Are we going back to Mac? In this episode the team talks about the new Mac Pro. Is this expensive machine a viable option for 3D artists and motion designers? We also cover the latest new features in Arnold and Redshift.
Arnold is the Most Versatile Render Engine for Mac and PC
Redshift adds C4D Noises and Nodes
Russ Gautier - Going from Cinema 4D to Houdini
Nick Campbell: 00:00 Hey render friends. It's Nick here with another Greyscalegorilla podcast. Today is a big day. I've been waiting 10 years for a new Mac pro and I currently have my credit card out and my finger over the buy button. And a, I'm hoping Chad can talk me out of buying this expensive machine. So, uh, we're going to talk a little bit about that. We also have some news about Arnold six and, uh, the new GPU render and also Redshift had quite a few updates as well. So we get into a little bit of render news, really fun podcast. Hope you stick around. And before we get started today, I wanted to welcome all of you who joined Greyscalegorilla Plus in the last month. We had quite a few of you join. Uh, it's been very exciting to see you click around and start watching all of this training.
Nick Campbell: 00:44 And don't forget if you haven't checked out. Plus we have now included all of our material collections. So that is the, everyday material collection, the modern surface material collection and texture kit pro for those of you, uh, still using physical render. And, um, definitely check out the new training as well. We have our Houdini course that we just dropped and also in December we're dropping some Arnold training, so we'll be talking a little bit about that today, but definitely come check out Greyscalegorilla Plus. It's been really, uh, amazing to see all of you join in the last month and we cannot wait to show you what we have in store. And with that, let's head on into today's podcast.
Nick Campbell: 01:36 Well, hello. Welcome back to the Greyscalegorilla podcast. Today we have some guests with us. Uh, Chad Ashley, how are you sir?
Chad Ashley: 01:45 Good, how are you?
Nick Campbell: 01:46 Oh, just wonderful. Uh, Michael, how are you buddy?
Michael Maher: 01:50 I'm doing swell.
Nick Campbell: 01:51 Feeling better. I know you got the, the holiday cold.
Michael Maher: 01:54 Oh yeah, it's, it's been going around on the family, but I'm feeling good today.
Nick Campbell: 01:57 You sound good, you know?
Michael Maher: 01:59 Oh yeah, well that's just, that's just my deep voice.
Nick Campbell: 02:03 Well, uh, tons of news going on today. We're going to be talking about the, um, the new Mac pro. Finally, we got some pricing on that thing we're going to talk about if, if this thing is, is this max still a thing for, for, you know, for 3d we're going to talk about that. Uh, what else we got? Arnold 6 GPU just came out or is that an announcement or is that a, is that kind of a new thing there?
Chad Ashley: 02:29 Yeah. So Arnold six just dropped, uh, which is the new Arnold core and they're bringing Arnold GPU out of beta.
Nick Campbell: 02:38 All right, we'll be talking about that. And of course, redshift had an update, so render wars are still alive. Um, but look, I, I kinda hope I'm gonna make help. I'm hoping Chad, you can like be either the angel or the devil on my shoulder and help me decide, uh, about this Mac pro. Now before all everybody get in the comments, get hate ready, but don't hit enter yet until you just hear me out just for a second. I have been using the same Mac pro for almost 10 years now. For, for nine years. I've had the old school, what they call a cheese grater, 2010, eight core maxed out Mac pro or 12 core. I'm sorry, that thing was a top of the heap when I got that dude, don't think it was flying.
Nick Campbell: 03:26 And of course we know for the last nine years max been um, you know, not updating to come out with the trashcan. That wasn't really the answer we needed came out with the iMac pros, which looked pretty fast. They still seem like an option, but then of course they dropped this actual modular Mac pro and everybody's been waiting for, uh, and then of course we find out today, uh, what the actual pricing is. So, um, uh, I'm sure, I'm sure we've all, I know I have, has anyone else gone in and maxed out a Mac pro, a 2019 Mac pro?
Chad Ashley: 04:02 I didn't actually have to do it because there was a bunch of people doing it for me. Various like slacks and Twitter and stuff like, Oh my God, look at this. It's more than a, I think somebody said it's more than a cyber truck. Like lower than a cyber truck,
Nick Campbell: 04:19 Less less than a banana with, with duct tape though. True. You know, so I think you'd get three Mac pros for the cost of that. So it sounds like it's about 50 grand if you crank all the numbers up. Now, I, uh, was a little nervous when I saw that, so I went in and I tried to replicate my PC as close as I could to that. Um, and of course you can't quite replicate it. You can't even get a, uh, a chip in the new Mac pro. That's as fast as my, um, my chip in my current PC. However, I tried to crank the, the numbers to an okay place like, um, uh, again to try to get it similar to my, to my PC. Uh, any guesses on how much that will cost? And that's without a monitor, by the way, what do you, what do you think? You already know?
Chad Ashley: 05:08 I know the answer, but I want Mike to guess.
Michael Maher: 05:11 Oh, I feel like my guess is going to be outrageous, but it's also probably realistic. Somewhere in like, let's say the $20,000 range.
Nick Campbell: 05:21 Oh ding, ding, ding.
Michael Maher: 05:22 Oh my God,
Nick Campbell: 05:23 Ding, ding, ding. So not as fast of a chip. Uh, of course the graphics cards are pretty impressive for this new Mac. They seem really cool if your final cutting all day. Um, but we, the, the jury's out on how these are going to even perform or even be compatible with a GPU rendering right now. So we're still waiting on all that news. So you essentially, if I, if I take the graphics cards out of it, if I get the chips in a right place, if I don't go crazy on Ram, we're in the, yeah, just around 20, uh, depending on the hard drive, depending on all this stuff. So let's call it 15 to 22,000, depending on some of that little extras.
Chad Ashley: 06:07 I was getting 25 when I specked mine out to be similar to our systems. So I don't know. I don't know. I have to go back and look at how you did it.
Nick Campbell: 06:15 But yeah, so maybe I may have missed a couple things too. Um, I didn't get the wheels. Chad said, look, I'm not crazy. I'm not going to pay $400 for wheels.
Chad Ashley: 06:27 Well, how are you going to move it? You don't have wheels. You gonna drag it like a barbarian.
Nick Campbell: 06:35 I know what, look, I have a bad back guys. I can't pick this thing up. It's heavy. It's heavy.
Chad Ashley: 06:39 I mean, you might as well for that price. You might, it might, should, should come with someone. It'll come to your house and move it anytime you want it moved. Oh yeah, I need to move it across the room again. Oh, I'll be right there.
Nick Campbell: 06:54 Oh man. Uh, while, uh, I definitely spent some time on the page now. Um, of course this is all, this is all a little bit silly, right? This is an expensive, expensive machine that I think is, is beautiful machine and it's plenty fast. I started watching some of the, the YouTube videos that are already out on it, seeing the sinner bench scores, which by the way, before we get into it, Seanna bench, I ran a Ross and a bench on my machine. Now. There was some other stuff running. I think I was still had like Cinema 4D open. It wasn't a perfect cinebench, but I got around an 11,000 cinebench on my PC. Does that kind of roughly where yours is, Chad? You're a little bit faster. These haven't done,
Chad Ashley: 07:36 I haven't done one in a long time and I honestly don't remember what my score was, but I am overclocking my system a little bit, so I'm guessing it'll probably be a little bit faster.
Nick Campbell: 07:47 I think if I remember right, you were closer to 12,000 because of your overclocking I was, I was a wimp. Old school went 11,000. And, um, I just, I forgot to, which is why I went and ran it. And it's, the reason I did was because, uh, Marcus Marcus Brownlee, is that how you say his name?
All: 08:07 MKBHD
Nick Campbell: 08:11 That guy love him. He had, he, uh, Oh no, it wasn't him. I watched his video and then I watched the one that played up right after it. I'll, I'll go find out this video. We'll put it in the links and I'll put it in the links. He did a Cinebench score on the new Mac pro, which w which had all the chippies in it, the fastest chip set. He got a 9,000, I want to say as a 9,000, 9,600 somewhere around there.
Chad Ashley: 08:37 So again, when he got in this latest vid that he just dropped her, was that, yeah. Okay.
Nick Campbell: 08:42 Latest fed. He's like go click, send and bench watched it all the buckets spun around and uh, so,
Chad Ashley: 08:50 So that's not surprising. That's an older CPU, right?
Nick Campbell: 08:54 Oh, and talked about this on, on one of the shows where, you know, we, we, you know, not to, not to defend the Apple thing, but they don't really get the brand new chip sets mostly for that re for stability reasons for, uh, to make, go back and listen to the other podcasts. I won't go back into that, but Mac is always a little bit behind because of they try to feature reliability over like your speed.
Chad Ashley: 09:21 Also, they have a longer manufacturing process, so they need to, because they're manufacturing their entire system themselves. Everything has to be tested and work together, which is like harder to be on the cutting edge of latest greatest stuff without completely redoing their line.
Nick Campbell: 09:40 Yeah. So all of this is to say, now look, if you're, if you're listening to this and you're like, I can't believe, I can't believe we're even talking about this. Like why, why are we raising my hand right now? That's Chad, which is, which is good, I think. I think that's, I think that that is a, um, that's actually a pretty healthy place to be right now. In fact, if you're sitting out there and you are happy with your current computer, and it also happens to maybe, I don't know, it actually doesn't matter if you're actually sitting there and happy with your current computer setup, then you could kind of ignore all this. Like you could fast forward here, um, because there's no, there's no need to, to worry about the new math pro, right? You're happy, everything's fine. Uh, for those of you who are either in a PC world and kind of bombing about windows or you're still on your Mac, which I've talked to many people now, I've been doing these roadshows talking, I've been out in the, in the United States circle in the country meeting these people that are like, Hey, I'm kinda still waiting for this Mac pro.
Nick Campbell: 10:41 I'm really hoping I don't have to do the windows thing. Is the Mac pro something that these people should be looking at? Am I, I'm also kind of putting my hand in there. I know I don't, you know, like do as much rendering as I used to and not in definitely not in cinema 40 as much as I'm used to. I used to, but is this thing even a thing anyone should be looking at? Or are we just in a windows world? Do, should we all suck it up and just be a part of this, of this window's nonsense?
Chad Ashley: 11:13 Uh, I mean that's a, that's a tough question. I, I feel like very, so let me re let me rewind it back for a second. I think if you're a, if you're a studio and you're buying multiple machines and, uh, you want to keep your costs, uh, at reasonable levels, then absolutely do not go with the Mac pro. Uh, if you are, however, if you are, uh, an editor or colorist and you're not, you're not a three D artist at all, maybe it makes sense. I don't know. I'm not in that world, so I can't really say, but I can tell from just how they're positioning it. That's who they're going after. Uh, so that there's that. Um, but I think for the individual artist or the freelancer, you should just bite the bullet and go with PC, you're going to get way more bang for your buck. You're going to get way more versatility. And at the end of the day, versatility and bang for the buck mean a lot for a person who is spending their own money on a machine.
Nick Campbell: 12:13 So reasonable Chad, right. C'mon, where are you at? Are you saying that somebody should buy this machine?
Chad Ashley: 12:22 I'm saying that if you have money to burn and you think the OOS is worth $10,000, then in that way, then uh, go for it. Um, but just know that you're going to be behind the tech curve if that's something that even matters to probably doesn't. Um, and it's just going to be like a very nice expensive machine that in a year from now you'll probably wish you had just waited for the version two, uh, or whatever version is it, is this a ver, is this is their versions with these,
Michael Maher: 12:58 They tend to just update stuff. They don't do like full out new versions. They'll, they'll tweak a piece of hardware and then come out with another one. But, so I just priced it out fully specked out Mac Pro, $52,748. That is almost $12,000 more than the brand new car that I want to get that I'm still like, no, I can't afford that car. I can't even get a tower. Crazy.
Nick Campbell: 13:35 Yeah. Okay. To be fair, you can pull the Ram, like that's a terabyte and a half or Ram. Right. So that's like you could, you could shave off like 20 grand just by like getting some normal Ram going to the slightly smaller hard drive. And you know, I think, I think that little booster thing, that thunder booster or whatever they call that, that's only for final cut. So you could get rid of that dude. That's two grand. Um, yeah, but forget about the wheels, the wheels dude.
Chad Ashley: 14:05 I mean, yeah, the Ram is just ridiculous. And like I don't, I'm not in a world where I need that much Ram. It's just like, the amount of Ram you can get is just, I don't even understand it. Um, but where they get you is on the CPU. So that CPU, the entire industry is sort of moving towards AMD for CPU cause they're killing it.
Chad Ashley: 14:28 They're delivering, uh, amazing chip sets for extremely low prices. It's insane. The thread ripper, the raisins, uh, they're very cheap for, for how much power they deliver. So to me like going with an Intel based Xeon, it's just like that's, that already seems old to me and that already seems like an way of thinking. If they had launched this thing with a a thread ripper and uh, you know, maybe it was, I'm assuming it would drop the price, maybe like five grand, maybe even more. I don't know. Um, then it becomes a little bit, it's still not something I would recommend, but it's a little less ridiculous.
Nick Campbell: 15:12 Yeah, it does seem it's silly on the face of it when you're like, okay, this is twice at least twice as much as my PC, which I bought a year ago by the way. So my, my year old PC, um, it is, it is over twice as expensive. It is not as fast in the chip area. Right. If I was just to like, let's say I'm an Arnold or physical user, I'm not getting out as fast and the GPU situation is still a big question Mark. Now Maxon said that they're working on a metal version of, um, Redshift. Is that correct?
Michael Maher: 15:49 Yeah. Yup. So we know when we don't have it. Exactly. So you might buy a brand new Mac pro and then still have to wait like a year until you could even use Redshift on a GPU.
Chad Ashley: 16:00 Right. And even then you're going to be using a, it's going to be a while before it's stable. It's gonna be awhile before it supports all the features. Yeah. I'm imagining it's no small feat to like make this thing work on, on metal. Uh, and so yeah. Then then there's also, uh, uh, that waiting for it to become something that's usable. So yeah. And then you're paying a lot for these cards. These cards are not cheap either, which is kind of ridiculous. I don't really know much about Radeon cards. I didn't think they were this much money though. Like it seems like they're expensive.
Nick Campbell: 16:35 Yeah. They're, they're like custom for this machine. Like they, Oh, I think as far as I understand, they're, they only work in this machine and they're designed specifically for this. Right. Cause they're those module things, right. They're like box things, which also makes me think so like I'm, I'm delaying, I'm delaying what I will, what I will uh, kind of share here. They call this in the radio, the little teaser. I will tell you if I purchase one of these already. Well and if I did, which one? Uh, but I'm going to hold back just a moment.
Chad Ashley: 17:08 Well there's only one one, right? Or what do you mean which graphics card?
Nick Campbell: 17:10 I'm saying I may or may not have already like purchased one of those.
Chad Ashley: 17:15 Yeah, I can pretty much guess he did obviously you thing, yeah, I mean it's all right. It's, it's just, yeah, I okay.
Nick Campbell: 17:23 You're going to have to state that. You gotta stay tuned Chad. I'll be here. I'll be here. Okay. So, um, what I'm thinking though is you can upgrade this stuff. So because we don't know what's happening with the video cards, we can, we can save some bucks on a video card and then just buy one later. Cause it is a, just a module you slap in and this machine, as far as I understand, so you can save the money there. If you're going to go more on, you know, chip, um, rendering anyway,
Chad Ashley: 17:54 what's the, what's the benefit of that? They're all, they're not going to, Apple is not going to slash these prices.
Nick Campbell: 17:59 No, that's true. But if I wait a year and then metal does get supported and then there's a new video card, I, I'm not double buying a card. I'm really not going to use, so I could just get like the regular card.
Chad Ashley: 18:10 So what you're saying is like they might release a version that specifically works on one of these better than another and you, you, you're going to buy the cheapest GPU and wait for that.
Nick Campbell: 18:25 I'm saying that's an option. I'm saying here's, here's what's happening. I'm trying to justify getting what are they going to be interesting and, and, and you, I'm kind of hoping Chad you're the other on the other shoulder cause I, what I got is I got me talking to you right now. I got 2010 Nick on one shoulder saying you have waited 10 years to not buy any new Mac stuff because they've, they, they have not done what, what you've wanted them to and they have finally kind of done what you've wanted them to for the last 10 years and you're not going to buy one.
Nick Campbell: 19:03 Are you serious? That's Nick on this shoulder and then I have like mini Chad on the other shoulder saying what you're saying right now, which is like come on. Yeah, I mean I feel like my, I'm a, I'm like a large voice of reason on your shoulder. Like come on, you got it. Like a genie hat on.
Chad Ashley: 19:23 And honestly I don't even think we would have, we probably wouldn't have, well we probably still would have this conversation. We wouldn't have as much of this conversation had your PC not had that, that cooling problem where you had to send it back and you kinda got all mad and all that sort of thing. I think if that had never happened and, and you were working on your PC and it's just fine, then you would be slightly leaning towards the side where I'm sitting on your shoulder and you'd be like, man, I like scoliosis.
Nick Campbell: 19:54 I understand that. I'll tell you this though. I'm, I've been using this machine since I got it back. They did an awesome job and fixing it and it's been working, let's call it flawlessly since I got it like hardware wise and software wise, it's been working fine like tons of time. Uh, renders fast, you know, flies with GPU flies with CPU. Um, however still just, I still cannot get used to this, this operating system. I know I'm like a broken record. I'm probably being somewhat of a baby but I'm not alone here. It's like it's a ridiculous operating system and it's a ridiculous, like every time I see you, you just went in to go try to turn your microphone up before this podcast and, and like could not figure it out. And that's not, that should not be on anybody to, to not know like that button is, that's, that's on windows.
Nick Campbell: 20:49 They screwed you up. You know, like they, they screwed it up for you is what I'm saying. Like that's a crappy experience.
Chad Ashley: 20:55 How much are you actually I'm not, here's my thing. Like I want to like shadow you for a day and see how much you're actually doing in the OS. Cause honestly, this is my day. I open up Chrome, I open up cinema. Like that's it. Like I'm not, I'm never in anything else. Like I'm not in the OS like I don't know what, I don't understand the OS beefs.
Nick Campbell: 21:15 I'm getting look and got a contract. I got it downloaded, I gotta sign it. Where's, where's my PDF pen? It's not here. I'll tell you that much. I got a, I got a big old like number to figure out where's my solver? I know solver.
Chad Ashley: 21:27 Let's call the calculator, man, we have that. What are you talking about?
Nick Campbell: 21:30 Come on. Calculator.
Chad Ashley: 21:32 Even I could just Google everything anyway. I just have, I just ask Google to like, Hey, what's 13 divided by five? But no, I mean like the, the signing document thing like isn't RPCs like the business computer of the world? Like there's no, I don't really sign a lot of documents, so I would assume there's something for PC to sign.
Nick Campbell: 21:52 It's the business computer in the same way. Those like hard to use a boomerang look and phones are the business phones. Like, yeah. Every company had one of those crappy boomerang looking phones and they could never work. Nobody. Nobody knew. You remember a week we have those at DK. Every company had one of those circular kind of like triangle shaped speaker phones.
Chad Ashley: 22:14 I was like, wait, you're talking about a Blackberry? Like what are you talking about? You're talking about the, um, Oh man, I'm gonna forget the name and the brand of that thing.
Chad Ashley: 22:23 Dude. I remember those things. It kind of looks like a triangle. Yeah, I know what you're talking about.
Nick Campbell: 22:27 So, so the same way that every office has one of those, every, every office also has like a P. it's not a, it's not a good excuse to say like, yeah, it's a business thing. Yeah. There's a lot of crappy like business software. So what was a lot of crappy,
Chad Ashley: 22:41 what you're telling me is that you would be willing to spend over $10,000 more to be able to sign a PDF because I'm just, you're making my argument for me off my shoulder, Chad. I can't like, I, this is like so easy. I'm just gonna take this from me. I've been waiting for that much money. You could hire a lawyer to come to your house and sign whatever the hell you want, dude.
Nick Campbell: 23:09 All right here. Here's, here's a, and we'll, we'll move on to some other news. Cause I, it, this is becoming less and less of a, I mean this is really fun. I really enjoy this, but I think it is becoming less and less of a, of even a discussion for our industry, um, as GPU moves forward as real time engines move forward. It is so clear that it, that even if this machine was slightly faster or I don't even know, even 50% faster than my current PC and it works with CPU and it was the price it is now, it's still, there's so many things we could sit here and discuss about how, how it will become outdated, how we might not be able to upgrade it. And if we do it will be very expensive. And how, like you said, version two is always better with Apple products. Like there's so many other arguments where I don't want to spend all day talking about it and now you, you hear me talking myself out of it as well. So, um, so yeah, I, I, I, for me this is a really unique use case, but I think it's worth it for the YouTube video.
Nick Campbell: 24:17 Like I think it's, it's worth it too for the YouTube video and we return it if we buy. Yeah. I mean here's send it back. Yeah. Here, here's what's good about Apple stuff, which I know is not going to be the same with this, with this expensive PC next to me, which is if I were to go resell this PC, it'd probably be worth the fee, like 50% of what I paid for it a year ago. That's my guess. Uh, I'm probably not too far off. Whereas that Mac probably like hold its value pretty good.
Chad Ashley: 24:48 I mean they, they tend to do that pretty well. I mean that's, they're well-built machines. There's no doubt about it. I mean, it's a quality machine. There's no doubt that it's a quality machine. It's just not for us.
Nick Campbell: 25:00 I know, I know. Can we, can we start doing final cut tutorials?
Michael Maher: 25:05 No, never again. Never again. You'll never get me back. I swear. No way. I left final cut in the dirt, man. That thing. They made it so bad. I can never go back. I will say the thing that I, the two things I miss the most. One was pressing the space bar to preview, so I had to download a little like plugin for that. The other thing is I was terrible at organizing documents and trying to search for files on a PC. You might as well just remake the entire file because you're not going to find it. So being on a PC for about almost two years now, I've had to just restructure and organize all of my stuff so I can actually find it instead of just searching my downloads folder cause I will never find it in there.
Chad Ashley: 25:55 So Mike, what you're saying is that it made you a better person? Is that what you're saying?
Michael Maher: 26:01 I won't go that far.
Chad Ashley: 26:02 I mean it sounds to me like it helped you get over something where organization and all that. So maybe, yeah, sounds pretty, that sounds like a, a real shining, uh, a recommendation right there.
Nick Campbell: 26:15 Well, so before I tell you if I actually already purchased this, um, I will say that we've talked about this on other episodes where Chad you have, there was a day where you pulled in and pulled me by my hair, frankly, like into the Google world. And you said, get off of Apple mail. I can't believe you're still using this. Get off of Safari, get in Chrome world, get in docs like get in Gmail. I didn't have any of that. And you pulled me in and I was kicking and screaming and then within a week I was like, you know what, you're right. This is way better. I can log in to my Chrome and I get all, everything's there. It's identical across the board and I get all this nice Gmail stuff and they can, you know, they could spy on me all they want. They, they won me over the, the, these Google folks. Um, and I, I, I'm saying all that only to say that is not happen within the PC world.
Nick Campbell: 27:22 All right. I came in kicking and screaming, screaming and everyone said it won't be as bad as you think. And it's, it's, I mean I'm, I'm being a little dramatic. It's fine. It's, it's just fine. It works. I'm not excited. You know what it is. I'm not excited of, of the, of all the little toys that I try to surround myself with, the one that I like spend the most time in front of does not make me happy. And it's not exciting. Make any of us excited. I mean, it's windows, you know, and, and let me ask you this, and I'm going to be on your shoulder, is $10,000 worth being happy when you go to work and you step sit and stand in front of a 30 inch screen. I'm like,
Chad Ashley: 28:02 but like I said, I'm into, I'm in two things to make me happy. I mean, yeah, I would, I, I, I could make myself happy with that cash, believe me. The ten grand pocket. Yeah. I mean that's, that's a, that's definitely a ticket to happiness. Um, no, I mean I'm not, like I said, like it's not a barrier for me because I'm in Chrome and I'm in, I'm in my apps, I'm not in the OS farting around doing whatever. Um, and it, it's just, yeah. And, but you also have to remember too, like I came from the time when 3d was just starting out where you were doing everything on an SGI workstation using Unix. So for me, having gone from Unix to Mac to PC, like trying all of them, I sort of learned early on that this is utilitarian. It is meant to get a job done.
Chad Ashley: 28:56 And so for me, I don't use the OS as a way to like, you know, get excited or uh, find artistic, uh, you know, comfort or whatever. Like I use, it isn't in a utilitarian way, it's a way for me to get my job done, to make beautiful imagery, all that jazz. So when I want a a experience like what you just described, that's sort of what I get from my phone. And I'm, I'm a Google guy, like you just mentioned. So I'm, I have a pixel phone and that's where I get my, uh, you know, beautiful experience of everything working together and blah, blah, blah. So I guess I just treat this, the, the workstation as more of a utility than necessarily anything else.
Nick Campbell: 29:37 Yeah, I think, and that's, that's a little bit where I am today. So I, I've come to this machine, which I'm speaking to you on right now for all my podcasts, the stuff and the audio and recording tutorials. I'm in cinema, I'm using it, you know, it's, it's a great machine. It does all that stuff. And then anytime I got to do practically anything else other than be in Chrome, I walk out of this room and into the other room where my old 10 year old Mac pro is and I sit down with the lower low Rez monitor and with like the fan buzzing a little bit cause I, there's like dust all crammed in there from 10 years of dust I should probably clean out and I'm so much happier over there like, you know, doing all my old Mackey stuff and like doing research and I'm doing a lot of like building this presentation right now. I'm doing it all over on my Mac. So maybe that's just going to be my future. I got to go flip on this thing.
Chad Ashley: 30:35 Why haven't you just gotten the new Mac book? Uh, the 16 inch, set it next, you know, set it on your desk and and like plug that into a KVM switch where then you're just like one button. You've now switched your mac, your mouse and your uh, your monitor and all that so that you can, you don't have to get up and walk across the room. You can just like flop switch over, start doing your thing
Nick Campbell: 30:58 I think that ultimately is where I'm going to end up. I just haven't, like I got an old Mac mini, I could just shove in on the side here and flip over to it and do all my regular stuff or yeah, I think that's where I got what I tried to do and this is more of an experiment that I mostly did so I could record it and talk about it for the year is I just tried to jump in as hard as I could and hopefully like after the cold water hit me, I would just like be okay with it. Like just surround myself with it and then eventually my body would be like, Oh this isn't so bad. This is actually okay. That, and that's why I got rid of the Mac in here to kind of force me to do the experiment.
Chad Ashley: 31:40 Cold Turkey.
Nick Campbell: 31:41 Yeah, there you go. And so now that it's been a year and I now, and then I also had the machine gone for awhile, so I literally had to go back to my Mac little reference there, let it go back to my Mac. And that kind of warmed me back up. Like, Oh, this is way slower over here. But man, I just, uh, I won't get back in, uh, into all that stuff that's on, that's been rehashed on other podcasts. But anyway, um, I, I, I'll be looking at it. Uh, let me, let me spill the news for those of you waiting or if you, if you have a fast forward it already, like, I don't want to listen to this. I don't want listen to this guy talk about, uh, like an outdated machine. Um, I, uh, I, I did not order a Mac pro yet.
Chad Ashley: 32:27 What?
Chad Ashley: 32:28 Wow, you got me, you got me bro. And I was like, I was seriously like, well, there you go. That's 20 grand.
Michael Maher: 32:38 Are you just waiting for the next payday?
Chad Ashley: 32:40 Is this like a, you know,
Nick Campbell: 32:43 We're going to wait for the end of year numbers. See how have I mentioned Greyscalegorilla Plus I guess. Uh, uh, so yeah, I, I'm, I'm gonna kind of,
Nick Campbell: 32:56 at least for now, I'll just wait it out, see, get, try to get some, some, somebody else to do the research for me a little bit. I'm kind of hoping somebody will grab it. Um, EJ if you're listening, I, I'd, you know, I'd say go ahead. You have my full permission EJ to just go ahead and get one. I know you've been waiting like I, I if you need a, like a little angel on your shoulder EJ I say, just go get it. You know what, um, just have me over and let me know. But I'm kind of waiting for somebody else in the industry at least that wants to kind of experiment, do a little bit more research. Especially with this, these video cards, that's kind of the big holdout for me is metal for um, redshift and, and that integration and just kind of see where all that sits. Um, and then, and then we'll see if there's some big news. I'll, um, I'll definitely spill it, but I definitely wanted to talk about it since it's, since it's fresh in my mind. And I did, I did have it in the cart. I did have the, I did have the beautiful display. I'm sure it's beautiful. I'm sure it's uh, like, uh, I just couldn't do it. It's, it's, that's a lot of,
Chad Ashley: 34:01 when we're done here, I'm going to totally buy one.
Nick Campbell: 34:06 Like, Chad, you, you already have a F a faster PC than I do and I know I had to live with them.
Chad Ashley: 34:12 Like how like insane that would be if I, if I, I didn't even tell you that I did it. I just wait for it to show up and then I just take a picture of myself with it. Like, Oh my God, it's here.
Nick Campbell: 34:26 I find out on YouTube as I'm desperately hoping somebody gets one. And it's me and it's you. You made the AB test video on YouTube chad here and I was totally wrong. This is sweet. I can't believe you didn't buy one.
Chad Ashley: 34:41 Wow. What a chump? Oh my goodness.
Nick Campbell: 34:46 Great. Well Whoa, Whoa, Hey, uh, let us know if you are even considering this ridiculous thing in the comments below and you know what, give me a little bit of, of um, what I really want to know. Help me justify getting one of these for you. For those of you listening, help me just by getting one of these, at least trying to find one that I could borrow. Do something to get the dang YouTube video out. Cause I think an AB test kind of thing would be fun. Be fun to kind of battle them out. Um, so let me know your thoughts in the comments we can move the heck on to
Michael Maher: 35:23 Before we go. Here we go. Last question. Okay. Uh, if, if, if you just love stainless steel and you have the budget, do you buy a Mac Pro or a dual motor Cybertruck with self driving? They cost the same.
Nick Campbell: 35:40 Are you serious?
Chad Ashley: 35:41 I'm going cyber truck, dude, that thing looks killer.
Nick Campbell: 35:44 Ah man. How much is a cybertruck? So it's like 50 grand.
Michael Maher: 35:49 Yeah. If you want to add self-driving, you can get the dual motor with self-driving. That's getting closer to about 60. It's about 50 K without self-driving.
Nick Campbell: 35:58 Hmm. Okay. Man.
Chad Ashley: 36:01 Does that curly with like the post-apocalyptic uh, like outfit or anything like that?
Michael Maher: 36:07 I'm sure you have one in your closet. Okay.
Chad Ashley: 36:09 Yeah, I can just dig that out. Yup.
Nick Campbell: 36:12 Is there a CD player or no? Yeah, six, six, six disc CD player.
Chad Ashley: 36:18 Yeah. I think if it has that, um, you're definitely going to need some rust proofing on those metal walls. Actually know the, the, they're not supposed to rust. Right. Those uh, panels that they have, it's a, it puts.
Michael Maher: 36:30 the windows weren't supposed to break either, so, right.
Nick Campbell: 36:33 See that's why you wait for version two right there. There you go.
Nick Campbell: 36:36 Uh, I don't know man. That's a, when you put it in perspective there, I got to say, yeah, we, we, we won't get back into it. I, I think when it, when it, when you really spec it out to the like the 20,000 range it, it's got, it's still ridiculous. Like it's still, it's still so ridiculous. I dunno.
Chad Ashley: 36:55 Well we'll add that you, you're, you've now you're starting to see the Ridiculousness.
Nick Campbell: 37:01 I don't know. There's going to be a new Mac in my life. I've been waiting too long now before. Just just, I know, I know we said we'll move on. I just want to let you know, I also specked out a maxed out iMac pro on your recommendation. Chad. You're like, look, if you're, if you really want pretty spreadsheets and a nice better screen and it's a Mac world, why don't you just get a new iMac pro?
Nick Campbell: 37:23 I said smart. That was that. Thank you Chad. That helped when max, that dude out that is 11 or 12 ish grand and the sin event score, which I looked up is 6,000 which, which isn't, I mean when you, when you, when you think about where this, where like what a, what a PC would cost to do that. I think it's of course like anytime you compare the raw parts versus a Mac, you're gonna, it's gonna look crazy. Um, but yeah, I don't, the options are pretty for cinema 40 users and 3d animators and people that are trying to render at home. I, yeah. I don't know if I could, if I could like in good conscience recommend it. Yeah. Um, for me, who's, who's spending his day making more presentations and I guess signing contracts, um, although I did find a really nice model of baby Yoda, so I, that really pulled me back into, into Redshift pretty heavy this week.
Nick Campbell: 38:31 Just wanted to let you guys know we, I should put that in the link to let me, let me make that note that somebody has a three D printed, a baby Yoda model that you can just drag in a cinema in. It looks great. So we're going to send, send a senior overhead, give him, give him a couple bucks while yeah, when you download it. Um, anyway, that has pulled me back and so, uh, I'm still doing some, some rendering over here anyway. When you put it like that, it does seem a little crazy. Uh, let us know in the comments what you guys think. We can move on to, uh, non-Apple related stuff and into some other news. Chad, why don't you tell us a little bit about, um, the new Arnold update?
Chad Ashley: 39:11 Yeah, so, uh, I've been on the Arnold beta for God forever now and, uh, GPU, uh, Arnold GPU came, was it entered beta about a year ago, I think. And uh, they just announced today, Arnold six core, uh, GPU is out of beta, which means that it supports like 98% of all the features that CPU has. Um, it's much faster. It's much more reliable. Um, it's, it's, I would say for the most part it's production ready ish. Uh, it's not without its problems. It's not without its limitations. Um, it has more of a hardware limitation than I would say most other GPU renderers do because it's a deeply, uh, they're deeply in, uh, I guess not bed is not the right word, but they're, they're very dependent on Nvidia. GPU is specifically the RTX cards, so you don't have to use RTX cards, but it's recommended and I have a whole slew of, uh, we're putting out an article very soon that's going to walk through all of my recommendations for getting a machine to work on our work with Arnold GPU, uh, and not want and not sort of feel like it's slow and it's not as fast as, as redshift in an octane on most things.
Chad Ashley: 40:35 Although I have tested Arnold GPU in some situations where it's faster than Redshift, but for the most part it generally is about 10 to 20% slower, uh, on, on some, uh, most scenes. And that's just because of the nature of it. So, yeah, I mean, there's so much to tell. I mean, it's, it's really been in the works forever. Um, it, it, it's, it, I've been through ups and downs in the beginning. I was excited about it. Then when they put it out in beta, it was like really slow and not so great and they fixed a bunch of things. And so now I'm sort of on an upswing. I'm liking it again. It's actually faster in some situations than my thread ripper, which is great. So yeah, it's good.
Nick Campbell: 41:19 So is this, um, is this because they're seeing some people have, you know, the all the chips and some people want to, you know, um, have a ton of graphics cards. Like maybe they were into octane and they moved over. Is that why they're doing this or is it, um, is it just to like speed up certain parts of the workflow? Like you would, you would, you know, texture in a GPU and then you would do, do your final and CPU or like what's the, what's the use case right now?
Chad Ashley: 41:50 The use case right now is, is actually probably the, the biggest benefit because what you get is you get the ability to look dev and light on GPU. If you have a system with maybe a dual graphics cards or maybe you have four graphics cards and you're going to get great performance out of your look dev. But being able to switch on the fly back to CPU is the real benefit here because then what that means is that if you want to send your your file off to a CPU farm, which are cheaper to render on than GPU farms, like cloud-based farms and even building your own farm, you have that ability to look dev on GPU, get it the way you want, and then flip over to CPU and send it to a farm and it's going to look exactly the same.
Chad Ashley: 42:34 And that this is really unique. There's not very many other renders that are able to do that. So, um, that versatility is, is definitely worth something. And, and I've been using it that way, uh, for awhile. Uh, and I, I, I think that's fantastic. Now for me, it's a bit harder for me to want to switch over to the GPU because I have a thread ripper and that thing is like, you know, bonkers fast. But for those of the, those of you out there that maybe don't have a really beefy CPU and you sort of put all your chips in this GPU basket and you bought, you know, four graphics cards or whatever, you're going to be able to use Arnold and it's going to feel a lot speedier than it used to before.
Nick Campbell: 43:18 And then for someone like that, could they still just use their GPU and do the final render?
Chad Ashley: 43:23 Absolutely. With that. Okay, cool.
Nick Campbell: 43:25 So it's not just like a GPU mode and then uh, uh, and uh, and then you always have to render CPU. It's, it's, you can, it's really either or, and you can.
Chad Ashley: 43:35 actually, what's really wild, and this is kind of crazy that they were able to make this happen. It's like you can actually flip while the IPR is going, you can flip from GPU to CPU and it'll just like turn on like there's, you don't have to like restart the IPR. You don't have to like restart cinema or anything like that. It just like does it awesome.
Nick Campbell: 43:55 I think I was interrupting you there, Michael. What were you saying?
Michael Maher: 43:57 Yeah, I just want some clarification. So, uh, in terms of let's say I have an Arnold license and I have a Mac, I'm still limited to just the CPU version. Correct? Like the GPU only works with Nvidia PCs.
Chad Ashley: 44:13 Yeah. The Nvidia cards, it, it, it's absolutely just an Nvidia thing. So yeah, if you're on a Mac, unless you're rocking some external GPU set up, then uh, yeah, you're, you're kind of out of luck there, blah, blah. And then I even think that, Oh man, I want to say that you might even be out of luck on external GPUs too, but don't, don't quote me on that, but I'm not sure you can even use those. But yeah, so that's, and there's no, there's no metal coming for this because this, they are, uh, in cahoots you might say with a Nvidia and they've been working really hand in hand with the Nvidia team to optimize Arnold on GPU to work specifically with the RTX hardware specifically. Also, uh, to, uh, don't want to forget mentioning, uh, check out the blog posts that we're about to launch. Cause I, I'm going to tell you sort of the optimal setup to get Arnold GPU working in a way that, uh, that's nice and speedy and it's gonna it's not, it's actually more hardware specific than, than anything else. Oh yeah. One more thing I forgot to mention. Um, Arnold is actually dropped their, they've dropped their price of their single user license down to, I believe you can get it for 340 bucks a year through tool farm, which is ridiculous. So that's pretty cool.
Nick Campbell: 45:34 Yeah, I'll, uh, uh, I'll be, I'll be checking that out. I've, I've been playing more, uh, around more with Arnold lately. I still am probably more comfortable in redshift, um, but, uh, just spin experimenting a lot more maybe with that Mac in the back of my head, like, August crap, I'm gonna lose my graphics card.
Chad Ashley: 45:55 Arnold's still my favorite. I think it's got the most deep feature set. It's got the most, it's got the best plugin in my opinion. And it also, uh, is using more native cinema 4D features than most of them do. And that, that actually is a good segue into, uh, this next update, which is maxon put out a ton of press releases earlier this week. I think it was Mike was on earlier this week or was it last week?
Michael Maher: 46:24 It was early last week.
Chad Ashley: 46:26 It's Monday today or no, today's Tuesday. I've completely lost track of time when it gets close to the holidays. More days start to like blend together, I swear to God. Anyway, so last week, um, Maxon released a bunch of PR to talk about two things, two big things, uh, with redshift and that is, um, the support for, uh, Maxons internal new node based materials system and uh, the support of Maxon cinema 4d noises in Redshift and uh, yeah, we, we put out a blog post about that.
Chad Ashley: 47:04 And um, it was something that a lot of people were excited about. It was pretty heavily to used. And then when it dropped, it was like everywhere. I think I got it. I got the notification in an email, I saw it in ads. It was even on the, uh, the splash screen that that pops up when you start cinema 40. So I was eager to try it out and um, honestly the noise was fine. It was missing some things. It was missing like some, some key things that I think would have been great to have like the movement feature from the original noise and the uh, some of the animation sort of features, uh, which I really enjoy in the cinema 40 noises. But for the most part it functioned.
Nick Campbell: 47:47 I use all those all the time. And you're saying you can't, it's like a different interface to bring those, those uh,
Chad Ashley: 47:52 no, they don't, they're not in there.
Chad Ashley: 47:55 They're not, yeah, they're just not in there. And maybe that's something that they're going to do. I don't know. Um, but yeah, there's just a couple things aren't that weren't there, but it worked for the most part. It worked. I think the big issue that I had with this, with this announcement was more around the a redshift working in the material editor, which, uh, was definitely not like great yet. And we cover the, the node based material editor in our training. Where did we, where did we do the training? Mike? You had the,
Michael Maher: 48:27 it's both in the guide to our 20, and it's also part of Greyscalegorilla Plus.
Chad Ashley: 48:31 Right. Okay. So if you're in there and you've seen that, you sort of get the idea of what the Maxon nodes are all about and all that sort of thing and it, it, it's not quite, it's not quite there yet.
Chad Ashley: 48:43 You can't, there's some things that it doesn't support. Uh, you can't, uh, save stuff to the, to the content browser, a node based material in the content browser, which is kind of a bummer for me because like, that's pretty much all of our materials that we make live in there, uh, and go to and from the content browser. So that was kind of a, a big gotcha there. But yeah, it just wasn't like, it wasn't there yet. And, and I think that maybe that has something to do with just the node based material system in cinema. Maybe that's something that they're hopefully going to be fixing and adding more functionality there. And, uh, yeah, but the good news is I think they're aware of some of these issues and I think they're working on them obviously in, and the other good news is that other renderers like Arnold, they're working on supporting the new node system in cinema as well, which is kinda cool.
Chad Ashley: 49:33 So I hope that by maybe NAB time, we'll all be hopefully using that new node system.
Nick Campbell: 49:43 It's, so is it kind of a, is it like a beta situation? It's not quite out.
Chad Ashley: 49:47 It is because here's the thing, like, um, uh, it's part of the Redshift 3.0 version, which is not out yet. It's in what they call experimental releases where you have to go to the Redshift site, you have to login to the forum, you have to go to the experimental build section and download the experimental build. It's not something that anybody should be using in production, although I know a lot of people that do, I wouldn't personally do that. But yeah, so it's in this experimental build and it's not called a beta, it's called experimental, although I would consider it a beta. My big beef with that whole marketing PR thing that happened was that nobody said this was an experimental build.
Chad Ashley: 50:27 Nobody said this was beta. So I was under the impression by all the PR that I got that this was ready for prime time ready for production and it wasn't, which was a little disappointing.
Nick Campbell: 50:39 I gotcha. So it's still available. Anybody can go get it, but you gotta you gotta kind of check the box and say, I know that this is an experimental and a kind of go through a couple of hoops to get it run. It's not, it's not like auto updating for anybody or anything like that.
Chad Ashley: 50:54 No. You have to go out and seek it out. And it's, I think it's worth going in there and playing around with it and giving them feedback on what works and what doesn't work and sort of sort of beta testing it a little bit, I think. I think that's, that's good. I think everybody should do that.
Chad Ashley: 51:09 Um, but I personally, there's just too many gotchas right now for me to use it every day.
Nick Campbell: 51:16 Well, uh, it's, it's been, uh, it's been crazy in the render worlds out there, getting all these new versions. I've been seeing the, the node stuff pop up and, um, I've, what, what's, where's octane been sitting in all of this lately? Have they had a big update or anything planned in their future?
Chad Ashley: 51:36 Uh, they got the 2020 update, which is, looks pretty promising. Um, I feel like they're, they're doing some interesting stuff. Um, it's just a matter of them making good on everything that they're talking about, which, you know, historically there they've not been super great about that. So, uh, I think everybody's really cautiously optimistic about what they're doing. Um, specifically what I'm excited about with them is like, uh, they're gonna support NV link, which is something that, uh, Arnold also supports, which I have, which is a little device that kind of looks like a little like Batman, um, throwing grappling hook thing.
Chad Ashley: 52:17 It's hard to describe, but it's like a little device that, that connects to GPS together so that they can, uh, work faster together and pool memory and stuff like that. So I'm excited about that. I'm excited about, um, you know, just some of the other stuff that I've seen in, uh, octane 2020. I don't, I don't have it in front of me right now, but there was some things in there that looked interesting. I want to say it was maybe random walk unless they already have that. Maybe, I can't remember exactly, but, um, yeah, they're, they're, they're doing some interesting things. I, I don't think, um, I don't, I don't think they'd been sitting idle by any means.
Nick Campbell: 52:52 Yeah. It's, it's as we get into 20, 20, I can't believe it's 2020, uh, as we get into 20, 20 and see some of this stuff too. I know we have some, some, uh, plans we're still working on, uh, you know, dates and all this stuff, but really diving a little bit deeper into where the render Wars is right now and kind of what that, what that world looks like. So I'll be, uh, I'll be definitely asking some more questions as well. So thanks as always for staying up to date with all that stuff. Chad, people always. Yeah, man. I know. I appreciate it. And I know the listeners always tell me like they love hearing how all that is. Even if they're still, you know, they have their renderer, they're using it in production. It's fine. It's like, like seeing and hearing all of uh, what's going on.
Chad Ashley: 53:37 So yeah, man, no problem. I just want to reiterate though that Arnold GPU is definitely worth checking out. Check out our blog post about it. I think it's a fantastic option for those of you that are looking for something that's very versatile. So I'm super stoked on it.
Michael Maher: 53:50 I'll jump on top of that. Um, for all the tons of you that join Greyscalegorilla Plus during our big sale a few weeks ago, uh, there is brand new Arnold training coming your way. We're going to have some Arnold five training dropping very soon. And then Chad's working on some Arnold six stuff. So there's about to be a ton of new stuff in Greyscalegorilla Plus
Nick Campbell: 54:17 I'll be watching that.
Chad Ashley: 54:18 Yeah, that course is killer. I can't wait to get that on the site.
Nick Campbell: 54:23 Yeah. So if you haven't checked out of, first of all, if you had joined plus so many of you joined. Uh, it's, it's been really exciting to kind of see everybody jump in and they've been sharing screenshots of what you guys been watching. It's been really fun. Um, for those of you who joined, thank you. Uh, it's been a huge push for us to get Greyscalegorilla where, uh, Greyscalegorilla Plus where it is. Um, and we're really excited to have you and we have so much, so much stuff planned for it. Uh, and for those of you who haven't checked it out, definitely go to the page. If you haven't seen the new Greyscalegorilla Plus page, uh, Michael and the team did an incredible job with, um, really showing everything that is included and also some of the stuff we have planned for the future as well.
Nick Campbell: 55:10 So that's been the biggest question is like, what do you guys want adding to all this? Um, so if you haven't checked it out, we obviously have all of our materials in it. Now, if you've been looking at any of our materials, it's all there. And then of course, all the training and, uh, our Houdini training as well. Uh, I don't know if we did a podcast, I know we had a podcast with the trainer that did our Houdini training, but we haven't really talked about it here on like the general podcast that is also out as well. Is that correct?
Michael Maher: 55:38 Yeah, it's doing really well. We're getting a ton of great feedback. Um, I think a lot of people were happy with the approach that, um, Russ got TA put this course together for us where we specifically wanted to talk to the cinema 4D artist and teach them about Houdini. It's not just like a cold dive into Houdini and you not knowing anything, but it's, it's really for, you know, Greyscalegorilla, longtime fans and tutorial lovers, uh, to, to be in, uh, taught in a way that they're already comfortable with, but learning Houdini and then even jumping back into cinema.
Nick Campbell: 56:15 Yeah, it looks awesome. Um, you know, the, my, uh, with the holidays coming, I'm think I'm going to jump into some Arnold training and little bit of Houdini. I've always wanted to play with it. I'll, I'll, I know we talked about it a couple of podcasts ago of like, is it as crazy as it seems? So I'm excited to jump in there and we've actually began at a ton of feedback to people are jumping in and saying exactly that. Like they click with it. They've been learning a ton and, and even showing some of the work they've been doing in Houdini. So if you are a plus member, don't forget to login, see all the new stuff and if you're not a member yet, come join us. It's been really fun to have you guys all here learning and being a part of plus. Um, unless there's anything else, I think we could wrap this one up. Any, any last minute news before it gets cold and everyone has to go holiday shopping. All the fun stuff out there.
Chad Ashley: 57:07 Nothing that I think we covered so much. I'm like, did we talked about that?
Michael Maher: 57:13 I just need to get your, uh, your credit card info. So I'm gonna check out this Mac Pro page.
Chad Ashley: 57:18 All I have left on my to do list is click buy, right, right here.
Nick Campbell: 57:21 Oh my gosh. If I see, if I even, actually, if you guys could just get one and tell me if it's worth the, I bet actually save time, you know. Thanks. I appreciate it. Just go ahead. Somebody out there, please go use your credit card. Or if you're, if you're, you know, Linus tech tips, you know, give us a call. Like you want somebody to like really push this machine, like, just come on over. I'll buy, I'll get, I'll buy the flight. I'll come on over to your place and I just want to play with a little bit of like, I don't know, maybe some Arnold or something. We'll set it up. Say, Hey, call me Linus call me. We'll set it up. Um, anyway, thanks for listening folks. Uh, let us know what you think in the comments. We always, uh, uh, we read all the comments here on YouTube if you're watching or, uh, in the podcast. So always appreciate it. And, um, uh, don't forget to subscribe. If you're listening to this, uh, you're watching it on YouTube. We have this in audio form in podcast world. You're going to be in the car, you're going to go visit some family, uh, come subscribe to the podcast and hopefully we'll see there. And with that, we'll see you, my friends in another Greyscalegorilla podcast. Thanks for coming guys. Have a good one.
Chad Ashley: 58:34 Bye bye.
Michael Maher: 58:35 Bye.