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Hello. I am a DAZ Studio newbie and this is my first time posting on this forum.
Has anyone got IRAY GPU rendering to work in DAZ Studio 4.11 Pro on macOS Mojave with an NVIDIA card? I’m on a late 2013 27” iMac with a GTX 780M 4GB VRAM. That's an NVIDIA card, so it should work, correct? It's not an eGPU, so it's supported natively by macOS, and DAZ Studio should support it too as a result, right?
Under Render Settings > Advanced > Hardware, I’m only seeing the CPU for Photoreal Devices and Interactive Devices. It takes forever to even render a simple scene in the viewport in IRAY preview mode.
I don’t have CUDA web drivers installed because there are none available at this time for macOS Mojave.
Display Driver For Windows Xp
What do I have to do in order to get DAZ to use my GPU for IRAY on my iMac? Do I have to roll back to an earlier DAZ Studio version? Perhaps roll back to an earlier macOS version too?
Thank you in advance.
Display Driver Uninstaller
Comments
- edited September 2019
*BUMP*
Does no one know an answer to my question? Am I out of luck?
Post edited by jeedvartsen on - edited September 2019
Hello. I am a DAZ Studio newbie and this is my first time posting on this forum.
Has anyone got IRAY GPU rendering to work in DAZ Studio 4.11 Pro on macOS Mojave with an NVIDIA card? I’m on a late 2013 27” iMac with a GTX 780M 4GB VRAM. That's an NVIDIA card, so it should work, correct? It's not an eGPU, so it's supported natively by macOS, and DAZ Studio should support it too as a result, right?
Under Render Settings > Advanced > Hardware, I’m only seeing the CPU for Photoreal Devices and Interactive Devices. It takes forever to even render the scene in the viewport in IRAY mode.
I don’t have CUDA web drivers installed because there are none available at this time for macOS Mojave.
What do I have to do in order to get DAZ to use my GPU for IRAY on my iMac? Do I have to roll back to an earlier DAZ Studio version? Perhaps roll back to an earlier macOS version too?
Thank you in advance.
The short answer is no. Nvidia has drivers for it to happen but Apple has deprecated Nvidia drivers in Mojave and is pushing forward with Metal so no. Apple has to allow the drivers to be used and they have no interest in drivers that don't mirror the cards in their computers or want to do the support for a card/driver not used in their current computers.
Post edited by nemesis10 on - edited February 28
Thanks for answering, but there still has to be NVIDIA GTX 780M support in Mojave though, seeing as the late 2013 iMacs come equipped with those and it's still listed as compatible with 10.14. The interface etc. still has to use the GPU to render macOS effects, even if its Metal instead of OpenGL. It' still using the GPU for that. So I thought DAZ was able to use the GPU too. But maybe that's not possible without CUDA drivers, which Apple doesn't permit for Mojave.
Anyways, would rolling back to High Sierra work?
What about Boot Camp? Would this allow me to use my GPU in DAZ?
Post edited by jeedvartsen on I'm on a late 2012 iMac, and I think (please note carefully the word think) you might have to downgrade to High Sierra 10.13.6 to get your GPU working—and even then things may be iffy. I can't speak specifically to your situation because I have a puny NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M in this machine. But I spent many hours wading through reams of confusing and often contradictory information on many sites, just to see if it was possible for me to squeeze any productivity out of it for Daz renders, and the little consensus I was able to find said that High Sierra 10.13.6 was the last system software version in which Apple provided any support at all for Nvidia GPUs.
The rumor mill is that there was a huge falling out between Apple and Nvidia that went to legal action. Apple then dropped any and all system-level support for Nvidia and Cuda drivers after High Sierra 10.13.6. Their divorce made us the orphaned children. I haven't budged off of High Sierra 10.13.6 since, primarily for that reason.
After wandering through the jungle, I found that this thread has the best info about what drivers work with Nvidia cards in Macs:
Sorry if this makes me the harbinger of bad news. I'm just the messenger. All good luck with it.
- edited February 28
Sorry if this makes me the harbinger of bad news. I'm just the messenger. All good luck with it.
No worries. It's the 'don't shoot the messenger' scenario. Thank you for this useful information. I'm rolling back to High Sierra then.
Now my next question is, would Boot Camp in High Sierra help even more? Cause running DAZ in Win 10 on my iMac, it's basically a Windows PC then, with all the NVIDIA support goodness that comes with it.
Maybe I'll try and make a Boot Camp partition on Mojave first, and try out DAZ in Win 10 there. Supposedly Apple released an update that fixes Boot Camp on Mojave. If it doesn't work, I'll roll back to High Sierra and also try Boot Camp there as well.
Any experiences with Boot Camp and DAZ?
Post edited by jeedvartsen on - edited September 2019
Any experiences with Bootcamp and DAZ?
Sorry, but nope. Never touched Bootcamp.
Post edited by mavante on Thanks for answering, but there still has to be NVIDIA GTX 780M support in Mojave though, seeing as the late 2013 iMacs come equipped with those and it's still listed as compatible with 10.14. The interface etc. still has to use the GPU to render macOS effects, even if its Metal instead of OpenGL. It' still using the GPU for that. So I thought DAZ was able to use the GPU too. But maybe that's not possible without CUDA drivers, which Apple doesn't permit for Mojave.
Anyways, would rolling back to High Sierra work?
What about Bootcamp? Would this allow me to use my GPU in DAZ?
As for the first part, you need CUDAS for iray to work so nope... Daz studio can only render through cpu. I have the exact same card so I am stuck at High Sierra but can render in iray (dforce, not so much because of Opengl which is also being deprecated for Metal). I use the Nvidia Web driver 387.101015.15.108 and Cuda 418.163. Bootcamp won't work because it is still running through the same CPU/GPU combination and Apple doesn't allow the Nvidia drivers to work. They did had a decade long falling out which you can read about on the web and it is extremely unlikely that it will ever end since Apple has kind of moved on and decided it's needs are better served by what it can control. Both cmpanies make their decisions based on pragmatic business considerations so it remains frozen at this point.
- edited February 28
Thank you for the reply, nemesis10. macOS High Sierra it is then, and thanks for letting me know what Nvidia Web Driver and Cuda driver you use with that. Very useful.
I'm still tempted to try Boot Camp in High Sierra though if only to compare rendering speeds in Win10 vs High Sierra. Oh, and I can play Overwatch in Win10. :P
Post edited by jeedvartsen on Thank you for the reply, nemesis10. macOS High Sierra it is then, and thanks for letting me know what Nvidia Web Driver and Cuda driver you use with that. Very useful.
I'm still tempted to try Bootcamp in High Sierra though if only to compare rendering speeds in Win10 vs High Sierra. Oh, and I can play Overwatch in Win10. :P
If you are daring and I do mean daring: https://youtu.be/54GQ2Ze5tJE
- edited September 2019
Thank you for the reply, nemesis10. macOS High Sierra it is then, and thanks for letting me know what Nvidia Web Driver and Cuda driver you use with that. Very useful.
I'm still tempted to try Bootcamp in High Sierra though if only to compare rendering speeds in Win10 vs High Sierra. Oh, and I can play Overwatch in Win10. :P
If you are daring and I do mean daring: https://youtu.be/54GQ2Ze5tJE
Thank you, but no, hehe, I'm not that daring. That's bound to cause some issues, for sure.
Post edited by jeedvartsen on - edited February 28
Thanks for answering, but there still has to be NVIDIA GTX 780M support in Mojave though, seeing as the late 2013 iMacs come equipped with those and it's still listed as compatible with 10.14. The interface etc. still has to use the GPU to render macOS effects, even if its Metal instead of OpenGL. It' still using the GPU for that. So I thought DAZ was able to use the GPU too. But maybe that's not possible without CUDA drivers, which Apple doesn't permit for Mojave.
Anyways, would rolling back to High Sierra work?
What about Bootcamp? Would this allow me to use my GPU in DAZ?
As for the first part, you need CUDAS for iray to work so nope... Daz studio can only render through cpu. I have the exact same card so I am stuck at High Sierra but can render in iray (dforce, not so much because of Opengl which is also being deprecated for Metal). I use the Nvidia Web driver 387.101015.15.108 and Cuda 418.163. Bootcamp won't work because it is still running through the same CPU/GPU combination and Apple doesn't allow the Nvidia drivers to work. They did had a decade long falling out which you can read about on the web and it is extremely unlikely that it will ever end since Apple has kind of moved on and decided it's needs are better served by what it can control. Both cmpanies make their decisions based on pragmatic business considerations so it remains frozen at this point.
Good news, guys... or at least I think so. I'm writing this from my newly created 1TB Boot Camp partiton (on macOS Mojave non the less), and lo and behold, I've installed DAZ and my renders are a lot faster than on Mojave. My GPU shows up in the Render Settings tab, and I've unchecked the CPU, so it looks like GPU rendering works. It looks like there's still NVIDIA CUDA support in Win 10 Boot Camp on Mojave. The 780m has 4GB of VRAM, and I usually just render one figure in a minimal studio setting with a white/black/colored background so this should be sufficient to keep the IRAY rendering nicely on my GPU.
I'm only using the base CUDA that came with the newest NVIDIA display driver. I'm looking to download the main CUDA drivers too, but I can't find a link to them. But I do find the CUDA Toolkit download 10.1 Update 2. Is that one what I need to download?
And btw, is there a way to see after-the-fact if DAZ used CPU or GPU to render? Maybe a log or someting? I want to be sure.
EDIT: Found the log. It's under Help > Troubleshooting > View Log File...
Post edited by jeedvartsen on If the renders are faster in bootcamp the GPU is definitely being used. You shouldn't need to download the CUDA driver..
- edited September 2019
If the renders are faster in bootcamp the GPU is definitely being used. You shouldn't need to download the CUDA driver..
After a test render, I looked at the log file under Help > Troubleshooting > View Log File... and it turns out it used only the CPU after all. This is very strange, as it rendered much faster on CPU in Win10 than on CPU in macOS Mojave. Is DAZ Studio really THAT badly optimized for Mac?
Here is a small snipped of what the log file says. I have 4GB of VRAM, and I've read that if you just have one figure and a simple backdrop, 4GB should be sufficient.
2019-09-09 02:42:27.205 Iray INFO - module:category(IRAY:RENDER): 1.2 IRAY rend info : CUDA device 0 (GeForce GTX 780M): Scene processed in 0.148s
2019-09-09 02:42:27.213 Iray INFO - module:category(IRAY:RENDER): 1.6 IRAY rend info : CUDA device 0 (GeForce GTX 780M): Allocated 37.2406 MiB for frame buffer
2019-09-09 02:42:27.293 Iray INFO - module:category(IRAY:RENDER): 1.2 IRAY rend info : CUDA device 0 (GeForce GTX 780M): Allocated 864 MiB of work space (1024k active samples in 0.079s)
2019-09-09 02:42:27.299 Iray INFO - module:category(IRAY:RENDER): 1.2 IRAY rend info : CUDA device 0 (GeForce GTX 780M): Used for display, optimizing for interactive usage (performance could be sacrificed)
2019-09-09 02:42:27.309 WARNING: ..........srcpluginsourceDzIrayRenderdzneuraymgr.cpp(302): Iray ERROR - module:category(IRAY:RENDER): 1.6 IRAY rend error: CUDA device 0 (GeForce GTX 780M): an illegal memory access was encountered (while launching CUDA ior stack renderer)
2019-09-09 02:42:27.310 WARNING: ..........srcpluginsourceDzIrayRenderdzneuraymgr.cpp(302): Iray ERROR - module:category(IRAY:RENDER): 1.2 IRAY rend error: CUDA device 0 (GeForce GTX 780M): Failed to update ior stack
2019-09-09 02:42:27.315 WARNING: ..........srcpluginsourceDzIrayRenderdzneuraymgr.cpp(302): Iray ERROR - module:category(IRAY:RENDER): 1.2 IRAY rend error: CUDA device 0 (GeForce GTX 780M): Device failed while rendering
2019-09-09 02:42:27.315 WARNING: ..........srcpluginsourceDzIrayRenderdzneuraymgr.cpp(302): Iray WARNING - module:category(IRAY:RENDER): 1.2 IRAY rend warn : All available GPUs failed.
2019-09-09 02:42:27.315 WARNING: ..........srcpluginsourceDzIrayRenderdzneuraymgr.cpp(302): Iray WARNING - module:category(IRAY:RENDER): 1.2 IRAY rend warn : No devices activated. Enabling CPU fallback.
2019-09-09 02:42:27.320 WARNING: ..........srcpluginsourceDzIrayRenderdzneuraymgr.cpp(302): Iray WARNING - module:category(IRAY:RENDER): 1.2 IRAY rend warn : Re-rendering iteration because of device failure
2019-09-09 02:42:27.320 WARNING: ..........srcpluginsourceDzIrayRenderdzneuraymgr.cpp(302): Iray ERROR - module:category(IRAY:RENDER): 1.2 IRAY rend error: All workers failed: aborting render
2019-09-09 02:42:27.321 WARNING: ..........srcpluginsourceDzIrayRenderdzneuraymgr.cpp(302): Iray ERROR - module:category(IRAY:RENDER): 1.2 IRAY rend error: CUDA device 0 (GeForce GTX 780M): an illegal memory access was encountered (while de-allocating memory)
2019-09-09 02:42:27.325 WARNING: ..........srcpluginsourceDzIrayRenderdzneuraymgr.cpp(302): Iray ERROR - module:category(IRAY:RENDER): 1.2 IRAY rend error: CUDA device 0 (GeForce GTX 780M): an illegal memory access was encountered (while de-allocating memory)
2019-09-09 02:42:27.326 WARNING: ..........srcpluginsourceDzIrayRenderdzneuraymgr.cpp(302): Iray ERROR - module:category(IRAY:RENDER): 1.2 IRAY rend error: CUDA device 0 (GeForce GTX 780M): an illegal memory access was encountered (while de-allocating memory)
2019-09-09 02:42:27.331 WARNING: ..........srcpluginsourceDzIrayRenderdzneuraymgr.cpp(302): Iray ERROR - module:category(IRAY:RENDER): 1.2 IRAY rend error: CUDA device 0 (GeForce GTX 780M): an illegal memory access was encountered (while de-allocating memory)
2019-09-09 02:42:27.332 WARNING: ..........srcpluginsourceDzIrayRenderdzneuraymgr.cpp(302): Iray ERROR - module:category(IRAY:RENDER): 1.2 IRAY rend error: CUDA device 0 (GeForce GTX 780M): an illegal memory access was encountered (while de-allocating memory)
2019-09-09 02:42:27.337 WARNING: ..........srcpluginsourceDzIrayRenderdzneuraymgr.cpp(302): Iray ERROR - module:category(IRAY:RENDER): 1.2 IRAY rend error: CUDA device 0 (GeForce GTX 780M): an illegal memory access was encountered (while de-allocating memory)
2019-09-09 02:42:27.337 WARNING: ..........srcpluginsourceDzIrayRenderdzneuraymgr.cpp(302): Iray ERROR - module:category(IRAY:RENDER): 1.2 IRAY rend error: CUDA device 0 (GeForce GTX 780M): an illegal memory access was encountered (while de-allocating memory)
2019-09-09 02:42:27.343 WARNING: ..........srcpluginsourceDzIrayRenderdzneuraymgr.cpp(302): Iray ERROR - module:category(IRAY:RENDER): 1.2 IRAY rend error: CUDA device 0 (GeForce GTX 780M): an illegal memory access was encountered (while de-allocating memory)
2019-09-09 02:42:27.343 WARNING: ..........srcpluginsourceDzIrayRenderdzneuraymgr.cpp(302): Iray ERROR - module:category(IRAY:RENDER): 1.2 IRAY rend error: CUDA device 0 (GeForce GTX 780M): an illegal memory access was encountered (while de-allocating memory)
2019-09-09 02:42:27.348 WARNING: ..........srcpluginsourceDzIrayRenderdzneuraymgr.cpp(302): Iray ERROR - module:category(IRAY:RENDER): 1.0 IRAY rend error: CUDA device 0 (GeForce GTX 780M): an illegal memory access was encountered (while de-allocating memory)
2019-09-09 02:42:27.348 WARNING: ..........srcpluginsourceDzIrayRenderdzneuraymgr.cpp(302): Iray ERROR - module:category(IRAY:RENDER): 1.0 IRAY rend error: CUDA device 0 (GeForce GTX 780M): an illegal memory access was encountered (while de-allocating memory)What does an 'illegal memory access was encountered' mean?
Also I saw this in the log:
zneuraymgr.cpp(302): Iray WARNING - module:category(POST:RENDER): 1.0 POST rend warn : renderer iray has no more devices available. Postprocessing falling back to CPU.
Does this mean IRAY really ran out of VRAM after all? One model (Victoria 7 HD) and the IRAY Hi-Key Plugin from the DAZ Store, with a couple of lights, that's it. I also have OptiX Prime enabled. It shouldn't take up over 4GB of VRAM, I'm certain. This is confusing.
***
EDIT: This is weird. I tried a new render. Same scene, same model, same amount of lights, same everything, except a new pose and a diffrent camera angle. Just for fun, I tried a render with a much larger output of 5000 x 3750 pixels, and I even upped the SubDivison level from 1 to 2.
Now, for the first time ever, I see IRAY utilizing the GPU right off the bat in the Render History window. It seems to be very finnicky indeed. I'm gonna let it render for an hour or so, and go through the Log to see if it dropped to CPU rendering after a while.
Here's what it said in the Render status window under History, as it initialized the render. Usually I just see CPU right off the bat. Not this time, Here it's GPU straight off the bat:
Rendering in NVIDIA Iray
Compiling Shaders - 0/1
Rendering image
Rendering...
Iray VERBOSE - module:category(IRAY:RENDER): 1.9 IRAY rend progr: CUDA device 0 (GeForce GTX 780M): Processing scene...
Iray VERBOSE - module:category(IRAY:RENDER): 1.4 IRAY rend stat : Geometry memory consumption: 59.152 MiB (device 0), 0 B (host)
Iray VERBOSE - module:category(IRAY:RENDER): 1.4 IRAY rend stat : Texture memory consumption: 196.5 MiB for 24 bitmaps (device 0)
Iray VERBOSE - module:category(IRAY:RENDER): 1.4 IRAY rend stat : Lights memory consumption: 3.4027 MiB (device 0)
Iray VERBOSE - module:category(IRAY:RENDER): 1.4 IRAY rend stat : Material measurement memory consumption: 0 B (GPU)
Iray VERBOSE - module:category(IRAY:RENDER): 1.4 IRAY rend stat : Materials memory consumption: 84.3711 KiB (GPU)
Post edited by jeedvartsen on Turn off optix. That sometimes hogs a lot of VRAM.
Bootcamp won't work because it is still running through the same CPU/GPU combination and Apple doesn't allow the Nvidia drivers to work.
Not true. Bootcamp is just an installer for Windows, giving you the option of dual booting. You can choose to boot MacOS or Windows at startup. You can't run both simultaneously (unless you're running one in a VM). If you want to switch from one to the other, you have to reboot. The selected OS loads the OS-specific hardware drivers at bootup. The hardware itself is OS-agnostic.
After a test render, I looked at the log file under Help > Troubleshooting > View Log File... and it turns out it used only the CPU after all. This is very strange, as it rendered much faster on CPU in Win10 than on CPU in macOS Mojave. Is DAZ Studio really THAT badly optimized for Mac?
Not surprising. Why would NVIDIA spend their time, money, and resources optimizing iray for Mac if Apple doesn't use or support NVIDIA hardware?
Take a look at egpu.io, which is a website dedicated to external GPUs. Even though your GPU isn't external, there's probably some information there that might answer some of your questions.
As far as I can tell from reading around there, what people have been telling you here is basically correct: that Apple, for whatever reason, does not support Nvidia GPUs in Mojave, and that Sierra was the last MacOS version for which signed drivers from Nvidia were available.
I didn't read up on the ins and outs of using Bootcamp, but I know that that's also a topic that's been covered in the forums there.
- edited February 28
Thank you, bytescapes and mclaugh. And thank you, kenshaw011267, I disabled OptiX acceleration for this last render that I started in my previous post. Turns out it crashed after about three hours or so. All the DAZ windows turned translucent grey and the infamous spinning blue ring appeared. The titlebar read 'Not repsonding', so I had no choice but to force-quit DAZ. A bummer, cause this was the most finished, high res render I've ever produced. It really really looked good, and it went pretty quickly too. I was so happy. And I still am, despite the crash, cause now I know it's doable, if I'm really careful. It looks like it used the GPU all along also, so that's promising too. I just need to make my scenes minimal, which has always been my intent all along, even before knowing about the VRAM issue.
I just need to fgure out why it crashed. It might be the VRAM again. There was just some very fine, fine grain left in the shadows last time I checked the render window, so I'm really happy about what I saw, even if I lost that render to the crash. It's a hi-key scene, so there weren't a lot of shadows in the first place to produce any grain. A win-win.
So finally, thanks to you guys, we cleared up several things, which will be a big help to other Mac users reading this. Let's reiterate them, shall we:
- macOS Mojave does not have eGPU (external GPU) support for Nvidia. Nor does it allow Nvidia CUDA or NVIDIA webdrivers to be installed, even if your Mac came with a Nvidia GPU from Apple. You're stuck with the normal GPU driver that comes with the OS, meaning no extended functionality like GPU Iray rendering etc. Your only options are 1 - to roll back to macOS High Sierra or 2 - Create a Windows 10 Boot Camp partition.
- DAZ Studio needs CUDA for GPU Iray rendering to work. So that leaves out macOS Mojave, due to Apple refusing CUDA drivers to work. If you have a Nvidia card on macOS Mojave, you are stuck with slow Iray CPU rendering. Or you could...
- Set up a Windows 10 Boot Camp partition in macOS Mojave (10.14.6). I have a 3TB Fusion Drive and Boot Camp works perfectly, at least for me (Late 2013 27' iMac, 32GB RAM, i7 3.2 CPU, Nvidia GTX 780M 4GB VRAM).
- Windows 10 Boot Camp fully supports your Nvidia GPU, including CUDA and the normal GeForce Experience game drivers. My card is an Nvidia GTX 780M. It has full feature support in Windows 10. The Nvidia isssues are only present in macOS Mojave, not in Windows Boot Camp.
- Depending on the hardware specs of your Nvidia card, DAZ Studio fully allows you to do Iray GPU rendering, provided you have enough VRAM on your card.
- You do not need to roll back to macOS High Sierra in order to get DAZ GPU Iray to work. You just have to be willing to work in Windows 10 Boot Camp. I spent my entire youth in Windows, so it's no big deal for me. The benefit of Boot Camp is, this way you get to keep all the shiny new goodies of Mojave, like Dark Mode and desktop stacks, and you also get the improved DAZ rendering in Windows 10 Boot Camp. The best of both worlds. If your Nvidia GPU is CUDA compatible and has enough VRAM, that is.
So it looks like my intial question has been answered. Thank you so much for all the help, nemesis10, mavante, kenshaw011267, mclaugh and bytescapes. I'm sorry I couldn't reply to each and every one of you. But I have read through all of your helpful replies, and I want to thank you all for the help.
I'll see you around on the DAZ forums, as I'm just getting started and I'm looking forward to having a lot of fun with this software. And I sure will have a billion questions. Thank you all!
Later :)
Post edited by jeedvartsen on A late addition: https://gizmodo.com/apple-and-nvidia-are-over-1840015246