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Twitter: @onshapetricks & @babart1977
There's nothing wrong with my M1, but it's been awhile.
I'll have to see how much the new M2 weights as this is my largest criteria when buying a laptop. They're talking about a 14" as the smallest and I'm not a big screen type guy.
They're also talking about the GPU being able to run real time ray-tracing which would be nice if we had something that'd do that. Apple is getting criticized for not having anything that'll need it. There's no games on a MAC. I'm thinking a browser, webgl, gltf and OS. One of these days we're not going to have red, blue & green parts; but we'll be working on real looking metalized assemblies with shadows. We'll tell our kids that when we did CAD with only RGB colors.
Looks like to hardware is ready, we're just waiting on the software.
Well this is interesting.
Now that you’ve made this post, I think I’m going to wait to get my next Mac.
I would be interested in getting the M2 because I do think I would be able to utilize the power of it
You mentioned how there needs to be software for the M1.
There are 3 programs available now that most likely can use that M2 to great effect.
Though I will say that a big emphasis of some of this software is for architectural visualization. Nonetheless, in the following links, you will see items that could have been designed by such as a mechanical engineer. The NORTH POLE video below, starts by showing a pot and a sink that a designer or engineer could have modeled, and then went on to render, as was done in the video
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EoXfe2Ei60Q&feature=emb_logo
Twinmotion Is a real-time renderer that allows you to animate the camera, the sun, water, wind blowing through trees, people walking, cars driving along the road, and SOME other things. But you cannot animate everything.
It’s not a general animation program. It’s a real-time rendering app that allows you to do fly through’s or flyovers, in which only certain types of objects are capable of showing movement
EPIC is the company that owns Twinmotion. Epic makes the UNREAL ENGINE which is used to make games. That Unreal Engine is the power behind Twinmotion
The link below, shows how people are using their M1’s with the Unreal Engine app. Scroll to the last few messages or posts.
https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/m1-mac-4-26-compatibility-report/155331
Also interesting is that the Unreal Engine, is starting to be used by some in the movie industry for real-time rendering
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M-AV-bctI1o
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IUkD87VSmyg
From what I viewed on the net, some architects start their project in Twinmotion, but when they need to develop the project’s visualization further, they take it all the way into the Unreal Engine itself, for its more advanced capabilities
There’s anther renderer called Redshift which is GPU accelerated, and this works using Apple’s Metal API for Macs.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fv7JV3OKMeg&list=PLIqMw1vG1TWYSNBdkdY0Rai6mJNDumura&index=1
And last — there is Enscape who recently joined forces with the maker of V-ray
Up to now. Enscape was only for windows. But, they just announced that they’re going to start with a beta version of Enscape for users of Sketchup first. So it looks like Enscape is on the road to being a Mac program also
So — there are three apps right now that you could use with your M1:
Twinmotion
Unreal Engine
Redshift
I know Twinmotion is free to at least some people right now. It might be free to anybody
And I saw in a video that the Unreal Engine was free. But I don’t know when that video was made so I don’t know if it is still free at this time
Redshift, well that’s a different story. I have one app that has Redshift incorporated into it, likely because Redshift and this program I have, are both owned by the same company
But other than something like that, I think you’re going to have to pay for Redshift. But, I think it’s fairly reasonably priced
I really like my M1 mac. Although the only native app I run is audio hijack and I'm not sure if it's running through rosetta.
Do you know if there's any webgl work being done for M1 or M2? I suppose the browsers would have to implement it.
Here's my new kitchen I'm working on in OS:
Can you imagine working in a cad system with these graphics? I'd never sleep.
I don’t know which programs are working via Rosetta. And I don’t know anything about webGL either so sorry I can’t help you in those areas
I don’t own an M1. I’m still using a 2017 entry-level MacBook Pro. But I want to start getting into Twinmotion so when you mentioned the M2, that definitely caught my attention. That’s what I’m looking to get
The way I’m trying to assess things right now is by looking at frame rates and watching the responsiveness of the interface as I watch guys give Twinmotion demos on YouTube using M1, M1 Pro and M1 Max.
The guys that were using Twinmotion were able to get up above 100 FPS at times, depending upon the quality they selected for the real time render. But a lot of times they were working slower than that maybe down to 30 but it still looked very good
On the other hand the guys that were using Unreal Engine, such as the guys that author and program games, well some of those guys were getting up to 185 fps, and I think I read of one instance where a guy was getting up to 250 fps, and the guy thought that there was some type of a governor as if the software was artificially holding him back from getting more frames per second.
I did install Twinmotion. I opened up a Vectorworks file that I exported and then imported into Twinmotion. I rotated around the model which was just a bathroom. That’s all I was able to do because I haven’t looked at any tutorials yet.
I just don’t know how far I’ll be able to get using my old 2017 MacBook, as I don’t like to use that Macbook when the fans come on and it starts to get real hot so until the M2 comes out, I’m limited
From what videos I saw, I guess what happens is that once you bring a model into Twinmotion, and then when you go into your modeling app and make a change, well Twinmotion then updates the render automatically in real time. So there’s some type of a link between your CAD app and Twinmotion. It might be a type of thing that once you do a save in your CAD app, then Twinmotion does an update. At this point, I don’t know how things are synced
On some of the videos I watched, guys were using either a MacBook Air or a MacBook Pro and they had up to three monitors. The built-in monitor and two other monitors. So maybe on one monitor you have your CAD app and then on another monitor you have Twinmotion. Or maybe you just have one bigger screen and have one window for your CAD model or one window for Twinmotion.
Does anyone know if Onshape is able to interface with Twinmotion? I hope so as Solidworks is set up for it.
The reason why I’m looking to use Twinmotion in particular is because it has a lot of assets. Trees, plants, furniture and everything. And I’m looking to do a big landscape / hardscape redo here at the home and I need to use something like this to show to the city. Those guys are pretty picky at times down there and I wanna make sure they see something that looks real nice
But Billy, as far as being able to work with well rendered models that update in real time — yeah I’d love that. That would put a smile on my mug that would go from ear to ear. That’s what I’m hoping for when the M2 Max comes along
webGL is the graphics engine for browsers, it's equivalent to openGL found on desktop machines. It's the base technology that allowed OS to exist.
A few years back I wanted my own web viewer to show my onshape files on my website. This was a deep vast hole that I fell into and I never reached the bottom. At the time there was no way to transfer the OS data to my servers other than stl which made data management of an assembly impossible. gltf has fixed this issue, but I haven't followed up.
One of the things that stuck was the concept of shaders for parts. When you added a material to a part in OS why not assign an appropriate shader to the part?
Current CAD designs:
Please! I'm not picking on these students, but these don't look real.
This is unreal v5, it's unreal
I'm not a gamer, but holy crap! It's hard to tell this unreal stuff is not real.
A search on webGL and unreal has many projects that have containerized unreal code to load onto your servers to allow you to render your project. Amazon has graphics servers setup and running Pixyz that'll take your CAD and convert to a gltf rendering and it's only $15,000 / year. I'm not interested in batch styled renderings, I just want my models to look real while I'm designing.
Onshape can we please just add some shaders to our materials so our models look real?
I currently have a macbook air 13". They say the new 13" air will have a glowing ribbon strip for function keys which I've never liked. The 14" macbook pro won't have the strip, they dropped it, which makes this one more desirable.
I carry a computer wherever I go so weight is important and I never got used to the multi-screen arrangement so a big screen doesn't matter to me. I think the 14" macbook pro has a zero border around the screen making it close to the 13" size.
I'm also not sure if the super M2, faster chip, is available in the 13". I'm saving my lunch money up so I can buy the super M2. Over the years I have found it's always best to buy the fastest chip.
Billy I’ve read a bunch of your posts. You’re the kind of guy that has the brain to get into a program like Unreal Engine.
On the other hand, the way I see it, Twinmotion is for a guy like me. A DRASTICALLY stripped down version of Unreal. Basically it’s Unreal for Dummies and that’s me.
I would love to see you get into Unreal and then I’d like to see what you do with it. I bet you would have a blast working with that
I believe Unreal Engine is free if you’re using it for non-commercial purposes, and I believe you could go download it right now
With Twinmotion it’s free for non-commercial. And if you want to use it for commercial I think it’s 500 bucks, but I did not take the time to see if that was a yearly charge or to purchase it out right
Head over to EPIC GAMES and download that thing.
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/
since I don’t buy computers all that often anymore. I’m gonna probably get close to the very best thing they have. The M2 Max probably topped out on everything except for the hard drive.
I’ll probably get a medium size built-in hard drive and then get an external hard drive on top of that
I expect to pay a chunk of change for this computer, but I don’t treat myself to that many things anymore so why not
I'm going to have some free time at the end of the summer and I'm trying to figure out what todo. If I get something working, I'll send you a link.
so Unreal 5 is like a beta or alpha version or whatever they call it — it’s not a regular version. I think the version that some are using on their M1’s right now is 4.27. You might want to check that out
I’ve never been a gamer either. But the detail where they’re rendering billions of triangles down to the pixel size in real time — geez that’s full on super computer work it seems like
Absolutely completely amazing. Just amazing
I spent a lot time yesterday reading the EULA for Unreal 5. I've never seen anything like this. It's free as long as you're not making money, and by the way, the 1st $million, you get to keep that. That's incredible, the gaming industry seems to be really friendly to startups.
thanks for sharing the unreal demo. It's really really wild!
It is amazing and I'm not a gamer. I still wondering why we only have RGB colors in cad? What's wrong?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gry36cT3TdI&pp=QAFIAQ%3D%3D