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My experience with it is somewhat negative. Since I upgraded, I've had a lot of weird little things happen with the system suddenly highlighting everything anywhere near my cursor as if I was clicking on things (which I wasn't), and I've had a higher number of freezes and crashes. In fact, I had bought the RSSY 3DL to Iray converter, and any time I try to run it, Daz just closes immediately. Still no ability to use filament/filatoon tools, and an uptick in dForce explosions and simulation freezes. I'm kinda wishing I'd held off on upgrading.
Thank you. I'm sorry I went up to the present version. I just don't think as 3-D cares about McIntosh users.
They do, but the problem is that Apple has done some really severe changes that Qt4 does support ( and Studio 4 is built on Qt4 ), and the Qt company deprecated Qt4 years and years ago and wont bother fixing what is broken, as it is fixed in Qt6 (which DS 6 is built upon).
Then we need to remember, Studio is stil free to use ( although content cost ), so they cannot just throw in a hoard of developers like other companies do and charge you $3K /year /seat for using it like the other big 3D companies do.
And for crashing scripts, as I said before, that is most of the time ( what I have analyzed so far ), a problem with Rosetta2 emulator emulating a JS engine running JS with Qt signal and slots calls,
Even loading an M4 ( causing the PowerLoader to activate) cashes, if Rosetta2 is unstable.
Usually I run a script I know crashes with an unstable Rosetta2 as soon as I've started DS, then when it doesnt crash, after a few startups, I have a stable DS that runs.
Hi everyone, I am about to purchase a new mac, and I wanted to know how much improvement (if any) I will get between an M4 and an M4 Pro. The M4 Pro is significantly more expensive. Thoughts? Thanks.
Hi there!
Answering from the US, the only place I currently see a choice between M4 and M4 Pro is the Mac Mini. The M4 chip is currently the only option available with the MacBook Air and iMac, and the MacBook Pro comes with the M4 Pro, M4 Max, or M5 chips as options. So I'm going to make two assumptions here: that you're in the US and looking at the same Mac options I am, and that you are indeed looking at a Mac Mini.
In terms of those assumptions, you have three tiers of Mac Mini with the M4, all of which have 10-core CPUs (with 4 performance cores and 6 efficiency cores), 10-core GPUs, and 120 GB/s memory bandwidth. Then you have a highest tier of Mac Mini with the M4 Pro.
The M4 Pro chip on offer gives you a 12-core CPU (with 8 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores), 16-core GPU, and 273 GB/s memory bandwidth. So that doubles your performance cores and slightly reduces your efficiency core number, gives you 6 additional Graphics Processing Unit cores (especially important for renders), and more than doubles your GBs-per-second processing speed. That last one feels especially significant to me because it can potentially halve the time of a complex render.
The maximum memory you can have with one of the M4 computers is 32GB processing memory and 2TB storage. With the M4 Pro option, you have the ability to max out at 64GB memory and 8TB storage.
But if you're not planning to make any of those upgrades at the time of purchase, you need to look at the difference between the baseline models of the highest-option M4 version and the M4 Pro version. Either way, you'll start with 24GB unified memory and a 512GB SSD. The initial $400 difference then covers doubling your performance cores and the GB/s bandwidth, and giving yourself an additional 6 cores for graphics processing. Those should have a measurable effect on render speed, and thus on the amount of wear-and-tear each render puts on your computer.
The next issue is just whether you're planning in sticking with the baseline configuration or upgrading, either now or in the future. The M4 chip maxes out your upgrade ability at 32GB memory and 2TB storage. If you expect to need more now, or later on, the M4 Pro gives you the ability to move up to a maximum of 64GB memory and 8TB storage.
My personal feeling about the $400 difference between the top-tier M4 model and the M4 Pro model is that it'd be worth it, because the initial differences between the two will directly affect the amount of memory load on your CPU and the completion speed for renders. The processing load that renders put on your machine can also affect how long it lasts, so a larger capacity there can add more time before you have to replace your computer again. In that regard, how much you can upgrade both initially and in the long term will have a major impact, so I recommend giving yourself the extra flexibility to incrementally upgrade before you have to buy a whole new machine.
If my assumptions are wrong, though, and you're looking at a different set of options in a different part of the world, think in terms of the same calculus: how much processing power and processing speed the extra spend will add to your render capabilities and how much that can affect the lifespan of your computer, and how much you can upgrade your memory and storage in the future before you'll need to replace the computer again. My personal feeling is that, if you can justify the M4 model directly beneath it, the M4 Pro model will be even more cost-effective in the long run.
I can compare M1 Max and M4 Max and the M4 Max is about twice as fast rendering as the M1 Max machine. Although the M1 Max Studio only have 32 GB RAM; while the M4 Max has 64 GB RAM.
Rendering, the M5 MacBookPro is about the same speed as the M1 Max de to being a laptop. Personally I love the Studio formfactor, enough ports but still small enought to toss in a backpack.
I just updated my MacMini M4 to OS 26.3.1 and I was messing around with some of the 'new' (at least to me) options and wanted to see if the Display on my Studio Display with Daz Studio was still super tiny but found five options, from Larger Text, lesser, Default, smaller, and More Space. Default was 'usable' but uncomfortable, the next one up was pretty good, (my computer glasses need recalibration) and you would have the option of spreading D|S out more, and Larger Text is big, fills the screen. Below 'Default' with my glasses it is hard to read.
I will admit that when I move D|S over to my HP Pavilion 27xi monitor, regardless of the display setting, the image is sharper and easier for me to see. Like when the optomitrist switches those lenses and asks you what is clearer, this one, or that one.
Something else I noticed just now also, my preset for the Apple Display is set at (P3-600 nits). There are other options but I am not going to miss with that.
I hope this helps someone.
Hi Mary!
The reason DS 6 is small on 4k screens is as DrJellybean said before, a memory leak in Qt, which we helped track down. Until that has been fixed with duct tape, using 2k display is the best option.
Hi Totte,
Is the Qt memory leak in D|S or the Apple OS? That is one thing I have been confused by. I am still using the 2K as my primary monitor.
Thanks
Mary
In Qt, which is the frameork Studio is built on, and in Qt 6.10, which Studio 6 is built on, and only when running on 4K screen on macOS, so I think it's pretty pinpointed, just need sto be fixed.
Would this be a DAZ fix, or a Qt fix? I don't remember exactly when it happened without going back through the logs, but earlier Alphas had normal-sized text elements without the memory leak and I can't remember what they fixed that broke this.
This will be a Daz3d fix; the earlier Alpha's had horrible memory leaks in the previous versions of this Alpha.
The leak is in Qt so it's a Qt fix AFAIK
That's what I was afraid of, being hostage to another company's development schedule; for me, 6.25.2025.22607 (~August 14, 2025) was stable for me; I kept dropping back to it because it had no memory leaks for me nor any text issues. I think the biggest problem I had with that one was that DAZ Studio would occasionally crash when I hid or unhid an item in the scene, otherwise it's still my favourite version for daily use. Even though it's probably a Qt fix, DAZ did something after August 14 that brought the bug to life (unless Qt upgraded at their end at that time).
AFAIK the bug started to trig when DS started to use optimized metal viewport, and the leak is there ( when you move viewport in 4K something leaks framebuffers. My layman analysis is that the 4K screen scaling tricks something about how much memory was allocated for the frame buffer and release to little.
That sounds about right, thanks for taking the time to break it down for me.
Does anyone know anything about the "DAZStudio TV BLENDER" That's on sale in the store today? Is it a plug-in that won't work in v. 2926? Is it "WindowsOnly"? Does it add real AI features to DS?
I've been experimenting with AI such as GROK BECAUSE I'VE BEEN SO DISAPPOINTED WITH DS.
I've been thinking that adding AI conjointly to DS Would really be a Boone for animation. I have gotten some DS RENDERS Animated with AI, And it certainly goes much faster than using the DS Timeline and then using a DS Render.
Apparently, You have to pay for RUNWAY, But it doesn't say how much. I think the usual rate is about $30 per month.
That's a new version of the FAST Blender pipeline that was released a few months ago. Product page says " Supported OS: Windows 11. macOS support coming in Febuary" (the older version did work on Mac IIRC, so it will probably be supported at some point). And no, it doesn't seem to support DS2026 (which is not surprising considering the SDK has still not been published)
From what I can see in the description, it adds features to Blender, not DS. It simply enables you to import your DS content into Blender easily (that part is based on Diffeomorphic IIRC)
I'm thinking of trying Google's chrome browser. I think it's available both on the Apple App Store and on the Google site. Someone told me to pick the Google site because what's on the App Store might be slightly older. On the other hand, I've heard that Apple recommends always downloading things from the App Store to make sure that they are safe. So, what I'm wondering is should I download it from the App Store or should I download it from the Google site. Any thoughts?
Either location is fine to be the equivalent of identical. Since it is an official Google app, the two versions are identical; I believe the one difference is that you may see the availability of updats appear in the App store if you download it from there but both trigger the identical updates at the same time. Chrome is interesting; it has a large number of fans and a lot of add-ons, but on the other hand, it is particularly poorly optimized on macs and uses both a ton of resources and battery life.
I've recently updated to Sequoia and since then the Public build crashes on launch
Studio 4.24 launches fine, but Studio 2026 crashes on launch. I tried a bunch of the common permissions issues and uninstalling plugins, but nothing worked, so I did a wipe and new clean install of my OS and Daz with Daz3DIM in case I screwed something up with my fiddling.
Any ideas on what could be wrong? I attached the log file below
https://www.techradar.com/pro/today-is-the-day-youve-been-waiting-for-egpus-can-now-officially-turn-a-humble-mac-mini-into-an-ai-powerhouse
Here's an article on the web that says that NVIDIA Cards now be run in an attachment to some McIntosh models. Does anybody know more about this?
"Users can run AMD workloads natively, while Nvidia GPUs require a Docker Desktop setup to execute AI computations through NVCC."
I don't know what a "Docket Desktop setup" means. Can anyone provide further clarification about what this article is saying? Is this good news regarding the possibility of running NVIDIA cards with, for example, my Mac Studio?
@inquire Unfortunately, this won't help us Mac users do iRay renders on a nVidia GPU on Mac.
I think this title says it all, "AMD or Nvidia eGPUs can work on Apple Silicon Macs, but not for graphic acceleration"
https://appleinsider.com/articles/26/04/04/amd-or-nvidia-egpus-can-work-on-apple-silicon-macs-but-not-for-graphic-acceleration
eGPU = External GPU
NVCC = NVidia Cuda Compiler
https://docs.nvidia.com/cuda/cuda-compiler-driver-nvcc/
TinyGPU requirements:
https://docs.tinygrad.org/tinygpu/
NVIDIA compiler runs in Docker
Docker Desktop Required for Nvidia cards: The driver requires the software stack to be compiled and managed within Docker.
https://www.docker.com/products/docker-desktop/
Important reddit user note:
ohaiibuzzle:
The reason why it works for AI is because in that workload you are purely doing computational work, you issue a bunch of commands in the GPU's machine code, it runs and return a result.
This does nothing for gaming because on Mac to do so, you needs to run a full Metal stack on the GPU for proper hardware acceleration, which, due to how strict Apple is regarding documentation on how to write those kexts, pretty much only they can write a driver.
https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comments/1saqzq8/mac_support_for_external_nvidia_gpu_available_now/
Thank you very much for answering. That puts it in a totally different light. But, then, what is the use of this? Why would any Mac user buy it?
AI computing.
Well, by AI computing do you mean someone who has AI apps like stable diffusion 1111 on his or her computer? Because there are websites right now, where you can do AI computing and the computing runs on servers rather than on your personal computer.
Or do you mean someone running an AI app like CLAUDE?
There are also websites where you can make AI pictures or AI videos, and again the AI engines are all running off other servers, not your own computer.
So I really don't know what is meant by the term "AI computing."
Basically, a lot of people want to do things with AI that is blocked by the cloud based AI system....
OK, so they run programs, such as stable diffusion 1111, on their own computer. Is that it?
Compy UI, there are numerous of AI stuff out there