I have been using a 2012 MacBook Pro with a separate Nvidia chip for a few years with NO problem with Houdini 14-15 Now the new 16 has been giving me some stability issues but nothing alarming.

A close friend of mine told me Houdini 16 on the latest MBPR with the Radeon Pro 560 has given him some trouble. Is this widespread? Anyone out there tried it?!?! I wonder why things have gotten worse.

I'm wanting to know because I have been planning an upgrade and this seems very disappointing.

In general Houdini on macOS is hit and miss based on the graphics card, for example Nvidia 9/10 series pcie card is quite terrible whilst the laptop you have is good.

AMD mobile graphics is probably in the same kettle of fish. What type of issues does your friend have?

He says stability issues and a slow GUI. ATI does not even recommend ATI cards.

In my personal experience on the same machine and OS Houdini 16 is not a stable as any of the 15 versions so I am wondering if its an actual MAC issue with the new hardware or is it an issue with the OS X release of 16.

I also wonder about the OpenCL support on these new ATI cards.

Ah - yes you should try to run the QT4 version, QT 5 is not as good for macOS, though it is getting better.

OpenCL AMD should be better than OpenCL Nvidia and is essentially on par with linux/windows.

It'd be worth submitting the AMD bugs just incase they are an easy fix but overall macOS is essentially not a recommended platform for professional work until there is a concerted effort by SideFx or Apple to work around/fix the openGL bugs. Metal2 is off the table for the foreseeable future afaik.

Thanks.

I'm on a 2016 MBP with the Radeon Pro 455 card.

In general, I find things to be quite stable. I do seem to always crash Houdini when I exit the program, but that doesn't affect my work in any way.

And for context, I'm doing mostly VEX and motion graphics stuff, as well as getting into modelling, rigging and animation. Basically sticking to the Houdini Core features and occasional particles. So I can't talk about the stability of any large-production dynamics, fluids, etc. I'm not even doing very much rendering yet.

If I want to do those things more in the future, I'll be investigating using a workstation or a cloud solution. But for now I'm very happy with the experience.

Edit: I'm also just reading up on the fact that official external GPU support is coming to Macos High Sierra. So that might help things in the future as well.

Thanks for that insite. I considered external GPU as well. It was a half accomplished dream with thunderbolt 2. It does seem to me like Houdini 16 itself has some mac related issues because the 15 releases gave me zero trouble. Cloud is also another approach. Gridmarkets has been good to me. Thanks for letting me know about your experience. It helps.

When Apple launched the new MacBook Pro many of the familiar ports disappeared replaced by USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 is it right ?

The problem is not the card but the OSX having its own opengl and opencl drivers.

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT202823 [support.apple.com]

Latest supported version from Apple is 4.1 for GL and 1.2 for CL, latest GL version is 4.5 which is supported by Nvidia or AMD with recent generation cards on linux and windows.

Houdini recommends 4.0+ so it works with 4.1 but I don`t now if it excludes any features from 4.1+ to the latest which is 4.5.

Yes they did remove “legacy” ports and adaptors are required. However, now there is external GPU support so more power can be added.

I hope apple gets on this driver update. Houdini 15 was always stable on the MacBook Pro and 16 is definitely buggy when working in the new Material context. Displacements are not stable at all but Wagner was having issues on the PC in his immume videos. Lends me to think it's a little bit of both.

Has anyone tried using OpenCL with solvers on this new machine? I have not made the upgrade yet but I am close to it.

chrislesage
I'm on a 2016 MBP with the Radeon Pro 455 card.

In general, I find things to be quite stable. I do seem to always crash Houdini when I exit the program, but that doesn't affect my work in any way.

And for context, I'm doing mostly VEX and motion graphics stuff, as well as getting into modelling, rigging and animation. Basically sticking to the Houdini Core features and occasional particles. So I can't talk about the stability of any large-production dynamics, fluids, etc. I'm not even doing very much rendering yet.

If I want to do those things more in the future, I'll be investigating using a workstation or a cloud solution. But for now I'm very happy with the experience.

Edit: I'm also just reading up on the fact that official external GPU support is coming to Macos High Sierra. So that might help things in the future as well.

If it's not to much could you test this one file to check if OpenCL works properly? On my Macbook Pro 2012 even with a “Supported” Graphics card OpenCL does not work properly. Basically there is a sim with a viscous fluid. Without openCL functioning properly the fluid splashes like water. But if it does work properly it should like more like honey. I would just like to know if you see a difference in results. Here are some photos and a HIP. Thanks if you can help.

Hello Noboru,

I've tested the OpenCLtest.hip file on my MBP mid 2012 Nvidia650 and had to make the following changes for the flip fluid sim:

•Setting the Under-Resolved Particles method to No Detection turns off this behavior and should stop particle creep.
•Choosing Float 32-bit for the precision on the Viscosity tab will speed up the viscosity solver and is sufficient accuracy for most simulation.
•openCL appears to kick in when changing the from Float 64 to Float 32 setting causing the flipsolver1 error to disappear on my end. No slowdown or crashes as a result.

I tried this on my 2016 MBP w/ RX 455 GPU. By default, OpenCL uses the integrated HD530, and I get the same error with 64 bit float. Switching to 32 bit float removes the error.

But if I set OpenCl to my AMD RX 455 (“HOUDINI_OCL_DEVICENUMBER = 1”), then the 64 bit float works fine without any error.

I have the MBP 2017 and I had huge issues with the QT5 version, basically unusable sometimes. I switched to QT4 and all those issues disappeared but I still have issues with rendering.

here are some of the issues I had:

General instability.
Can not use the Ladder function with my Wacom tablet.
Moving around in the network view is not smooth. I do not know what triggers it. Sometimes it only affects the left side of the network view (Wacom tablet).
Can not hover over different node’s inputs and see what they are called. The inputs on the pyro solver for example.
Having trouble deleting nodes.
Having trouble creating nodes, especially when pressing tab and dropping it using the Enter key.
Launching the flip book takes forever.
Connecting nodes. (Wacom tablet)

The only issue remaining is probably the worst.
Every time I render, the generation of the scene takes about 22 seconds which is extremely frustrating. I do not know how to fix it so I suppose I will be waiting for the external GPU unless anyone here knows what is going on.

Any information is useful.

Thanks

Yep- a lot of the Wacom issues are tied to their new driver. If you downgrade it that helps.

simonsimon
I have the MBP 2017 and I had huge issues with the QT5 version, basically unusable sometimes. I switched to QT4 and all those issues disappeared but I still have issues with rendering.

here are some of the issues I had:

General instability.
Can not use the Ladder function with my Wacom tablet.
Moving around in the network view is not smooth. I do not know what triggers it. Sometimes it only affects the left side of the network view (Wacom tablet).
Can not hover over different node’s inputs and see what they are called. The inputs on the pyro solver for example.
Having trouble deleting nodes.
Having trouble creating nodes, especially when pressing tab and dropping it using the Enter key.
Launching the flip book takes forever.
Connecting nodes. (Wacom tablet)

The only issue remaining is probably the worst.
Every time I render, the generation of the scene takes about 22 seconds which is extremely frustrating. I do not know how to fix it so I suppose I will be waiting for the external GPU unless anyone here knows what is going on.

Any information is useful.

Thanks

Setting these Houdini Environment Variables may also help improve stability in various macOS cases similar to what you've experienced.

# ~/Library/Preferences/houdini/16.0/houdini.env

HOUDINI_ENABLE_TABLET = 1
#Enable Wacom tablet support (also try the driver downgrade mentioned by aRtye if this has no effect).

HOUDINI_FAST_SKIN_BLENDSHAPES = 1
# Enable experimental feature to use the GPU to do deformation in SOP_Deform and SOP_BlendShapes.

HOUDINI_NO_LEGACY_MENUS = 1
# When set, Houdini will not load the old MainMenuMaster, MaindMenuEscape, and MainMenuCommon menu files. It will only use the new MainMenuMaster.xml, MainMenuEscape.xml, and MainMenuCommon.xml.

HOUDINI_OGL_FAST_BONES = 1
# When enabled, nulls and bones rendering is done by accumulating all the objects and issuing one instanced drawing call.

HOUDINI_OGL_MAX_GL_VERSION = “4.1”
# By default this is zero, indicating that Houdini should use all available features that the OpenGL driver provides. It can be set to any OpenGL version (major.minor, like “2.1”) and only those OpenGL features that were part of the OpenGL core at that version will be enabled.

HOUDINI_ENABLE_RETINA = 0
# If set to 0, turns off Houdini’s support for retina displays under OSX. This will cause Houdini to act as if the display has half the resolution it actually has, resulting in a slightly pixelated interface. The advantage is that Houdini will also use less Video RAM for buffers, and run fewer pixels through the OpenGL shader pipeline, resulting in slightly increased performance. Linux and Windows are not affected by this setting.

HOUDINI_UISCALE = 65
# This specifies a fixed scale factor to adjust the dots-per-inch Houdini uses for displaying ui. A value of 100 will provide the default of 85 dpi. A value of 200 will have all fonts and icons twice that size, and 50 will make them half that size. A value of -1 will cause the dpi to be calculated from the monitor’s dimensions and resolution, or by HOUDINI_OVERRIDE_*.

HOUDINI_DISABLE_SOHO_SPOOLING = 1
# When this variable is defined, interactive rendering from within Houdini will send data directly to the renderer over a pipe rather than first saving it to a temporary file and then spooling it to the renderer in a separate thread.

C_p_H-kwiknip

simonsimon
I have the MBP 2017 and I had huge issues with the QT5 version, basically unusable sometimes. I switched to QT4 and all those issues disappeared but I still have issues with rendering.

here are some of the issues I had:

General instability.
Can not use the Ladder function with my Wacom tablet.
Moving around in the network view is not smooth. I do not know what triggers it. Sometimes it only affects the left side of the network view (Wacom tablet).
Can not hover over different node’s inputs and see what they are called. The inputs on the pyro solver for example.
Having trouble deleting nodes.
Having trouble creating nodes, especially when pressing tab and dropping it using the Enter key.
Launching the flip book takes forever.
Connecting nodes. (Wacom tablet)

The only issue remaining is probably the worst.
Every time I render, the generation of the scene takes about 22 seconds which is extremely frustrating. I do not know how to fix it so I suppose I will be waiting for the external GPU unless anyone here knows what is going on.

Any information is useful.

Thanks

Setting these Houdini Environment Variables may also help improve stability in various macOS cases similar to what you've experienced.

# ~/Library/Preferences/houdini/16.0/houdini.env

HOUDINI_ENABLE_TABLET = 1
#Enable Wacom tablet support (also try the driver downgrade mentioned by aRtye if this has no effect).

HOUDINI_FAST_SKIN_BLENDSHAPES = 1
# Enable experimental feature to use the GPU to do deformation in SOP_Deform and SOP_BlendShapes.

HOUDINI_NO_LEGACY_MENUS = 1
# When set, Houdini will not load the old MainMenuMaster, MaindMenuEscape, and MainMenuCommon menu files. It will only use the new MainMenuMaster.xml, MainMenuEscape.xml, and MainMenuCommon.xml.

HOUDINI_OGL_FAST_BONES = 1
# When enabled, nulls and bones rendering is done by accumulating all the objects and issuing one instanced drawing call.

HOUDINI_OGL_MAX_GL_VERSION = “4.1”
# By default this is zero, indicating that Houdini should use all available features that the OpenGL driver provides. It can be set to any OpenGL version (major.minor, like “2.1”) and only those OpenGL features that were part of the OpenGL core at that version will be enabled.

HOUDINI_ENABLE_RETINA = 0
# If set to 0, turns off Houdini’s support for retina displays under OSX. This will cause Houdini to act as if the display has half the resolution it actually has, resulting in a slightly pixelated interface. The advantage is that Houdini will also use less Video RAM for buffers, and run fewer pixels through the OpenGL shader pipeline, resulting in slightly increased performance. Linux and Windows are not affected by this setting.

HOUDINI_UISCALE = 65
# This specifies a fixed scale factor to adjust the dots-per-inch Houdini uses for displaying ui. A value of 100 will provide the default of 85 dpi. A value of 200 will have all fonts and icons twice that size, and 50 will make them half that size. A value of -1 will cause the dpi to be calculated from the monitor’s dimensions and resolution, or by HOUDINI_OVERRIDE_*.

HOUDINI_DISABLE_SOHO_SPOOLING = 1
# When this variable is defined, interactive rendering from within Houdini will send data directly to the renderer over a pipe rather than first saving it to a temporary file and then spooling it to the renderer in a separate thread.

Thanks for your info.

I tried adding those variables but it made things worse in terms of rendering.
So I am screwed until further notice.

The MacBook Pro was not so Pro after all hah.

Thank you for the help.

Hi !

I'm new to Houdini. I have a 2017 MBP top spec (4gb GPU), I'm doing Scott Pagano's Lynda / LinkedIn tutorials… However, moving around the Viewport / Scene View is terrible. Slow and choppy.

Is there a setting I can apply to improve performance? - apologies - I'm a new user and only just learning my way around.

All that said, has anyone had any further experience with external GPU's since High Sierra? I'm wondering if that could help. I'd rather not have to shell out for a desktop.

Cheers

Maybe try reducing the level of detail in the viewport using Display Options > Geometry, as well as setting Antialiasing Samples to Off in the Scene tab.

Some resources about external GPU support that might be relevant:

The Beginner’s eGPU Setup Guide for Mac:

https://egpu.io/setup-guide-external-graphics-card-mac/ [egpu.io]

External graphics cards work with all Thunderbolt-equipped Macs. A 2011 MacBook Pro with the first generation Thunderbolt and the latest 2017 MacBook Pro with Thunderbolt 3 can both harvest the power of an eGPU.

MacBookPro eGPU - Unboxing / Setup / Test in FCPX / AMD Radeon RX 570 8GB:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLLGuO64UUQ [www.youtube.com]

MacBook Gaming Still Sucks - GTX 1080 + macOS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DaDjFm7_qw [www.youtube.com]