The biggest killer of Mac rendering is texture RAM overload. Use the V-Ray Asset Editor to inspect your textures. Convert all JPEGs/PNGs to Tx (V-Ray Texture) format. This tiled format allows macOS to stream textures from the SSD rather than loading them all into RAM at once.
After your initial render, you can adjust the intensity and color of every light source in the scene live, without re-rendering. This is a massive time-saver for Mac users who dread long export times.
Let's look at real numbers (Rendering a 4K interior scene with glass, reflections, and 20 lights): vray for sketchup mac os
| Device | CPU | GPU Render Time | Denoise Time | | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | | MacBook Pro 2019 (Intel i9) | 2 Hours 10 min | N/A (AMD GPU unstable) | 4 min | | MacBook Pro M2 Max (12/30) | 38 minutes (Hybrid) | 22 minutes (Hybrid) | 45 seconds | | Mac Studio M2 Ultra (24/60) | 19 minutes (Hybrid) | 11 minutes (Hybrid) | 18 seconds | | Dell XPS 8960 (RTX 4090) | 25 minutes | 6 minutes | 10 seconds |
Conclusion: The Mac Studio M2 Ultra is incredibly competitive for CPU tasks but falls behind a $4,000 Windows desktop with an RTX 4090 for pure GPU speed. However, for laptop users, the M3 Max MacBook Pro is the fastest rendering laptop on the market per watt of power. The biggest killer of Mac rendering is texture RAM overload
V-Ray for SketchUp Mac OS now utilizes Hybrid Rendering. This means it uses 100% of your CPU cores plus the GPU cores (Metal) simultaneously. While Windows users have CUDA (NVIDIA), Mac users have Metal. The latest V-Ray builds leverage the high-bandwidth memory of the M-series Max and Ultra chips to render complex scenes with massive texture packs without crashing.
Installing V-Ray on macOS is straightforward: Let's look at real numbers (Rendering a 4K
If you are using an M2 Max or M3 Ultra, set V-Ray to "Hybrid rendering" under the Render settings. This uses the performance cores of your CPU in tandem with the GPU cores. You will see significantly faster iteration times than using CPU-only mode.