Autodesk Maya on the M1 Max 16” MacBook Pro - An Animator’s Perspective

I have spent the past year using a M1 Max MacBook Pro 16” for personal and freelance animation work - predominantly in Autodesk Maya. I now have a pretty good idea of how it runs (through Rosetta) on Apple Silicon. In this video, I will run through a few different tests to show how it performs, and give an animator’s perspective on whether it’s worth purchasing for Maya. Hope this is useful to you.

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Specs:
Apple MacBook Pro 16" (2021)
M1 Max 10 core CPU, 32 core GPU
64GB Ram
2TB SSD

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Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction
00:47 - Autodesk - Is there a native version coming?
02:49 - Rosetta 2 - How it works
05:39 - Running multiple instances of Maya
09:40 - How a simple scene performs
11:13 - How a complex scene performs
14:58 - Viewport Interactivity
20:02 - Rig Interactivity
26:17 - Animation Caching
32:05 - Is an Apple Silicon Mac worth it for Maya?

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Links:
How x86 to arm64 Translation Works in Rosetta 2

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Rigs used:

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Music used:
Six Seasons by Unicorn Heads

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Social

#autodeskmaya #applesilicon #M1MaxMacBookPro #animation

[sketchd]

Thank you for such a thorough demo into using Apple Silicon, like the MacBook Pro, with the versions of Maya you tested! This gives me a lot to consider and helpful on a future purchase.

[JohnyByrne]

It's really great to see another animators experience with this machine. Looks like things are running great! Also nice to have a sneaky peek at your work+ workflows.

[Gluthen]

Finally a video of how Maya runs on the M1 from an animators perspective. There's just one other video with some dude duplicating objects - interesting, but this is so much better. Thanks a million for making it. It runs better than I had hoped. Would love a native port, of course, but the performance looks surprisingly good through Rosetta.

[gherat]

I’m the guy that asked the AMA developer. I recently heard they are actually beta testing a native Apple silicon version of Maya and already have a working m1 beta version. But they are not allowed to say anything specific about it because of some law.. The Sarbanes–Oxley Act.

[lucasdotart]

Great overview, James. Thanks for doing this!

I'm still learning 3D animation, and 3D modeling in general. I've been using a M1 Pro (with CPU % GPU cores maxed out and 32GB of memory) with Maya 2022 and so far, no problems whatsoever. Of course, I'm not working with complex projects like you.

I also have a PC (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3060Ti, 32GB) and my renders are a bit faster on the Mac, using V-Ray. On the PC side, I've tried render using CUDA and RTX, but they are slower than the CPU render itself. Someone told me that if I'm going to render via GPU, I need to create my project from scratch thinking about the GPU, like lights and whatnot, but like I said, I'm still learning.

Cheers!

[isaacsalinas]

Hey! Thank you for this video! Any thoughts on the new m4 chips? Would love to see a video with their performances. Thanks again!!

[johncho]

Great video. Every other review of Apple silicon seems to assume that all creative work done on Macs is video editing. I use a 14” MBP and iPad Pro for 2D work. For 3D, it’s windows/Nvidia all the way for me. But glad to see there are people doing 3D on Macs.

[betopradod]

James, I have bought a MacBook Pro M2Max 64gb. It is running so fine and smooth with Maya. Even for complex hair and fur development with XGen. Thanks for your attention.
Beto Prado

[MichaelHalsell]

James, are you considering the M3 upgrade? Could you share your business need or workflow needs for or against the upgrade? Thank you.

[MaximilianBieber]

Also using the 16 inch M1 Max Macbook Pro and started learning Maya. Really hoping we see some great updates with Maya 2024. It should come out in the next few months if I got their Update Cycle correct. Let's hope we get some kind of update for improved apple silicon support.

Apple should release their Mac Pro in the Sommer at WWDC or at least show him off, so a native Maya Ver. could be something they could use to demo it. They mostly only show Cinema 4D in their PR Reels which is already native and seems to perform very well. Let's hope we get something for Maya and Arnold too.

[blane]

Thanks for this detailed breakdown James. Would you be able to do a follow up video since Arnold 7.1.4 for Maya 2023 has native support for Apple Silicon?

[Aselia-qw]

Can you share what are the specs of the machine that you working with for this?
Great video by the way!

[haruka]

Hello. Thank you for showing how to use Maya on Mac. Recently I stared using Maya and it is very first time doing these type of staff. I'm so excited to use Maya, however now I'm stuck with view sequence staff. I tried many things but there is no answer to be shown view sequence on Mac. I tried Quick time player, INNA, things like that. Is there another way to see that object I crate? Also, is that right that unless I have to use this view sequence I can't update staff I create on any SNS? If it's possible, I would like to see this comments and answer my questions. Thanks.

[anilchhetri]

Best video i could find on YT regarding maya + mac + character animation +viewport maya playback test.
I'm planning to buy mac mini m4 for my personal use 80% for character/creature animation and no gaming.
I currently have i7 10700 2.9 Ghz and RTX2060, 32 gb ram,
on one particular creature animation file with 2 creature rigs maya playback gives me 10fps, then i tested the same maya file on my friend's m2 mac mini 8gb model. It gave me 24 fps. and i was blow away by the performance.
i also compared (online) m1 max benchmark with m4 mac mini and it shows almost similar CPU results.
can u suggest if i should just go for m4 mac mini or opt for m4 pro mac mini? i don't think i need more GPU for my work.

[xeppepochannel]

Very useful information. I've been using Maya on both Windows and Mac M1 and I haven't noticed any difference. A native version should make an improvement in performance so I hope it comes soon.
Changing the subject, do you use a graphic tablet to work in Maya? Thank you very much

[hugofelipe]

For the creation of 3D environments and 3D clothes for the metaverse, being the "do everything", which machine do you recommend me? MacBooks Pro Max or any laptop with Nvidia RTX 3090 or 3080? Note: I have no problem with costs. Thank you, friend! Great video.

[gherat]

Autodesk had finally added native Apple Sillicon support for Maya 2024 including Arnold!

[atstylee]

Hey James, thank you for the great review. Have you since noticed any hiccups or ran into any problems whilst animating on the M1 MBP? Also are you thinking to upgrade to the latest M3 chips?

[Tlow_]

Hi, James! I wanted to ask if the software has improved in any way in the past year and which version of Maya you are using at the moment. Thanks!

[OndrejMalota]

Good video! May I ask you guy, does you Maya crash when you switch Material Viewer in Hypershade from Hardware to Arnold?