Maxon's Redshift Now Available for macOS With Support for Metal and M1 Macs - MacRumors
Skip to Content

Maxon's Redshift Now Available for macOS With Support for Metal and M1 Macs

by

Maxon is bringing its GPU-accelerated renderer Redshift to macOS, with support for Apple's line of M1 Macs and Apple's Metal Graphics API for speedy performance on Apple's machines.

redshift for mac
Lunar Animation director James Rodgers says his company is seeing "crazy results" rendering with Redshift on a Mac Pro with Metal support. "A typical frame from the very effects heavy game cinematic we created for Mythic Legends, an action-packed strategy mobile game by Outfit7, previously took 26 minutes to render per frame," he said. "Now it's rendering in only 58 seconds!"

Redshift provides a wide range of features that include ray switches, flexible shading networks, motion blur, AOVs, deep output, and more. It is a biased renderer that allows artists to adjust each individual technique for the best performance and quality blend for production purposes.

Redshift is optimized for high-end performance on both Intel and ‌M1‌ Macs. Maxon says that Redshift for Intel-based Macs will be available this week, while Redshift for ‌M1‌ Macs will launch with the release of macOS Big Sur 11.3.

Popular Stories

MacBook Pro Low Angle Wide Lens

Apple to Launch 'MacBook Ultra' With These Six New Features

Friday April 24, 2026 10:32 am PDT by
While the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro were just updated with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips last month, bigger changes are reportedly around the corner. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, the higher-end MacBook Pro models will be receiving a major redesign by early 2027, and he said that Apple might use "MacBook Ultra" branding for them. If so, the MacBook Ultra would likely be a...
Read Full Article • 162 comments
Dynamic Island iPhone 18 Pro Feature

This Is What the iPhone 18 Pro Looks Like

Saturday April 25, 2026 10:00 am PDT by
A recent leak provides our best look yet at the design of Apple's upcoming iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max models. Leaker Sonny Dickson recently shared images of the first iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max, and foldable iPhone dummy models. The images largely conform with rumors about the designs of the three devices and provide the first real visual confirmation of how they will look. ...
Read Full Article
app store monthly sub commitment

Apple Introduces App Store Monthly Subscriptions With 12-Month Commitment

Monday April 27, 2026 12:52 pm PDT by
Apple today announced the launch of a new subscription option for App Store developers: monthly subscriptions with a 12-month commitment. The new option allows developers to offer subscribers discounted pricing typically associated with an annual subscription but paid on a monthly basis to keep payments more affordable. This new payment option allows you to offer subscribers more affordable...
Read Full Article • 135 comments

Top Rated Comments

V
vinegarshots
66 months ago

I find that rendering claim really suspect and misleading. What is he comparing it to? Redshift is a GPU renderer and the 3090 card is the most powerful GPU and the change from the 20 series to the 3090 didn't see that sort of improvement. Octane on macOS has been pretty sluggish and, although Redshift is faster, it's not THAT much faster.
Yeah, seems like there is some important information missing there. What hardware were they using for the previous 26 minutes per frame render? Were they even using Redshift at all for the 26 minute version, or a different renderer altogether with CPU instead of GPU rendering? Something is very fishy with that...
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
A
Alan Wynn
66 months ago

I find that rendering claim really suspect and misleading. What is he comparing it to?
Before they got Redshift on the Mac, they were rendering their frames by hand. They shipped the data files to rural China and a 100 women and children would render them on abacuses (keeping them carbon neutral) and send back the data. These people are super fast and can render a frame in 3 minutes, the rest of the time was sending the frames back and forth over the net. :-)
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ChrisMoBro Avatar
ChrisMoBro
66 months ago
I find that rendering claim really suspect and misleading. What is he comparing it to? Redshift is a GPU renderer and the 3090 card is the most powerful GPU and the change from the 20 series to the 3090 didn't see that sort of improvement. Octane on macOS has been pretty sluggish and, although Redshift is faster, it's not THAT much faster.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
kaisdaddy Avatar
kaisdaddy
66 months ago

Octane is amazing but reliability is a feature and it’s terrible in that respect. Redshift looks amazing, it’s fast and I know it’s not going to let me down. Whenever I go back to using Octane I realise how antiquated certain aspects of it are.
Agreed on Redshift stability compared to Octane but I still use the latter because it's so much easier to get great looking results compared to Redshift.

Now that Maxon owns it, maybe Redshift will get a UI overhaul that makes it more intuitive.
Until then, I'll keep using Octane knowing that it will crash from time to time but give me great looking output without requiring a PhD on my end.

Overall I'm just tickled that more than one 3rd party render engine supports Metal now.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
R
richinaus
66 months ago

It's not apple's "amazing" hardware at work, it's code optimization. People here think the M1's have some legit graphics chips, lmao, it's about as good as the old as heck GTX 1050, which is pathetic in 2021.
Yeah, but M only seen on the lowest end macs to date.
I am giving Apple a chance with their more pro machines, but I still dont believe they will deliver anything like a 3080/90 level. Then I will happily bag them :).

In reality though I expect an above average gpu only, and nothing special in the forthcoming pro machines, with maybe the MacPro having some super expensive card thats good. The computers will most likely be great for FCP but not in 3D rendering like Octane and redshift. Alway love being proved wrong though.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
portland-dude Avatar
portland-dude
66 months ago

That's a crazy improvement!
It's not apple's "amazing" hardware at work, it's code optimization. People here think the M1's have some legit graphics chips, lmao, it's about as good as the old as heck GTX 1050, which is pathetic in 2021.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Read All Comments