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What (if any) limitations are there with the current (2.78) and soon-to-come (2.79) versions of Blender for OS X?

I know in the past there have been some features that weren't fully supported (Open Subdiv and micropolygon displacement?), and issues with GPU rendering only working on Invidia GPUs. It's been a while since I've looked at this issue in detail, so I'm hoping to get an up-to-date view of the Blender+Mac landscape.

I hate to ask such a broad question, because I know it can be hard to address every angle... but that's just the trouble I'm having. I don't know how much of my own knowledge is still current, or how much I might not be aware of.

If this question can be answered with a "here is the official place to get all the details about Blender's OS X builds" that would be ideal. I just don't know if there is such a place, on blender.org or elsewhere. Any help appreciated.

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The feature support should be the same as any other system. The official MacOSX releases will be built using the available third party libraries which includes the newer features using opensubdiv, openvdb and alembic.

As with other platforms, cuda support is better than opencl. This will depend on what mac you have as newer macs now have AMD and Intel video cards. While technically a hardware issue, the hardware is tied to MacOSX. For Cycles rendering this could lead to render farms being more popular for mac users.

anyway newer macOS users should consider that blender DOES NOT SUPPORT METAL and since Apple is discontinuing OpenCL, reading this statement on blender official website can make you sad when it comes to use GPU rendering specially in cycles render engine:

GPU rendering is only supported on Windows and Linux; macOS is currently not supported.

... and because of some technical issues (some of these issues mentioned here) it's hard to say that they are going to support Metal (at least soon)

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  • $\begingroup$ Thanks! Do you know if the Shadow Catcher feature will also be included in the final OS X build? I downloaded a recent build that I believe has it in the Win version but in the Mac version I cannot enable an object as a Shadow Catcher. $\endgroup$
    – Mentalist
    Commented Mar 27, 2017 at 9:48
  • $\begingroup$ There shouldn't be any reason for it to not be supported on osx.As it is only just being done, a few days between builds can make a difference. $\endgroup$
    – sambler
    Commented Mar 27, 2017 at 10:49
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks, sambler. It seems the Shadow Catcher is in its own branch at the moment, and that only Windows builds exist. At least, this is what I have gathered from these sources: 1 2 3 Hopefully it will get included in the next official release and therefore be available on OS X as well. Fingers crossed... $\endgroup$
    – Mentalist
    Commented Mar 28, 2017 at 2:26

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