MacBook Pro M4 Max for Houdini, 3D and Nuke, real production experience?
Hi everyone,
I’m considering buying a MacBook Pro with an M4 Max chip, mainly because I need a powerful portable workstation while traveling.
I work in VFX/compositing and mostly use Nuke, but I’m also learning and planning to use Houdini more seriously for 3D, FX, simulations, procedural work, and possibly rendering.
I understand that a MacBook is not a full replacement for a powerful desktop PC with an RTX 4090, especially for heavy GPU rendering or CUDA-based workflows. But portability is important for me, so I’m trying to understand how realistic it is to use an M4 Max MacBook as a main working machine.
I’d really appreciate feedback from people who use Apple Silicon Macs for production work:
- How well does Houdini run on M4 Max in real projects?
- How is the performance with simulations, caching, Vellum, Pyro, FLIP, particles, volumes, etc.?
- Are there any serious limitations with rendering, GPU acceleration, Karma, Redshift, Octane, Blender, or other render engines?
- How stable is Nuke on Apple Silicon?
- Is 64 GB of unified memory enough for serious VFX/3D work, or would you recommend more?
- What are the biggest problems or limitations you’ve faced?
- Would you choose an M4 Max MacBook again, or would you rather build/buy a Windows/Linux workstation?
I’m especially interested in real production experience, not just benchmarks.
Thanks!