Macbook PRO M2

[LK]

Hello,

I am trying to find the best macbook to run Archicad and Twinmotion. I want macbook pro with M2 chip, but I am not sure if it will be compatible. Here are the specifics:

Apple M2 8-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine

24 GB unified memory

1 TB SSD storage

I don't know if the mac will run theese programs without any problems so I would like to know what do you think.

Thanks!

[Emre Senoglu · Accepted solution]

MBP M2 even as the base model will run all of your AC projects just fine. Twinmotion could benefit from an upgraded model, but should still be able to run %90 of your projects in high quality. One thing to keep in mind that TM currently doesn't support Pathtracing on mac. This could possibly change in the future - UE 5.1 will bring Native Mac support and TM is moving onto UE5 with the next update. The way I deal with this is I build my projects on my MBP (M1 Pro Base model) then rent a virtual pc for rendering with path tracer. You will only need to use the virtual machine for 10-15 mins since your scene would be already set up.

Here's a look of how one of my latest scenes performs in TM. The file includes a lot of custom vegetation, as well as some quixel and sketchfab models. Nearly 30M polygons, in medium settings you get 10-18 fps. Which doesnt sound too good, but if you look at the video, it is perfectly acceptable.

https://capture.dropbox.com/N7xA6vXEBc0Xewbo

[Jose Gradoli]

Twinmotion will benefit from the upgraded M2 MacBook, especially the unified RAM/GPU RAM. 8GB models will suffer with interiors with some lights.

I'm not sure with the Epic-Apple war UE5 will be fully compatible with macOS..

[Alex7]

Hi, I am really intrigued about the virtual machine you described. Do you have any more information on that? Link? Cost? Do you need a subscription? etc

[Emre Senoglu]

I've used iRender in the past and it was pretty smooth. You don't need a subscription, you pay for the time you use. However the minimum 'credit' you can load on your account is 50 usd. Once you charge your account, you then only pay for the time you rent the machines. The lowest tier machine (RTX3090 24GB vRAM) was enough for me, and should be good enough if you're doing stills / short clips. That configuration costs 4.16 usd per hour, though I can't quite figure out their new payment system - since it says you pay for 6 hour at a time.

You upload your files using their upload app (similar to dropbox) and you can do this before you start your rent time. For the first use, you have to install the app to the virtual PC yourself. From there the app stays installed.

However my main method is to remote into my own PC that is located in another country than me. I currently use chrome remote desktop app, however there are other apps that do the same thing: teamviewer, microsoft remote desktop, etc.