Rendering software for MacBook Pro

Hi everyone! Is there a rendering program for Mac OS X that does not have so much high system requirement? I use a Macbook Pro Retina 2017 Touchbar, I5, 3,1Ghz. I don’t need to have a perfect photorealistic picture, I just need a normal (nice) rendered image, that my macbook can run it. I tried V-Ray, but my machine got so hot during the rendering, that I thought it would explode.:”D Unfortunately it gets hot very soon with these high system required sotwares. :frowning:

Good luck with this… Unfortunately I don’t think there is an easy “fix”. I’ve had the same issues with my Macbook Pro’s. The problem is they don’t seem to have the best cooling fan setups… I use Twilight for my rendering and it will max out the cpu which leads to the massive heat build up. My guess is most if not all the Mac based rendering engines will do the same thing if they access resources the same way Twilight does. I fried two motherboards in a 2012 model Macbook Pro. Ended up replacing it with a 2015 model and bought an iMac to do my heavy rendering on. Still render on the 2015 Macbook Pro and yes it gets hot… try to limit it to the smaller rendering tasks, just figure at some point I’ll fry the motherboard in it if I do enough rendering.I do keep it on one of those cheap-o fan cooling stands which does seem to help some with the heat. All that said I still love my Mac’s… good luck with yours.

In order to keep my CPU cooler in my iMac during rendering I use a little system tool called “smcFanControl 2.6” and it works great. It allows you to manually control the fan speed so you can crank the fan up to full power before you hit render. I don’t know if it will create conflicts with anything else in your system but it works great for me.

This is one of the fundamental differences between a desktop and a laptop, especially an ultra-thin laptop such as Apple likes to make: there is very limited space inside the laptop to get good airflow for cooling. I think the fans and airflow in a MBP Retina are as good as you are going to find in any thin laptop. The problem of too much heat in too small a space is just very hard to overcome. It’s ironic that laptops now come with CPUs and GPUs that are actually overpowered for what the system’s heat management can handle!

Mac’s have multiple temperature sensors in or around the components, and macOS is supposed to regulate the fan speed to keep the temperature in a safe range (actually shutting down if it goes above a limit). The smcFanControl that @LiamMorrisseyStudio mentioned can indeed push the fan to max speed before the OS does so. But it can’t increase the max speed or airflow of the fan, so if you are pushing it to the limit the computer will get just as hot either way.

All quality rendering software will take as much processing power as you have available, which causes the CPU and/or GPU to get hot. This isn’t just Vray, unfortunately. One thing to note is that your MacBook Pro has an AMD GPU, which Vray ignores, causing your CPU to do all the work. If your computer was instead running an NVIDIA card, Vray would be able to pass off all or some of the rendering task to the GPU, freeing up the CPU for regular tasks and keeping it from getting too hot.

My MacBook Pro gets really hot, too. When I use it at home I place it on a piece of 1/2 in. thick aluminum plate for a heat sink. That helps a great deal.

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Hello. Now I use a Windows computer. I want to buy a macbook pro16. Can you tell us more about it, do you render on it? in what program? And what level (maybe there is an example) your objects. To compare by render time. I am currently using a Windows gaming laptop. But it is big and it is not convenient to take it on the road.

I haven’t used my MacBook Pro with SketchUp for a long time and never bothered to use it for rendering.

And it is realy hot when you use SketchUp?

It gets really hot no matter what I’m doing with it.

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My 16"MBP often gets a bit warm, but not really hot unless it is working very hard.

Mine is from 2009 and probably long past due for a new battery. I expect it’ll get recycled instead.