It's no secret that Houdini doesn't perform well with AMD GPU technologies on Mac's. It seems that many were holding out for the latest revisions in El Capitan to resolve those issues but sadly it hasn't been the case so far.

I provide consultancy services regarding creative technologies to studios that operate in the advertising, design visualisation and architectural visualisation sectors rather than VFX. Houdini has always been viewed as the leading solution for simulation based workflows by these sectors but increasingly it's being seen as a great solution for providing ‘smart assets’ for real time engines via the Engine plugins for Unity and UE. However there's a far greater propensity of Mac hardware in the studio sectors where I work.

So my questions are:

- Should I advise clients looking to utilise Houdini in their workflows to only use bespoke Linux/Windows workstations?

- Does bootcamping into Linux/Windows provide a smoother workflow based on the mix of AMD hardware found in high end Macs over the last 3 years (Mac Pro's and 27" i7 iMacs)? I'm still reading about various problems on the various Houdini related social media platforms.

- Is there a way to run Houdini using OpenGL 2 or to restrict problematic aspects of OpenGL 3 as was the case with Houdini 13 on Mac hardware?

- Considering no other DCC application suffers the same OpenGL issues on OS X (with AMD GPU's) as Houdini, is it possible that the SideFX engineers will find an internal solution to the current viewport problems?

- Are there any strategies that current Mac Houdini artists use to overcome the OpenGL glitches? For instance, it seems that most of the problems are with primitive and point selection and visual feedback provided for these in the openGL viewport.

I'm a beta tester for many DCC vendors including Autodesk, The Foundry and Chaos Group so I'm aware each of these vendors have experienced issues in the past but these have now been resolved. The soon to be released Modo 10.0v1 has in fact really upped its game with it's advanced viewport and this works well across AMD, nVidia and even the latest generation of integrated Intel GPU solutions (although only discrete GPU's are officially supported).

I must admit I find it surprising the number of AMD GPU hardware configurations that are listed as being officially supported that provide a substandard UX only when used on OS X.

Jonathan Moore2
- Should I advise clients looking to utilise Houdini in their workflows to only use bespoke Linux/Windows workstations?

Newer Macs, and Macs with discete graphics cards (like the D300-700, Radeon 5970, or an Nvidia Quadro in the older MacPro) are more stable when it comes to OpenGL. Mobile GPUs, especially the older AMD ones, have more issues. The older AMD mobile GPUs (like the M6770) have a driver bug that causes the selection problem.

- Does bootcamping into Linux/Windows provide a smoother workflow based on the mix of AMD hardware found in high end Macs over the last 3 years (Mac Pro's and 27" i7 iMacs)? I'm still reading about various problems on the various Houdini related social media platforms.

Bootcamping allows you to use AMD's or Nvidia's OpenGL implementations on Windows which is far superior to Apple's. There are far fewer GL issues with Linux/Windows than OSX (and most of those can be fixed by us, or very quickly fixed by Nvidia/AMD).

- Is there a way to run Houdini using OpenGL 2 or to restrict problematic aspects of OpenGL 3 as was the case with Houdini 13 on Mac hardware?

Not anymore, the GL2 renderer was removed in order to jump to Apple's core profile GL3 implementation.

- Considering no other DCC application suffers the same OpenGL issues on OS X (with AMD GPU's) as Houdini, is it possible that the SideFX engineers will find an internal solution to the current viewport problems?

Most of the OSX issues revolve around sudden performance drops, which are sometimes persistent and sometimes return to normal. To my knowledge, only the older AMD mobile GPUs have problems with selection.

- Are there any strategies that current Mac Houdini artists use to overcome the OpenGL glitches? For instance, it seems that most of the problems are with primitive and point selection and visual feedback provided for these in the openGL viewport.

OSX 10.11 builds have solved much of the problems that plagued 10.9 and 10.10. The AMD selection bug for older AMD mobile GPU remains and there's no workaround for that.
In the fall, we turned off scene AA at AMD's suggestion in H15 to get rid of other graphical corruption in the viewport. The underlying issue has been reported to AMD and they have it on their radar to fix. When they do, we'll re-enable the scene AA.

I'm a beta tester for many DCC vendors including Autodesk, The Foundry and Chaos Group so I'm aware each of these vendors have experienced issues in the past but these have now been resolved. The soon to be released Modo 10.0v1 has in fact really upped its game with it's advanced viewport and this works well across AMD, nVidia and even the latest generation of integrated Intel GPU solutions (although only discrete GPU's are officially supported).

This is pretty true of Houdini on Windows and Linux as well.

I must admit I find it surprising the number of AMD GPU hardware configurations that are listed as being officially supported that provide a substandard UX only when used on OS X.

Our current list of supported cards on OSX is fairly small:

AMD FirePro D300, D500, D700
AMD Radeon 5770, 5870, 7970

Nvidia Quadro K5000
Nvidia Quadro 4000
Nvidia 650M and 750M

Intel and the mobile AMD GPUs, which are the most problematic, have been removed. Unfortuantely, they're also the GPUs that Apple has been putting into their newer systems. I find it rather surprising that these have the least stable GL implementations.

Hope that helps.

Thanks so much for you detailed reply, it's most appreciated.

Looking at the list of supported AMD GPU's - the AMD FirePro D300, D500, D700
& AMD Radeon 5770, 5870, 7970 - I think it's safe to say no AMD powered iMac's are suitable (even the high end custom builds), Only FirePro powered cylinder Mac Pro's and the last generation Mac Pro's with the 7970. The nVidia powered iMac's with 650/750m's were otherwise weakly specced hardware so I don't think I'll have any clients with ‘workstations’ to that spec.