Which model of imac pro is best for digital 3d animation workflows?

wyattfromplace wrote:

... I use blender, maya, zbrush, substance painter, and houdini.

Blender 2.9 will make better optimization of GPU for real time (approximate) rendering, Cycles is also now GPU accelerated, Blender does not need a lot of CPU cores to work well. I'm using it with 4 cores on a 9 year old system and it's still pretty flex-able. I'm using LUXRender with Blender, it's CPU based for me because I have the HW cores across servers I can utilize, but there is a GPU version - and it's free.

Maya is also becoming a very GPU extensive app and utilizing GPU computing

unfortunately all I can find on their page are the Windows recommendations for GPU. For $4,000.00 you should be able to call them.

Zbrush is CPU based only at this time, more CPU cores the better

the other two I don't actually have an answer.

[edit] Actually I do, Houdini is GPU intensive and it WONT run Nvidia cards on OS X so an aftermarket EGPU with a bank of Titans or 10xx or Quadros is not going to do anything. The Macs come only with AMD cards exclusively after 2015 - so if you bought a 2015 iMac with a 4GB DDR5 Nvidia 965M you have a computer that cant use Houdini

Many 3D programs rely almost entirely on GPU for computations, this is especially true with the rendering engines which are the applications that take those ugly wireframes objects and make art. In almost all cases these are done with two separate programs that do things very differently.

Modeler (not a lot of CPU cores need)

Rendering engine (a ton of GPU cores needed)

What you are asking is like "whats the best computer to use a computer on?" What you need to be asking is "what is the best computer to do specifically what I need to do with my animation pipeline"

what is your platform?

e.g. High Poly Animation, Physics Animation

what is your modeler?

e.g. C4D, MAYA, Blender, Sketchup?

what is your rendering engine?

e.g. Renderman, VRAY, Octane, Lux?

what is your pipeline?

e.g. "C4D to Mudbox to VRAY"

All the CPU's in the world are not going to help if you have a GPU rendering engine and all the GPU computing cores are not going to work if you don't have the VRAM to store your texture data or do you have a hybrid engine?

Turbo-boost is at best a sales pitch, it means nothing, it's a theoretical that "might" happen, not "will" happen and it's generally .1/.2 GHz. faster if it can sustain it.

The largest one you can afford. Make sure the software you want to use is compatible with High Sierra.

CountryGirl56 wrote:

Yes, as I mentioned, or I meant to, there are too many variables to entertain a meaningful answer. Mine seems fast. 😎

I've tailored my workflow to my network devices. Unless someone wants to pay me I'm limited with throwing money at my computer unless I want to sell some guitars.

Unlike computers those things actually go up in value. 🙂

I sold my used LP and bought an new SG. The LP was a '95 and it was right handed, the SG was a '98 and left handed. If I never learned lefty I would still have an LP. The LP more useful clean or dirty, but the SG is just a meaner chunk of wood out of a Marshall 1/2 stack - which is useless in my guest room.

Yes, as I mentioned, or I meant to, there are too many variables to entertain a meaningful answer. Mine seems fast. 😎

I have a 20th Anniversary Les Paul Custom. It hasn't increased in value as much as I would have liked. 😟

I always liked SGs. I think we've left the topic however. 😁

I should have put "largest" in quotes. The more cores and the faster the CPU, the more you can do quicker. If you are looking for benchmarks… I'm not certain enough iMac Pro's have been shipped to have in-depth analysis of the various configurations.

Edit: As stated, the GPU is also a factor. Then of course whether current software is optimized for the iMac Pro is another question.