How to speed render up on Mac

[haffy]

A couple of questions to clear things up

Is there any eGPU enclosures that can take multiple GPUs for Mac, that's not a DIY solution? I use an Macbook Pro as my main workstation..
Is there any way to set up a render slave running Linux/Windows on LAN to work with Blender / Octane X?
Can I access and send work to Otoys render farm ORC from inside Blender?

[frankmci]

I'm only passingly familiar with Blender, but FYI, we are using Macs as our main workstations with C4D, and have Octane render slaves running on Mac OS, Windows 10, and Ubuntu on the LAN, without any problems.

[J.C]

A couple of questions to clear things up

Is there any eGPU enclosures that can take multiple GPUs for Mac, that's not a DIY solution? I use an Macbook Pro as my main workstation..

Yes they are, but they are pretty expensive. As far as I remember Tom Glimps build one that could hold 4 GPUs connected to a computer with a single ThunderBolt connection.

Is there any way to set up a render slave running Linux/Windows on LAN to work with Blender / Octane X?

Sure, you can. Bear in mind that both have to be running same version of Octane.

Can I access and send work to Otoys render farm ORC from inside Blender?

You can export an .ORBX file from Blender and upload it using ORC.

[haffy]

A couple of questions to clear things up

Is there any eGPU enclosures that can take multiple GPUs for Mac, that's not a DIY solution? I use an Macbook Pro as my main workstation..

Yes they are, but they are pretty expensive. As far as I remember Tom Glimps build one that could hold 4 GPUs connected to a computer with a single ThunderBolt connection.

Is there any way to set up a render slave running Linux/Windows on LAN to work with Blender / Octane X?

Sure, you can. Bear in mind that both have to be running same version of Octane.

Can I access and send work to Otoys render farm ORC from inside Blender?

You can export an .ORBX file from Blender and upload it using ORC.

Thanks for your answers, and you too frankmci.

I will look up what Tom Glimps have done, sounds interesting. I just wonder why nobody else is working with this, there must be a market for it? Must be more people than me that work on laptop.

Regarding using a slave, can this work if I use Metal on the laptop and Cuda on the slave?

[J.C]

Regarding using a slave, can this work if I use Metal on the laptop and Cuda on the slave?

You can but both Master and Slave must run the same Octane versions.