Er, who said Irix/Solaris were still supported? You must not have visited the downloads [sidefx.com] page recently.

well, then even more so reason to replace those by osx

if its true that theyre running houdini secretly on osx already, it would be great to see it asap.

I'll bet the Porsche I don't own that SideFX could port 95% of Houdini to OS/X in less than a day, however the problems always occur in the small things; like full audio support for all the bizarre sound codecs, the mozilla help browser bugs, various openGL bugs and quirks and such.

It's most definitely comes with an ongoing maintenance effort not to be sneezed at, all just to keep things compatible between all the platforms. I'd have to give Side Effects the benefit of the doubt that they continuously re-evaluate the value of the OS/X market.

However, for me personally, if it would boost Houdini's sales and reputation significantly to do it, I'm all for it! I'd love to have the bigger pool of freshly inducted artistic talent that tend to circle the Apple world.

I don't have any strong objection to a mac port - as long as it doesn't take time away from linux/windows…

but I really wonder if there is enough of a market for it…
macs really aren't as big for 3D as PCs (mostly because of graphics cards etc) and those who are doing 3d on a mac have already purchased what they need (maya etc), so even if there was a build of Houdini for the mac - who would buy it?…it's the same problem as now…people would have to /switch/ from something else to Houidni…

arctor
but I really wonder if there is enough of a market for it…
macs really aren't as big for 3D as PCs (mostly because of graphics cards etc) and those who are doing 3d on a mac have already purchased what they need (maya etc), so even if there was a build of Houdini for the mac - who would buy it?…it's the same problem as now…people would have to /switch/ from something else to Houidni…

I am a fairly avid Mac OSX supporter and I would love to see Houdini on Mac, just as I would love to see many other programs on Mac.

However, I agree with arctor that if Houdini was ported for the Mac that no one would buy it - initially. But maybe after a while, Houdini on Mac OSX would be a very attractive option.

Its my understanding that the only way Maya made it to the Mac was through funding from Apple? Maya 3.5 was the first release and was largely unused. But from v4.5 onwards we saw figures of 25% of sales being on Mac ( admittedly from Steve Jobs: http://www.architosh.com/news/2002-07/2002c1-0718-maya45.phtml [architosh.com] )

Would Houdini see a similar pattern or would this be unlikely because of it has a smaller market than Maya?

Stuart

I remember when this happened and people were talking about that 25% figre…but it's actually “…25 percent increase in licenses through their support of the Mac OS X platform.”…which means NEW licenses…which is pretty small and IIRC 25% is just a little more than apple's market share

FWIW, Apple's desktop market share is around 3% and their portable market share is around 5%.

Interesting, do you happen to have figures on the split in the entertainment industry? I know that walking about here I only see Apple laptops with the occasional Dell or something poking out, and almost everyone I speak to are saying they'll buy a Apple with the Intel chip next - as soon as they're out.

It seems like people really LOVE the OS. I'm sure admins hate it.. since some local hearsay is that an all-Apple studio nearby here in Santa Monica really had a tough time getting their render farm running smoothly recently. However, if working on Apple and rendering on Linux is actually smoothly possible without the same ghastly level of maintenance it takes for that to work on Windows and Linux, I'm quite warm to it - for small/medium sized shops.

As for us at Digital Domain, I am very much a cheerleader of All Linux All The Time!

hmm…well this was a few years ago…a few months after Alias released Maya for OSX…and they may have been talking about VFX user base…but to be honest it's a bit too vague to be 100% sure :roll:

as for OSX, I don't really get the appeal myself - I have a linux box and a G5 under my desk…other than Sahke it's just a nice jukebox

that's cuz you don't have houdini on it

none of your sas you!

but really…is there any real reason to port to OSX? is there a hardware advantage? does the OS offer anything that anyone would want? and by that I mean where Houdini is concerned…not just because people like the interface…I'm not just being contrary about this - I really don't get it…what are people missing by not having Houdini on OSX?

I get the impression that there is no techical reason to want to work on Mac, bar the supposedly good integration of a unix-like shell.

If you're talking Windows versus OS/X playing along with Linux: Currently when you get something running on Linux, you have to budget in another 50% of the time it took to develop it in the first place into getting it to run under Windows too - from path hacks to unimplemented extensions. And I'm talking about supposedly “platform-independent” things like PERL scripts and such. This is practical experience talking here Ooh the pain.

If the unixy nature of the OS/X shell makes this at all easier (as is insinuated), I'd chuck Windows in a heartbeat.

As for other technical reasons to switch to OS/X from Linux, I have no idea at all.

Yeah, the only thing that appeals to me on OS/X is that it has a wider range of software available. Photoshop, Painter etc.etc. are available on OS/X, and aren't under Linux. I think it's more of a choice between Windows and OS/X and in that case, OS/X is much easier to integrate into a Linux system.

Given Apple's ridiculous pricing schemes, I would not want to deploy more OS/X than I had to (texture painters, basically) but running two machines (one OS/X for painting, one Linux for Houdini) is very ineffecient so you'd pretty much have to have Houdini (or whatever you're using, note that XSI is not on OS/X either) on OS/X for that to work.

Also, I think Side Effects made a great decision not porting, since the CPU change to Intel would have meant even more work re-porting to that “new” OS/X platform. That's one reason not to trust Apply, too ) There are rumours (only rumours) floating around that OS/X itself may disappear and Apply will move to Windows, however I don't buy that rumour myself, that would just mean Apply would exit the PC market altogether and would have to rely on Ipods.

Cheers,

Peter B

I am agree with Jason and Peter.
There aren't any technical reason to use Apple platform instead of Linux-Intel/AMD.
In the hardware side the only adventage, the Altivec engine in the mac processors have dissapeared due to the reason all of us know.
In the OS side, Mac OSX is a FreeBSD with a “beauty pass” over it.
It doesn't give you more than Linux. I have administrate Linux, Windows and Mac servers and workstations, and if you want a real tool to work with I recomend Linux with no doubt.
If you don't have the time or the needed personal, you can work in Windows, but i think that is better to invest some time developing a Linux pipeline.
So i don't think that a port to MacOSX is needed.
I prefer to see a more paralalelized Houdini, with multithreading in particles or IK solvers for example, to improve the perfomance and to use the future: the multicore processors.

well… yeah sure.. from a certain point of view OSX is just BSD with a beauty pass. But at the end of the day that “beauty pass” is what separates us from the people of the late 20th century..

OSX means you have a UNIX backend, plus a real media layer in Quicktime - not just mplayer bullshit, means you have a usable file browser, means you have Quicksilver, means you have Photoshop, means you have file system metadata etc etc etc..

from the perspective of the OSX user its the beauty pass that matters, its not just a shiny theme, its a level of fit and finish that runs through every level of the OS.

there is no technical reason for cruise control and leather seats, but most people prefer that they are there..

Ive had to use linux every day for years and it just leaves a foul taste in my mouth, made worse by having my powerbook next to me as a point of reference, sure, linux may have a lot going for it under the hood, but from a user perspective its like being stuck in 1994

now as for sidefx making the port.. well.. its going to come down to paying customers.. ill be honest, im not personally going to buy one, but if the port is there then it just makes it that much easier to slot a mac into our pipeline.. (and get the company to buy one)
our comp apps all run on the Mac, our renderer runs on the Mac, all our R&D TDs run Macs as their personal machines, largely because they are all sick of linux bullshit and just want to stop fighting and do their work.

but at this point Maya is the only real 3d app on the platform… lets face it, XSI isnt going to come to the party, Houdini would be a big draw card..

so yeah, no technical reason, but a lot of user reasons…

Hi puppeteer.
I think that is absurd to begin a flameware about what OS is better, here in a 3D app forum.
But please don't say thing like Linux is stuck in the 20th century.
I can show you some examples of a Linux desktops that can embarrase many mac users.
Many Mac users doesn't know that many of the main MacOSX apps, like Safari are simply copies of well known linux apps like Konqueror.
Anyone who have tested a well installed maplayer knows that it can plays anything, and when I say anything I say anything, not like Quicktime.
Well, both worlds have their pros and cons, and both worlds are in the 21th Century in their own way.
And sorry, I have used Mac to develop for more than a year and in my previous company all of us migrated to Linux because development in the Mac environment was a pain.
Compare XCode with Kdevelop or Visual Studio (Windows), I think that we can found users for all the OS, and I think that it is great.

For sure.. a 3d app forum isn't the place for an OS flame war..
but this is a thread about the pros/cons of porting Houdini to OSX.
We arnt arguing the merits of Houdini, we are arguing OSX vs Linux vs Windows, directly or not..

both your previous posts extol the virtues of Linux over OSX with intentionally provocative phrases like “if you want a real tool to work with”
so i don't think im starting something that wasn't already rolling..

now, in response to your last post.

sure, Safari is just a pretty wrapper around KHTML, so what.. the wrapper is the bit I have to interact with, the pretty wrapper is, at the end of the day, the bit I see. I don't care if I have the equivalent HTML rendering under linux, at the end of the day, for me Safari is more polished to use.

as for mplayer… mplayer is just a player and encoder.. nothing more.. you cant build anything more complex than a shell wrapper around it. Quicktime is a full blow system level API. being able to playback Divx doesn't mean anything to me, being able to use QT reference movies, chapters, metadata, those are things that really matter…
and the biggie.. frame by frame control and scrubbing in (slaps face) both directions..

“Anyone who have tested a well installed maplayer knows that it can play anything”

well tested and installed? why do I want to be testing and installing my media framework, seriously.. its 2006, its a quite reasonable basic expectation that it should work out of the box.

as for a desktop that will embarrass osx.. seriously.. where.. If you can show me one, from even a minor distro maker I love to use it..
show me one that can deal with multiple monitor display configuration without kicking you back to the command line just to install the driver.. and then requiring buggering around in a cryptic X11 config file.. and then after all that. still not giving you the control and flexibility of the monitors control panel under MacOS 6.1…. and Wacoms, dont get me bloody started on Wacoms

Now you could say that these are all things that your tech dept can take care of for you.. but why, these are all tasks that should be basic.. why do I want to chew up valuable tech time on basic shit that should work in the first place..

One could also argue that any potential Houdini user should be able to take any of these niggles in their stride, because .. well because houdini users are hardcore.. and dont need pretty GUIs and stuff and can deal with infinite system configuration, but remember, every hour spent trawling some god forsaken linux answers site to find out why your machine insists on making your CRT primary over your TFT or someother garbage… thats an hour that your not learning more about Houdini, another hour thats spent not doing your real job, another hour working as part of the great worldwide Libré software perpetual beta program..

Now im not saying linux is useless either, I value it as a social movement and as an insurance policy against people like Apple and Microsoft acting like asses.. I just dont want to put up with the day to day crap that using it entails..

therefore I want to be able to use Houdini on a platform that lets me, well.. just use Houdini .. and not have to be a part time unpaid UNIX admin/developer/hacker

I think that the Mac has proven it's ability to handle big projects in the 3D/VFX world. Just read the Luma Pictures story about underworld evolution.
That kind of workflow is getting more and more common everywhere as an only mac station is able to do high end video editing as well as 3D creation, compositing matchmoving, finishing, etc. It's no more needed to have a dedicated machine for each part of a work; and in a DI workflow that means more flexibility and less costs.
Ok it has some weak points like QuickTime that really sucks, but I don't think that there really are better alternatives…
Linux is in my opinion an excellent OS but is number 2 just behind Mac OS.

So concerning the port of houdini on Mac OS X; I really can't wait for that.
Maybe the change to intel processors will make the port from Linux to OSX easier. There is also the X11 alternative.
I don't think that Science-D-Visions had a lot of pain porting 3DEqualizer to mac as it's basicaly an emulation of their IRIX version through X11 and it's working quite well.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/x11/ [apple.com]
http://www.3dequalizer.com/ [3dequalizer.com]

If houdini goes to mac I'll be one of the first to buy it.

yeah, im not going to be unrealistic and expect a true localization..
Just something that runs would be fine..

Real Mac apps are always nice..
But even Apple cant be bothered sometimes.. just look at Shake..
Nuke has also come across with very little real effort made to make it act like a Mac app (menus tethered to a window?)…

but thats fine, ill deal with menus being in wrong place and bizarre fileIO dialogues as long as i don't have to waddle over to another machine..

The biggest problem with that is support. SESI has the best in the biz IMHO. If they were to have the temerity to just “hang stuff” off dialogs and have the app look and feel substantially different than the other platforms, support would suffer immensely. This has nothing to do with the right/wrong of doing the port to OSX, it's merely that I think to do a port of something which is light years beyond Nuke in terms of interface(both in depth and polish), it needs doing properly or not at all.

Cheers,

J.C.