The Mac FAQ
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I dropped the full Photoshop, and went to affinity, and I'm happy, but, of course, that depends on what you want to do with the program.
Little update on the iMac M4 today.
I did re-enable Spotlight after I excluded the Users/Shared folder. Shared has all the DAZ content folders and totals around 1.3TB of stuff. With it excluded from Spotlight indexing, I went to pick up lunch today. When I got home, Spotlight had finished indexing the remainder of the drive. It also consumed so little space on the SSD, that I couldn't tell how much my free space had shrunk. I can now search everywhere on the Mac except in the Shared folder. That doesn't bother me since I mostly look for things within DS (Smart Content). I save my self-created presets, renders, etc. in my user account folder and that one is included in Spotlight. So, quite happy that Spotlight worked by excluding the 1.3TB worth of DAZ installed content folders.
Also, I do have several alternative image editing apps on the Mac. I gave Pixelmator Pro a try and I think it will do most (even all?) of what I routinely did with Photoshop Elements. Will need to play with it a bit more to make sure. I'll report back after I've had a chance to use it to post-process my renders.
Haven't moved all my DAZ content over to the external T9 SSD. Now that I have enough free space on the internal storage, I'll hold off until it fills up a bit more.
I did get a slight speed up with Iray rendering. Forgot that I had it set to use up to 8 cores. Set it to 10 core limit this morning and can see that all cores are maxxing out during rendering. The performance cores always ran at full power, now all the efficiency cores join in at full power. So that's a nice little boost with Iray.
One last thing for now, but an important one: Thanks to @Totte for helping the DAZ developers figure out the menu bar related crashes. I'll take stability over the slight convenience from the menu bar change. Thanks all for letting me know about this.
Still happy with the iMac M4. I continue to tinker with creating morphed/mixed figure shapes almost daily.
Enjoy your day!
Lee
This has happened to me more than once using Monterey 12.7.6, and possibly earlier versions of Monterey. I'm using it on a Macintosh pro late 2013 edition. I'm wondering if this is related to the Monterey OS.
After acquiring a number of snapshots, when I scan the data volume with disk utility, I'll get a message that the snapshots are mixed up somehow and I should Back up the data on the drive as quickly as possible. I do that.
When I try to repair the drive in recovery, it fails on the data volume. The other volumes check out OK.
So I fix this by reinstalling the system OS. After I do that, all of the volumes, including the data volume, check out OK.
So are there any thoughts as to why this happens? Why do the snapshots get mixed up on the data volume?
Out of curiosity. What is the best/safest studio version to run on a M2 mac currently?
- And is there already feature parity with regards to the Premier only plugins?
Filament is still not on the table hence, as this won't be there until studio 5 which might be 26/27ish, right?
If you have access to it, I would say it's Public Beta 4.23.0.4: it's basically Daz Studio 4.23.0.1 (so it has the fix for the menus and access to anything except Filament/Filatoon) with the fix for the plugins (some plugins won't load with Daz Studio 4.23.0.1, the bug was fixed in Daz Studio 4.23.0.3 but Daz never pushed either 4.23.0.3 or 4.23.0.4 as the new general release).
I don't know enough about Daz Studio 4.23.1.XXX (the current beta builts) regarding stability, but due to it being a currently developped version it could be less stable than 4.23.0.4. Having said that, if you're regularly using Restore figure pose, it's blazingly fast with the current beta built. And it would give you access to Persona Presets (Scene subset with Character Preset functionnalities).
Mac version doesn't have access to Render Queue, but outside of that, I think we have everything else. Here's a screenshot of all the Premier plugins available on Mac:
Geforce RTX 50XX are currently not supported by the Iray version included in Daz Studio and from what Richard Haseltine said, an Iray version supporting them can not be used with Daz Studio 4.
So, either Daz is able to find a solution to have an Iray version supporting RTX 50XX with Daz Studio 4, or it will have to wait for Daz Studio 5.
From our point of view as MacOS users, the later is likely the best outcome, because if DS 5 is the only way to support the best RTX hardware, releasing it will likely have a higher priority than it had when the most visible missing feature was Filament for MacOS.
Strictly, Totte provided a crash log that the development team then used to figure out the issue - which ilustrates the importance of providing crash reprots and so on.
With the new Mac studio models out, which version of the M chip would be better to get in order to run DAZ Studio https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/03/apple-unveils-new-mac-studio-the-most-powerful-mac-ever/
The M4 chip, or the M3 ultra?
I've been looking over the info on the new Mac Studio. I'm going to see what the reviewers say regarding performance. For me, it seems like the M3 Ultra will yield the best performance over the M4 Max. Folks are guessing that the M4 Ultra (if one is coming) may be dedicated for use in the Mac Pro. I was hoping that the Mac Studio would have the M4 Ultra. That M3 Ultra does look quite impressive on paper, though. :)
I pondered getting the Mac mini M4 Pro instead of the iMac M4, but went with the iMac until I see a substantial update to DAZ Studio (Apple Silicon full/native compatibility with a bit more feature pairty with our PC friends). Will likely order the Macbook Air M4 tonight/tomorrow to have a thin, light, and fanless laptop to replace my Macbook Air M1. And tinker with DS while out and about. After that, I will want a much more powerful Mac, likely the new Mac Studio at this point, to serve as my documents/media hub and DAZ Studio system. But only if DAZ Studio will run quickly and natively on it with good rendering speed (even if not using the GPU cores.) Otherwise, a lower spec Mac will let me enjoy my non-3D graphics, music production, writing, and entertainment needs at a lower cost.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, the base M4 has a nice DS performance boost over the base M1. I would bet that moving to the higher variants of M4 (or M3 Ultra) will see a significantly higher performance boost with DS. Within the limits of what the Mac version of DS is capable of.
In short, I'd think the Mac Studio with M3 Ultra and ample RAM and storage options would be pretty good using Mac DS 4 if you consider DS 4 is likely as good as it will ever be feature-wise for the Mac. For me, the questions on choosing a new Mac have been: Timeliness of DAZ delivering the modern version of DS, the feature set parity of said new DS (Filament for instance), native Apple Silicon support (not Rosetta emulation), and ownership model used by DS (subscription, single pay option for plug-ins/add-ons/assets/even the app iteslf.)
We'll see what the reivews say about the new Mac Studio and I'll see if there are compelling reasons to justify picking one up with the primary goal of using DS (current and future? versions.)
I'm rambling - train of thought typing! LOL!
Lee
My late 2013 edition of a Mac Pro has thunderbolt two. The new Mac studio has thunderbolt five. Is there a way to connect the two computers so as to run migration assistant? Is there a way to hook up one of my present external drives with thunderbolts too to the Mac studio with thunderbolt five?
I'm pretty sure TB2 has a different connector type than TB4 or TB5. So the cables that I've seen won't work. TB4 and 5 have USB-C type connectors. You'd need an adapter and I'm not sure if that will work with Migration Assistant. I was prepared to use my Time Machine backup of the M1 iMac (on an external SSD drive) to migrate everything to the M4 iMac. Luckily, I found out that I could connect the 2 iMacs together with my TB4 cable and migrate directly to the new iMac. It did take a while (few/couple of hours?) for the nearly 2 TB of data to transfer and I couldn't use either iMac while the migration was underway. I did pick up an Apple TB5 cable at Target after the fact. You can use TB4, 5, and maybe 3 on the newer Macs. The Mac with the slowest Thunderbolt port will be the fastest speed that you'll get between the 2 Macs. I *think* you'd be better off by using an external drive and Time Machine to do the migration. Plus side is you'll have a backup of the Mac Pro in case you need it in the future.
By the way, I did order the new M4 Macbook Air earlier tonight. Should be getting the 15" MBA with 24GB RAM and 2TB SSD in the new blue color next week. I'll be giving my M1 iMac and M1 Macbook Air away after that. If I go for a more powerful desktop Mac in the near future, I'll migrate all the data from my 16" Macbook Pro (Intel i9 processor) and give that away as well.
Lee
Well, I do have external drives and time machine backups on the external drives, but I still have the same question. How would I be able to connect a drive with a thunderbolt two slot to a new Mac with the thunderbolt five slot? Would using the so-called Geek Squad at Best Buy's Be a real option?
Also, I really think it's important to hook up External drives to be able to have a back up via Time machine. But I also use SuperDuper to get a full backup of the internal drive, which to me is really essential. That's helped me out in a number of cases in the past. So my question here is is there yet any external drives with thunderbolt five connectors? Once I get a new Macintosh, I won't want to use the present external drives that I have precisely because the connection speed would be determined by the slowest item being connected. Hook up a thunderbolt five computer to a thunderbolt two drive and the connection speed would be thunderbolt two.
What about these yellow tokens that are being sold in the shop? Does the AI assistance work in the Mac version of DAZ Studio? Is this only for premier members?
It's not premier-only, but from the plugin documentation, it seems to be windows only: https://yellow-1.gitbook.io/yellow-tafi-plugin/yellow-daz-studio-plugin/getting-started/introduction
Which they definitely should state on the page where you can purchase their non-refundable token packs....
Well, I'm glad I didn't buy any. Thank you for that "Windows only" Information. Anyway, I'd be more interested if it included Genesis 8 Figure shapes, because I have many more genesis 8 Characters than I do Genesis 9.
Apparently the "windows-only" mention is in fact present on the "Yellow" page but hidden in the "Additional product information" section that I (and probably a lot of customers) didn't even see.
https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MYH93AM/A/thunderbolt-3-usb-c-to-thunderbolt-2-adapter
https://support.apple.com/en-us/102477
Thanks for both of these links, they should help.
What about wanting to hook up a drive that is thunderbolt five to the thunderbolt five computer, so that I could get Time Machine done quickly or a full black up using SuperDuper quickly? Are there any such drives available now?
Luckily, I have a cousin who was a senior vice president in Charge of information technology. He should be able to help me with things like hook ups. But he wasn't a Mac Person, so I need some articles or things to show him.
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/external-storage#interface-ports:thunderbolt-5
I don't see thunderbolt five external drives there, am I missing something?
They showed up for me:
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/owc-envoy-ultra
OK, thank you. I thought they were just very small portable drives. They look like they're about 2 TB each. Are the portable ones just as good as the ones that just sit on the desktop? The ones I have are plugged in and sit on the desktop, and get their power from being plugged in. I've heard that the portables are perhaps weaker and that they are depending on the Mac computer for their power. Is that the case with these drives, do you know?
Went back and looked at the specs, and they just seem to be bus powered. Are there any of that plug-in and get more power that way?
Does someone knows where Daz is hidding the list of the directories added to the Content Library panels ?
I have uninstalled Daz Studio and the PostgreSQL thingy, then removed anything (outside of the DIM folder) in the Applications folder, same deal with ~/Library/Applications Support/DAZ 3D/ (so everything outside of the files related to DIM was removed) but once I have re-installed Daz Studio, the previous list of directories in my Content Library is back
I know I can remove all directories from Daz, but I would like to know why something like that is not removed when the application itself is removed. And why anything else didn't survive the removing.
I didn't see that Daz is storing files in both ~/Library/Application Support/DAZ 3D and ~/Users/[myname]/Library/Application Support/DAZ 3D. I removed the later, but not the former.
Removing both didn't change the situation, so I tried using AppCleaner and it still didn't change the situation.
But while looking at what AppCleaner removed, I opened ~/Users/[myname]/Library/Preferences and saw that even after AppCleaner or DIM, a couple of .plist files survived.
Removed them finally cleaned the Content Library directories list.
I don't understand why you wanted such a thorough cleaning. What was the problem?
No real problem but I wanted to change the way I'm keeping a second computer synchronised with my Mac and I'm also planning on slowly adding metadata to products from third party stores and maybe later for various freebies I like.
I wanted to make sure both databases were close to each other, so it felt easier (considering I planned on redownloading everything because instead of synchronising 'My DAZ 3D Library' I'll synchronise the download folder and use DIM on the second computer too) to start from a clean slate (I do have a backup of the previous situation).
I could have removed all directories from Daz Studio, but I didn't thought they would survive un-installing Daz Studio, so when I discovered they were still here, I wanted to understand why they survived everything I tried to make them goes away.
I remember in a discussion somewhat above this, a discussion about the M4 chip and the M3 chip -- It
was said that the M3 chip could not do something that the M4 chip can do. Was it Ray Tracing? Anyway, now we have the Mac studio with an M4 chip or an M3 ultra chip. Does the M3
Ultra a chip outweigh the M4 chip in a Mac Stidio In terms of its ability to run DAZ studio? Which should be the better version of the new Mac studio?
https://www.theverge.com/reviews/627419/apple-mac-studio-m3-ultra-first-look-benchmarks
here's a review. Does anyone know how DAZ Studio will run on this MAC Studio?!
I think we'll need to wait another day or so until we see some more in-depth reviews of the new Mac Studio. At present, I'm now feeling that the M4 Max would be better for CPU rendering in DS rather than with the M3 Ultra. If I'm reading the initial reviews correctly, the M3 Ultra's single cores are a little slower than M4 Max cores. I'll need to go back and see how many cores the M4 Max and M3 Ultra have. If the M3 Ultra has more cores, it could be overall faster than the M4 Max.
I was hoping for an M4 Ultra, but since that's not an option, I'll make a decision once more benchmarks are published.
I suspect that DS will run just fine on the new Mac Studio. At least the latest betas anyway. No crashing on my M4 iMac over the past week or so that I've owned it. Been stable and about 1.5 to 2.0 times improvement in rendering time for my projects (compared to my M1 iMac.) Pretty sure folks have been having issues with the regular (non-beta) version of DS on macOS Sequoia and maybe a few earlier versions of macOS.
If I were buying today, I'd likely get a Mac Studo M4 Max with 96, 128, or 192GB of RAM, a 4 or 8TB SSD, and an Apple Studio display. Would like to get the Pro XDR display, but would like to see the price come down or a new version with better specs (for the same price.)
Should have the M4 MacBook Air in the next day or 2. Tracking currently says Thursday, but there's a chance for delivery tomorrow.
If I decide to wait on the Mac Studio, I'll get a Studio Display, and top spec M4 Pro Mac mini (top M4 Pro chip, 64GB RAM, and 8TB SSD.). Will go that route mostly to use as my hub system with all my projects/documents/music stored on it. That'd be powerful enough for running DS in it's current forrm while letting me hold off until New DS arrives. Then I can get a Mac that will do New DS justice - I hope.
Might change my mind on all this after the hands-on reviews re: new Mac Studio come out, but those are my current thoughts on the matter. :)
Lee
Please let us know what you decide, the M4 chip or the M3 ultra, and why..
Will do. :)
Lee