Hi guys,
First and foremost this is not a flame thread, I just need to understand some technical details before I make a decision.
MacOSX has served my needs perfectly for several years at home. It is different for me at home than work (I use Linux at work) because I am also using several productivity/development tools on OSX. Acquired licenses, my established workflow and ecosystem is another reason I am still on OSX.
But lately Apple's ignorance for 3D users and Houdini's problems with Apple systems are getting me concerned about further investments on Apple hardware.
First of all I would like to understand how come Maya is working more stable than Houdini on Apple systems and what technical difference lies in the root of this ? Or is this my misperception and not the fact ? If someone would explain this I would really appreciate it.
We can see that Apple is clearly dropping Nvidia in favor of AMD GPU's in new models. All of thier recent releases now have AMD GPU including, Mac Pro, Macbook Pro and iMac. However, their implementation of OpenGL and OpenCL still give big headaches to the developers on top of their lack of updates/fixes.
I was considering a MacPro along with Houdini but I am very scared now to make such investment because of the obvious issues. What do you guys think about Houdini users on OSX ? It is not really a simple and painless thing to change the OS but should they prepare to change their OS soon or should they expect some changes and improvements in terms of stability and features ? Or can I trust that the FirePro GPU's in MacPro will function without any issues in Houdini ?

tinyparticle
First of all I would like to understand how come Maya is working more stable than Houdini on Apple systems and what technical difference lies in the root of this.

What's this based on? Do you have something to test against.

Overall H14 with Gtx980 on OsX is stable. Windows does work better though for tasks that involve CPU or OpenGL/CL processing

Thanks for your answer Marty. What model of Apple computer are you using the GTX 980 on? While asking my previous question I was not limiting OSX to Nvidia, rather especially pointing to AMD and Intel, for some reason I have this perception in general use. I may be wrong too.
I would also like to know the experiences of Mac Pro users in the forum with Houdini, especially those who use the 2013 models with AMD GPU's.

From a developer's standpoint, I'm also not happy with Apple's lack of focus on their GPU drivers. The rest of OSX is quite polished - so I'm not sure why the OpenGL and OpenCL implementations are lagging in both features and robustness. This unfortunately isn't anything new. Ever since H11 introduced GLSL shaders we've had issues, dating back to 10.6, which simply aren't present on other platforms. Everything from weird GLSL compiler errors to crashes and unexplained software-rendering fallbacks.

The current situation is that discrete GPU support is much more stable than the mobile GPU support. I'm not sure why this is, given that the vast majority of OSX platforms have a mobile GPU. But both the GL4-capable Nvidia and AMD discrete cards (GEForces, Quadros, Radeons, FirePro D's) are less troublesome than their mobile brethren (GEForce M, Radeon M, Intel). The discrete drivers are still not quite up to the standard of Nvidia and AMD's own OpenGL drivers, but at least they don't have the serious and worrisome issues that the mobile GPUs do. The GL3 discrete cards seem to also be very problematic, but at least you can't buy those anymore (the GL3-capable Quadro FX 4800, for example, causes the entire monitor to “lose vsync” when you place a node - something I can't even begin to explain).

Because of this, I would have trouble recommending a Mac at this point for professional use, especially an iMac or MacBook (Pro/Air) which have mobile GPUs. This is based more upon Apple's history of drivers than the current situation, as regressions have been common and fixes slow in coming. It would take a prolonged effort on Apple's part to fix the drivers, to nudge me back towards recommending OSX again, but I think that would benefit all users.

Houdini 14 uses Apple's newer OpenGL 3.3/4.1 core profile driver. Previous Houdini versions used the legacy OpenGL 2.1 driver, which I suspect a lot of other applications still use (switching from legacy to core is not at all trivial). We we made the switch, the hope was that the core profile would be more stable and faster since it discards most of GL 1.x and 2.x to focus on modern GL3/4 methods. While it is faster, the stability is about the same as I came to expect from the GL2.1 driver but varies based on the GPU used. As a result, we recently changed our H14 System Recommendations for Mac GPUs to reflect this as the 10.10.2 and .3 releases didn't see any improvements.

I hope that helps!

FWIW, http://preta3d.com/os-x-users-unite/ [preta3d.com]

tinyparticle
Thanks for your answer Marty. What model of Apple computer are you using the GTX 980 on? While asking my previous question I was not limiting OSX to Nvidia, rather especially pointing to AMD and Intel, for some reason I have this perception in general use. I may be wrong too.
I would also like to know the experiences of Mac Pro users in the forum with Houdini, especially those who use the 2013 models with AMD GPU's.

The 980 is in a moded 2012 cheesegrater - with 2 x 5680 @ 3.33, 64GB ram, USB 3 and eSata cards with Raid attached, SSD system disk. It hums along at 95% of the top of the line nMP. There are caveats though as it's not officially supported by Apple, and being non-efi, there is no startup screen; use an the old GT120 for that.

In regards to AMD; I have the 7950 as a backup card, it has some selection issues with H14, and doesn't accelerate NukeX so it's not in general use. Handy to have though as the 980 requires Nvidia Web drivers, which don't like Apple's Os/security updates, and usually require an update or hack to keep working.

Create Pro do custom cheesegraters, though in the end it's really just a CPU replacement.
http://www.create.pro/ [create.pro]

EDIT: an important caveat; whilst OpenCL on AMD/OsX is very good, OpenCL on the 980/OsX is terrible. My next step should be to install the 7950 with another PSU to get the full range of options whilst in OsX. Another caveat is OpenCL CPU is not available on OsX You have to be pretty keen to stay with OsX at this stage of the game, I write this from Windows on this machine :twisted:

Andy58
FWIW, http://preta3d.com/os-x-users-unite/ [preta3d.com]

Maybe you should write to Microsoft. With their current big push for multi-platform/multi-OS support, they may fix what Apple can't, if they get bored in their spare time

mantragora

Andy58
FWIW, http://preta3d.com/os-x-users-unite/ [preta3d.com]

Maybe you should write to Microsoft. With their current big push for multi-platform/multi-OS support, they may fix what Apple can't, if they get bored in their spare time

I realize you're joking with this, but having Nvidia or AMD's OpenGL implementation on OSX would go a long way to fixing all the OSX-specific OpenGL/CL issues. They currently supply the low-level driver, but not the GL on top of it (Apple does that). So, write to Nvidia and AMD

Thank you all very much for your responses and honest opinions. This helps me immensely. I think it is time to part with the OSX in pro platform. Looks like it's time to go back to windows at home.

unless u need adobe products , or game ( yes I do , so its a factor for me also) install a nice solid linux ( ubuntu or centos imho)

Unfortunately I use several products that don't exist in Linux environment. Linux is a greater trade-off for me that I can not afford at home.

I dual boot at home, Llinux (OpenSuse 13.1, at the moment) 98% of the time and Windows 8.1 2% of the time, i.e. when I find a few minutes to play a game

I happened to have a bunch of old harddrives around, so I dual-boot with 2 drives, way easier than fighting Microsoft's aversion to dualbooting on a single drive.

I really wish Apple were serious about 3D too, since it would be nice to have a *nix system with broad consumer software support.

Cheers,

Peter B

Houdini on Windows performing like a champ, but every time the Command Line Tools is needed I'm partying like it's 1984 :shock: :!: “ ‘ls’ is not recognized” regularly appears now; will sleep better when we can use the CLT in Cygwin

MartybNz
Houdini on Windows performing like a champ, but every time the Command Line Tools is needed I'm partying like it's 1984 :shock: :!: “ ‘ls’ is not recognized” regularly appears now; will sleep better when we can use the CLT in Cygwin

Because you are using wrong Command Line. Switch to Powershell and once in it write:

Get-Alias

It will print all the aliases that it uses for its own commands that may have similar functionality to the ones you may find in old CMD or on Linux.

PWD <=> Get-Location
LS <=> Get-ChildItem
MAN <=> help
etc. are there and can be used as Alias or as normal command.

Powershell is available from Vista up, and for XP it is only as download.

MartybNz
Houdini on Windows performing like a champ, but every time the Command Line Tools is needed I'm partying like it's 1984 :shock: :!: “ ‘ls’ is not recognized” regularly appears now; will sleep better when we can use the CLT in Cygwin

I use GNU on Windows to keep me sane at the CMD prompt. http://freecode.com/projects/gow [freecode.com]

Even if you completely ignore the OpenGL/CL mess Apple made over the last years - the current “workstation” line indicates quite clearly that they see themselves more as a jewelry manufacturer these days.

I used to own a SGi O2 back in the 90s, it suffered from exactly the same set of problems as the current black suppository Apple workstations. It is a failed concept. It's not made for work.

I get that SESI tries to cater to the mac audience, but personally I would steer away from it, from a freelance/business-perspective.

We have a lot of Linux boxes here and occasional windows workstations for the Adobe circus and certain other tools.
I (personally) feel that this is the winning combo.

My take is that the useful fixes to the GL/CL drivers are ~tri-monthly in Windows/Linux, whilst OsX currently appears to be yearly, 10.9, 10.10; unfortunate it's current foundations are very wobbly to begin with.

Projecting forward; it may be that 10.11 will be announced next month, WWDC, and will be available in Oct that might make OsX more usable. The form factor does greatly inhibit extending the usefulness of the machine in a pro-environment.

The ideal resolution would be for Apple to allow external vendors to provide OpenGL implementations, until then they make a great modern video editing OS.

NB thanks for the tips Mantragora and Andy!

I think I have lost my hope on Apple fixing the GL/CL drivers in a timely fashion, maybe they will eventually but I just don't like being sacrificed as a pro user in favor of mainstream users. Apple from their perspective may have a greater sum of revenue from the mainstream users compared to the pro users so maybe that's why we are not their priority but we on the other hand are spending much more money individually compared to any mainstream user and feel a bit cheated being treated this way.
I have checked both GoW and the powershell, and thanks for the tips.
I think the way Peter has suggested is the ideal way for me, to have a dual boot box so I get both the nix advantages and the windows apps on demand.

MartybNz
will sleep better when we can use the CLT in Cygwin

Can't you just start the Command Line Tools and then do something like c:\cygwin\bin\bash -l ?

I am not familiar with the inner workings of OpenGL, but maybe the next version of OpenGL, Vulcan https://www.khronos.org/vulkan [khronos.org] will unify all platforms. I see that Apple is a supporter.

I guess though that this would take operating system and 3D application developers a long time to implement.