to show how much power was being used - it was nowhere near the 250w for each GPU when under load. So it's another bit of Apple marketing 😉 I bought a 1600w PSU since I was planning on installing four GPUs but nowadays that has all changed and the power of say a 4080 is the equivalent of four 2080ti so I might invest in one single GPU. Probably a 4090 when the 5090 come out since the prices might drop.

I am well aware of the slack GPU power of Mac Studios, I have been looking at the Ultra with 76 cores which scores the same as a single RTX2800ti (like I have) in Cinebench and is vintage 2018 - or is that 2017? It's still reasonable I suppose. I don't take too much notice of Cinebench scores since when I rendered a project on mine on my PC it was taking 25 frames per second (2x RTX 2800ti) compared to my M2 Pro which was taking 50 secs. Other projects varied… But when you think about it if you shell out £1,800 for a RTX 4090 and realise that it can use up to 750w of power that's quite demanding. Those Mac Studios are quite power efficient in comparison. Think I will always have a PC and a Mac but with comparable performance, especially now that xRefs works over Team Render I can have a mini render farm going - happy days!