Will Vulkan viewport will be available in Houdini 20.5 for macOS silicon ?

I just installed 20.5 on my M1 MacBook,
And the Vulkan option is greyed out.

Unfortunately H20.5 does not support Vulkan on macOS.

Can we build Vulkan for Mac?:

Making a Vulkan cmake project in macOS
[www.youtube.com]

Hi there. Amazing release with 20.5! Are you able to comment on possible future support for Vulkan on macOS?

I don't think they will build for Vulcan, I'm so disappointed ..............

Mac user are forgotten here is an example of Copernicus on my pc and on my Mac Studio Ultra M2 🥺

I don't think I will renew my licence after more than 4 years ....
Karma XPU based on CUDA, metal no way 🫤

Yea I'm very disappointed in the lack of support for Apple Silicon..

I hear you and am in the same boat. I am writing work orders for large technology projects and Houdini might not make the cut anymore because of this. Yet, it is fair to say that the ARM and UMA of M-series is a newer paradigm. I will be working on Mac specific Houdini tools but have a lot of technical debt to make up for based on the over reliance on CUDA.

I am not sure how difficult it would be to add support for Vulkan on Mac but they should definitely do that or change to a metal viewer. This is basic functionality for a large swath of junior Houdini users (students, academic researchers). It will be difficult to involve Houdini in learning environments with this poor performance on Apple devices. I was really hoping to build an M4 iPad interface but I will have to see.

Right now, Blender is eating Houdini's Lunch when it comes to MacOS Rendering. Optimize GPU renderers with Metal
[developer.apple.com]

Apple has the whole "Learn Metal CPP" project and with Houdini Engine you could just create a native experience. Then integrate the MLX CPP/Python for UMA specific graphics computing and machine learning.

Again, remember that the Metal framework and the necessary documentation for developers to learn Metal and MLX is just being produced to even present the opportunity for developers to understand how to integrate into Houdini.

Program Metal in C++ with metal-cpp
[developer.apple.com]

Custom Extensions in MLX [ml-explore.github.io]

PHENOMDESIGN
I hear you and am in the same boat. I am writing work orders for large technology projects and Houdini might not make the cut anymore because of this. Yet, it is fair to say that the ARM and UMA of M-series is a newer paradigm. I will be working on Mac specific Houdini tools but have a lot of technical debt to make up for based on the over reliance on CUDA.

I am not sure how difficult it would be to add support for Vulkan on Mac but they should definitely do that or change to a metal viewer. This is basic functionality for a large swath of junior Houdini users (students, academic researchers). It will be difficult to involve Houdini in learning environments with this poor performance on Apple devices. I was really hoping to build an M4 iPad interface but I will have to see.

Right now, Blender is eating Houdini's Lunch when it comes to MacOS Rendering. Optimize GPU renderers with Metal
[developer.apple.com]

Apple has the whole "Learn Metal CPP" project and with Houdini Engine you could just create a native experience. Then integrate the MLX CPP/Python for UMA specific graphics computing and machine learning.

Again, remember that the Metal framework and the necessary documentation for developers to learn Metal and MLX is just being produced to even present the opportunity for developers to understand how to integrate into Houdini.

Program Metal in C++ with metal-cpp
[developer.apple.com]

Custom Extensions in MLX [ml-explore.github.io]

it looks like they don't care about their Mac customers 🥺

dyts
it looks like they don't care about their Mac customers 🥺

This is something larger than just Houdini, I think this has to do with corporate computing platforms.

Mainframes and Racks vs Personal Computing.

Corporate creativity where a few make the creative capital; or
individual creative practice that is convivial and culturally resilient to new creative practices.

(80&90s flash-back) Apple PC vs IMB Mainframes. Same dynamics but for GPUs.

Steve Jobs Interview - 2/18/1981
[www.youtube.com]

Since the release of Apple Silicon, the prospect of working on a Mac seemed brighter, especially with Apple showcasing Houdini during their presentations. The release of Houdini for Apple Silicon brought promise, despite some limitations and incomplete features.

However, even though we're still in the early stages, I continue to encounter numerous frustrating bugs and issues on my Mac compared to my Windows machine, making the experience quite one-sided.

For instance, the Houdini launcher crashes every single time I update it, though it works fine afterward. Additionally, using a multi-monitor layout often causes problems. While this isn’t flawless on Windows either, at least the info panel responds correctly, and I can open the shelf without issues.

The Viewport is another significant point of frustration. It’s new and shiny on Windows and Linux but not available on macOS. This limitation partly stems from Apple's focus on its proprietary technologies rather than participating in Vulkan, but perhaps support will come in the future.

Houdini Engine on macOS is a mixed bag. While Unreal Engine on Apple Silicon shows promise, it’s still not fully realized.

Karma XPU is another area where macOS lags, as it only supports CPU rendering. I hope this will change soon.

TL;DR
The situation is truly frustrating. I understand that researching, developing, testing, and shipping features across multiple platforms takes considerable time and effort. There's no question about that. I just wish the Mac wouldn't always seem like an afterthought.

Sidefx is Metal support is planned and will Karma XPU will be supported one day on Mac Silicon ?

Vulkan viewport is quite buggy even on Windows. The future of MacOS Vulkan viewport is blight.

kodra
Vulkan viewport is quite buggy even on Windows. The future of MacOS Vulkan viewport is blight.

yes it is buggy now on windows

point is when the Windows version is running almost flawlessly, the macOS version might just come out and be just as buggy as Windows is now

As far as I understand, supporting Vulkan on macOS should be possible using MoltenVK: https://github.com/KhronosGroup/MoltenVK [github.com]
Hopefully SideFX is taking this route...

Just wanted to +1 this thread. Vulkan viewport on MacOS would be incredible, or alternatively a Metal viewport.

I've been really happy running the silicone releases on my machines and would love to be able to push the hardware even more.

joostkonemann
As far as I understand, supporting Vulkan on macOS should be possible using MoltenVK: https://github.com/KhronosGroup/MoltenVK [github.com]
Hopefully SideFX is taking this route...

As far as I know, MoltenVK isn't magic dust you can add into your Vulkan project and make it run on MacOS. Blender tried this route and it didn't work out for them.

(Blender now has native Metal support, allegedly better than their Vulkan support, so they don't need it anymore)

Also +1 on this.

Migration to Vulkan in other softwares (such as TouchDesigner) is turning out really great on macOS.
Of course, native Metal support would be ideal, but I believe Houdini can achieve something similar.

Currently, the viewport in macOS lacks many of its functionalities or has very poor quality.
(like blooms, ambient occlusion, casting shadows)

I somehow believed that the 20.5 Vulkan update aims to address these issues and bring parity with the PC...
I'm genuinely looking forward to future support on this.

Apple silicon M2 Studio here. I am, likewise, hoping that Metal gets more attention. Just in case the developers at SESI read this forum. I know it isn't easy, developing especially towards what has to be a smaller sub-set of the user-base, in addition to the other technologies they have to implement. But I'm definitely interested, and I love using Houdini.

gupon
Also +1 on this.

Migration to Vulkan in other softwares (such as TouchDesigner) is turning out really great on macOS.
Of course, native Metal support would be ideal, but I believe Houdini can achieve something similar.

Currently, the viewport in macOS lacks many of its functionalities or has very poor quality.
(like blooms, ambient occlusion, casting shadows)

I somehow believed that the 20.5 Vulkan update aims to address these issues and bring parity with the PC...
I'm genuinely looking forward to future support on this.

I also add that viewport is unusable when you use packed primitives or textures in crowds or Copernicus