Arnold on Mac M1 and Team Render / Distributed Rendering to a PC Workstation

[fsTHG3M]

Hi,

I am working on a Mac M1 Max laptop in Cinema 4D and I want to be able to use the power of my new PC Workstation (TR 3960x and dual RTX 3090). Right now I am using Parsec, not optimal in any way for me..

Can I do this with Cinema 4Ds built in Team Render? If so, is there a licensing trial to test this out before asking by boss to buy?

Or even better, is there a Distributed Rendering solution that give me live feedback in the IPR?

And can I use XPU (GPU and CPU) in Arnold?

[peter_horvath]

The Arnold plugin for Cinema 4D (C4DtoA) supports Team Render with clients running on different platforms. There's a 30-day trial period with single-user licensing, where you can render without watermarks, see https://www.arnoldrenderer.com/try/. No distributed solution in the IPR, only Team Render is supported for final frame renders.

[fsTHG3M]

Hi,

Can I test the Team Renderer on a trial license?

Kind regards,

Fredrik
R3 Sweden AB

[peter_horvath]

Currently the device settings (GPU vs CPU) belong to the whole render session, there are no per-client control. You have an option to fallback to CPU if no GPU exists, also Mac always renders on the CPU, so in that sense you can mix GPU and CPU (e.g. Windows client renders on GPU, Mac client renders on CPU). Our goal is to have feature parity on GPU and CPU, but there are some known limitations and unsupported features, see https://docs.arnoldrenderer.com/display/A5AFCUG/Getting+Started+with+Arnold+GPU and https://docs.arnoldrenderer.com/display/A5ARP/Supported+Features+and+Known+Limitations

[peter_horvath]

Side note on the M1 part, currently Arnold runs in Rosetta2 mode in Cinema 4D S24 and R25. Cinema 4D S26 however does not support Rosetta, therefore Arnold can not run there yet.

[peter_horvath]

And can I use XPU (GPU and CPU) in Arnold?

---

Yes, there are no feature limitations in the trial.

[fsTHG3M]

So I can run the trial on my Mac M1 C4D R25 and Team Render it to my PC? If so I have problems, The PC is greyed out in the Team Renderer. The Firewall is off.

Fredrik
R3 Swden AB

[thiago.ize]

Just to be extra clear, Arnold does not render with GPU and CPU at the same time. You have to choose one or the other each time you render.

[fsTHG3M]

Ok, so I need to choose CPU on both machines besvuse there is no GPU support on the Mac?
But I should be able to Team Render? Where do I change to CPU? Can’t find it.

Fredrik

[Stephen.Blair]

---

@fsTHG3M wrote:
Ok, so I need to choose CPU on both machines besvuse there is no GPU support on the Mac?
But I should be able to Team Render? Where do I change to CPU? Can’t find it.

Fredrik

---

You do it in the scene Render Settings

[fsTHG3M]

I can't seem to find it?

And this is how the Team Render looks.

Can't seem to get that to work ether.

[Stephen.Blair]

Oh right, you are on macOS.

There's no Arnold GPU for macOS. Just CPU.

Arnold GPU requires NVidia cards and drivers.

[fsTHG3M]

My main concern is to be able to use Team Render or Distributed rendering from my Mac. If I can only use CPU during the development of GPU it's fine. But how do I get the Team Render to work?
I want to use GPUs on the PC if that is possible, even thou I am on a Mac sending the scene.

[thiago.ize · Accepted solution]

You can't mix CPU and GPU in the same frame. Even if that was allowed you'd probably see some subtle differences, like the parts done on the CPU might have more/less noise than the GPU parts.

[fsTHG3M]

Thanks, I see. Then I have to keep looking.