Last month Apple unveiled the M1 Chip - the first of the new Apple Silicon processors, the new ARM-based SoC’s that will replace Intel processors in its Macs.

Important information for Apple M1 Mac owners

Maxon has released a Service Pack 1 R23.110 to provide native M1 Support for Cinema 4D R23 users.

If you use plugins that do not support the new Silicon CPU, you will need to enable Rosetta.
By following these steps, you will enable Cinema 4D to run plugins such as X-Particles and Cycles 4D.

1. Select Get Info for Cinema 4D (from Applications > Maxon Cinema 4D R23)

2. Enable Open using Rosetta

INSYDIUM customers who own R23.008 and below do not have Silicon Support. Earlier versions of Cinema 4D will run under Rosetta, and X-Particles and Cycles 4D will work. However, using xpExplosiaFX will cause crashes. Apple does not support AVX, so you will need to delete the xpexplosiafx.dylib file, as with any older Mac that does not have an AVX CPU.

INSYDIUM Support for Apple M1 Macs

To provide the necessary support for Apple M1 Macs requires a complete rebuild and extensive QA testing of our software.
Fortunately, we have made substantial progress already, and in doing so, we are confident that we can deliver a Service Update that will provide full Silicon Support early next year.

In the meantime, Rosetta provides Cinema 4D the ability to run x86-64 plugins efficiently, with some impressive results.

Below are some examples from our development testing showing X-Particles (Build 895) running on Intel-based Macs compared to Rosetta and native Silicon M1 X-Particles which is under testing for release Q1 2021:

Mac mini, 3.2 GHz 6-Core i7
FPS: 8.85

Mac mini, M1
FPS: 11.04

Mac mini, M1 (Rosetta)
FPS: 7.24

iMac, 3.6 GHz 8-Core i9
FPS: 10.68

INSYDIUM’s CEO, David O’Reilly, is impressed with these new systems. They have surpassed his expectations.
We are looking forward to carrying out further tests, as the results are already exciting.

We will, as always, keep you informed and updated on our progress.