I recently got one of the new Mac Pros and it doesn't get along great with After Effects, particularly when it comes to ray-tracing. There is no Nvidia GPU option for the new machines, so ray-tracing defaults to CPU. But then, even with a simple solid, it gives you an out of memory error. I've seen postings saying this is fixed in 12.2 but I've got 12.2 and the newest CUDA driver installed and run the machine with all other apps closed, but no luck. Presumably I'll figure out how to get it running after a fashion eventually, but even then, even with the new machines' many fast cores etc, CPU ray-tracing on the new Mac Pro is not looking promising on the speed/usability front.
Element 3D is an option, but its reflections can't interact with the comp the E3D object is within, only with the environment map in the plug-in itself, so there are many cases where it's a poor substitute.
My question isn't really how to get ray-tracing to work with the new machines. That would be great, but my sense is the answer there is, it effectively can't.
My question is, given that motion graphics increasingly involve the complex interplay of light, reflection, transparency, and three dimensional objects, and that from here on out Mac Pros will no longer accommodate nvidia cards, and that many creative types will only work on Macs, how long will this state of affairs continue? How long can it continue? Are there any plans to make After Effects fully functional on the new Mac Pros? Ray-tracing has always been balky and wonky and prone to error messages and crashes, but despite all that it's also an indispensible part of After Effects.