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I am in the process of moving my non-Daz files off of the external Hard Drive to the mini's hard drive and have uninstalled all DAZ content and zips. With 753+ GBs to move, it may take a bit more than the hour the Mac is telling me, even if it has done 145+ so far. I know what some of those folders contain!
I will reformat as APFS per https://support.apple.com/guide/disk-utility/file-system-formats-dsku19ed921c/22.6/mac/15.0 and start over again.
Thanks for hanging in with me Totte.
Yupp, plain APFS is what you want, no encryption (slows things down) and no case sensitive (makes things break)
It didn't lie! Reformat done. APFS now to set up file structure.
That did it! The reformat to APFS and reinstallation of DIM and DAZ Studio and the files are showing up correctly in Smart Content. Thank you so much for working me through this Totte. I hope my struggles will help others before they can make my mistakes.
If there was one thing that Daz could do, it would be to give a recommended MacOS installation guide for external drives or whatever that pays attention to upgraded formats. Not everyone is a computer expert. Even my flatmate whose college degree is in Computer Science was at a loss.
Mary
I think it has been mentioned several times over the years but easy to miss, that's why I asked about it when you had problems, here.
So glad it's working now.
Well I am not sure my math is correct, but I did a test on my Mac Mini M4 this morning. And with the help of my cat, Charlie I came up with the following. I apologize for any errors ahead of time.
System Configuration
System/Motherboard: Apple Mac Mini M4
CPU: Apple M4 Pro @ 20 Cores (14 performance & 4 efficiency)
GPU: Apple M4 Pro @ 20 Cores (14 performance & 4 efficiency)
System Memory: 64 GB @ SPEED LPDDR5
OS Drive: BRAND MODEL CAPACITY
Asset Drive: BRAND MODEL CAPACITY/Same (if same as OS)
Power Supply: NA
Operating System: macOS Sequoia v. 15.1.1 (24B2091)
Graphic Drivers: Apple M4 @ Speed
Daz Studio Version: 4.23.0.4 (64 bit) Public Build
Optix Prime Acceleration: NA
(I unplugged my hp monitor and used the Apple Standard Display.)
Benchmark Results
DAZ_STATS
2024-12-09 08:01:19.040 [INFO] :: Finished rendering.
2024-12-09 08:01:19.346 [INFO] :: Total Rendering Time: 26 minutes 10.99 seconds
IRAY_STATS
Iteration Rate: (1800 / 1567.399) 1.148 iterations per second
Loading Time: ((0 * 3600 + 26 * 60 + 10.99) – 1567.399) = 3.591
2024-12-09 08:01:24.135 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend info : Device statistics:
2024-12-09 08:01:24.135 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend info : CPU: 1800 iterations, 1.204s init, 1567.399s render
Iteration Rate: (DEVICE_ITERATION_COUNT / DEVICE_RENDER_TIME) iterations per second
Loading Time: ((TRT_HOURS * 3600 + TRT_MINUTES * 60 + TRT_SECONDS) - DEVICE_RENDER_TIME) IRAY:RENDER :: Apple M4:: 1800 iterations, 1.204s init, 1567.399s render
2024-12-09 07:33:38.473 [INFO] :: Finished asset load (open): 0m 8.152s - /Scenes/fe4080a1ef8f06f8c57485bc5dcdba.duf
2024-12-09 08:01:19.035 [INFO] :: Saved image: /Users/maryemcneil/Library/Application Support/DAZ 3D/Studio4 Public Build/temp/render/r.png
2024-12-09 08:01:19.040 [INFO] :: Finished rendering.
2024-12-09 08:01:19.346 [INFO] :: Total Rendering Time: 26 minutes 10.99 seconds
2024-12-09 08:01:19.371 [INFO] :: Loaded image: r.png
2024-12-09 08:01:19.401 [INFO] :: Saved image: /Users/maryemcneil/Library/Application Support/DAZ 3D/Studio4 Public Build/temp/RenderAlbumTmp/Render 1.jpg
2024-12-09 08:01:24.095 [INFO] :: Saved image: /Volumes/Spawns Work/Users/Public/Renders/2024/Benchmark Scene on Mac Mini M4 2024_12_09.png
2024-12-09 08:01:24.135 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend info : Device statistics:
2024-12-09 08:01:24.135 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.0 IRAY rend info : CPU: 1800 iterations, 1.204s init, 1567.399s render
Mary
I did crash D|S a few times prior before I started and learned I had to be very careful just where I put my mouse pointer. But once the render got going, no issues. I did have to install the outfit, it appears to not be included in the Essentials packages or whatever. After looking at recent Nvidia postings, I am wondering if D|S was updated to fix rendering times. That math really messed with my head so I guess it is me.
Also, I loaded the G9 Core characters last evening and was shocked to find none with metadata. I used the ones included in the G9 essentials load to copy the data and this morning I did a full metadata reinstall via the DB Maintenance. And a large number of other products showed up in Smart Content after that. I have no clue if that is a quirk of the MM4 and DIM or D|S itself. I've not ran into it before on the iMac, MM1 or Win 10/Win11 computers.
Mary
Do you have a judgment of how quickly the render was completed on this new Mac compared to how quickly it would be completed on your older Mac?
Have you tried rendering essentially the same file on your older Mac?
Just in terms of your initial impression, do you think this new Mac renders with Nvidia faster than your previous Mac rendered?
On page 89 of this thread someone brought up my old MacBook Pro M1 review on https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/7369491/#Comment_7369491. I had to use it to track down the references myself since the Benchmark threads had seemed to disappeared and I couldn't find my documentation.
There was an improvement, but if you compare the results that others are finding for Windows with modern Nvidia cards the difference is a like a 1 minute versus 20 - 30 minutes. I had shut down my second monitor and all other apps, leaving only D|S to work alone on this computer. My normal working method is to have Google Chrome with maybe 10 tabs open, File Manager, maybe Word or Excel open but reduced, and any others that I have been researching. How that impacts my real world rendering experience, I can't say.
I am just now downloading a few more products, hair at this time, so it may be a few days before I have enough products to play with a normal creative render to compare with. Or to see how USC2 handles it. (Just remembered I need to get my codes in D|S for my plug-ins still.) Need some more wardrobe, environments, poses... not everything of course, it will take maybe four to five months to download everything I want from the outstanding 22,627 files that are ready to download. I have to budget our internet demand so we don't run out of 1.2 Tb per month.
Remember, the Apple M1, M2, M3, and M4 do not have Nvidia in them. They are CPU renders only. And can't do Filament/FilaToon at this time. Hopefully faster than DAZ Soon™.
Mary
I have come across a weird quirk unique to the Mac OS I think. When I did the metadata update to fix what didn't install into the Mac Mini M4 properly, apparently it shared with D|S on the MacBook Pro M1 and either updated the .dsx files for a new naming structure (adding in spaces, ' , _ _ , - , and it seems removing DS or PS at the end of file names) and made thumbnail file names bad or just removed the thumbnails I had added to Runtime/Support. But by clicking the file in Smart Content and choosing update metadata, copying the .dsx file there I can update my Support files. Actually it will update the .dsx, but not the .dsa or .jpg/.png. And I keep my thumbnails in downloads or on Google docs to be used by all my computers, to be redownloaded when stuff happens.
If anyone has an idea how to keep D|S on one MacOS computer not affecting another MacOS computer' D|S, I sure would like to know it. Some actions are not nice to share between systems.
Are they using the same content folder, same content database or same thumbnail folder across multiple machines?
No. Each has it's own. Except I store the thumbnails I have had to create for files that came without thumbnails or with blank ones in Google docs, and download to the individual computers and then machines to move into their Runtime's. I never had an issue between the 3 Windows machines.
hmm, ok. Weird then
Yeah. Sorry about delay, Xfinity in Denver has had some internet outages off and on. And I had to fix lunch.
I get that we can't use Apple's Metal Rendering engine in DAZ Studio, But has anyone tried taking an Nvidia set up scene In some other application and rendering it in Metal To see what happens?
Are there any thoughts on creating a translator that would convert the Nvidia shaders into Metal ones?
The issue is not the shaders, Iray shaders work fine with the M series. What I might do is set up a scene on my M1 or M4 that was complex, and then take it to my Win 11, RTX 4090 and render it there (so long as all of the elements were loaded on both machines). My M1 and M4 does WORK fast on set-up unless it crashes. Must remember to save a lot and not work when I am exhausted.
Late yesterday afternoon I tried setting up an USC2 scene and I forgot and touched the shift and/or command keys and crashed the M4's D|S. Metal seems to be very sensistive to certain keys that don't bother Window computers.
I do render on my M1 and wait for the render to get done. Same as I do if I am on my Window 10 GTX 1080 laptop or GTX 1080Ti desktop computer. It is what it is.
DS is currently not using Metal for rendering at all, and the issues with crashes are almost 100% accountable to the fact that Qt 4.8 (which DS is built ontop of ) is not at all compatible with later macOS (10.13+) as it has been outdated for over a decade. But you do not move millions and millions of lines of code and plugins to a new API platform while keeping backwards compatibility, fast, it takes time, a shitload of time.
Those random crashes I sometimes experience on Windows but they are much more frequent on macOS but the crashlogs are not saying much. Some have been fixed, like using the Qt Menus and not Apple Menus in DS on macOS 14+ as Qt 4.8 did not play nice at all with the new menu event model in macOS 14.
I know that DAZ studio cannot make use of the Metal render engine. I am asking if anyone knows of another application in which there's a set up to do an nVidia render, and instead someone tried rendering that with metal. If so, how well can metal render That, and how quickly?
Also, are there any attempts to write translators that will go from nVidia to Metal?
OTOY Octane Renderer is metal based, and fast, but the macOS DS integration is non existing (last I checked), no DS plugin still.
Looks like they have a DS plugin now though.
https://home.otoy.com/render/octane-render/mac-pro/
I had the Octane plug-in but when USC came out, I had to uninstall it. Seems like it didn't play nice with it. Has that been fixed?
The little I messed with Octane I kind of liked it.
That looks interesting, but I notice that while the Enterpise edition lists DAZ Studio, they suggest that you try the demo first... that *doesn't* list DAZ Studio.
If anyone does test it out, I'd love to hear the results.
I donated my m1 iMac to my daughter -- she needed a decent screen for her work -- and picked up a MacBook Pro m4 Pro with 48 gb of RAM; I also grabbed a 4 TB Thunderbolt SSD and moved all of my DAZ/Poser assets from a USB HDD to it.
So far, everything is working perfectly; working inside DAZ Studio is very fluid.
I don't normally use iRay but I did a quick test to compare against my 2012 iMac and 2020 Intel MacBook Air, both i7 machines with very similar spec's.
The Air and iMac both took just over 2 hours for the render, the MacBook Pro took 33 minutes with the settings and light I'd used, which matched my expectations based on my experiences with the m1 iMac.
I know that updating millions of lines of code isn't "fast" but they had a bare-bones version of DAZ Studio 5 with Filament running on the Mac over three-and-a-half years ago and had planned on adding most of the main features a few months later. Richard has stated that most of the new featues being added since (except, of course, the Windows-only ones) are also being added to whatever the new DAZ Studio will be called.
So far, we have absolutely zero news on when we might expect the update.
I've mostly stepped away from 3D while dealing with heatlh issues, and after spending thousands a year here for decades it's been nice to spend my money elsewhere for the last three years.
I think I'll be stepping further back for now; I may take a look at Maya if I want to get back into 3D. The Indy pricing is far, far less than I'm used to spending on assets here, and I'm sure I can find something in the $60k+ of DAZ store assets I have to play with.
Life is too short -- and getting shorter every day -- to spend too much of it waiting for something fairly nebulous that may not come in time to use it.
Well, that is quite a reduction in time, for the rendering. I'm glad to learn about that. That's what I was wondering: How much faster would an M4 Mac work as compared to my late 2013 edition Macintosh Pro, which is Intel based?
I've generally just been using the regular Content Pane. Then, I became interested in the Smart Content Pane. But a lot of my stuff does not show up in the Smart Content Pane. What can I do so that it does show up?
Also, in the Smart Content Pane, I found, under "Lost," an item that I want to use. I double clicked on it, and it loaded into a scene. But I tired to search for it, to see its whereabots, both in DAZ Studio and in the Mac "Find." I can't find it. How did it get "lost"? I saved it out as a separate scene. But there should be a way to track where it's stored. I can find it in the "data" folder, and in "Runtime," and so on, but nothing appears about where it should be in Content. Still, it does load.
Right-click>Browse to File Location.
Lost and Found is a category for things that don't have a real category.
Why is it that a lot of my things do not show up in the smart content window?
In order for something to show in Smart Content ti needs a category, a compatibility, and a file type (e.g. Wardrobe or Materials). If Filter by Context is checked it also needs to be compatible with the active selection(s).
@inquire, I am posting a link to SloshWerks' YouTube video on the steps to adding Metadata to your products so they will be added to Smart Content. I had to learn to do this because I have a lot of older products that were prior to Smart Content, RDNA, some freebies, or HiveWire and Renderosity purchases and before Content Wizard. And I am anal retentive and it drove me crazy to have hundreds of items in 'Lost and Found'. This is an older video but does the job.
I haven't watched a more recent video that is part of the DAZ Master Class series but I thought to offer it to you also.
But if these don't help, my Google search query was: 'how to assign smart content in daz studio' and a number of YouTube videos and DAZ forum threads popped up with that.
Mary
@memcneil70: thank you so much for these links.
@inquire, I finally had time to create a reqular render to test the Mac Mini M4 in real world timing. My first render was too dark and I added a spotlight and the times were way different.
The first took 1 hour 19 minutes and 1862 iterations. The second took 1 hour 31 minutes and 2101 iterations.
I used USC2; Kayden 8.1, Everyday 2 for G8M, Trail Running 4 G8M, dForce Shy Style Hair; Beagle; Eagle; Willow Pond for Simple Grasslands Expanse Fish; FM Easy Environments Oak View HDRI; Portrait Lights; and the extra spot light on the second render. I had to use what I had downloaded for now. The fish were shrunk to fit the stream.