Whenever Houdini crashes on my Mac Pro, it's almost always viewport related. Upon crashing, it emits a crash log, which you can find by looking at the console (assuming you launched Houdini from the command line) and it looks something like /tmp/houdini_temp/crash.hipname.username_NNNN_log.txt. Open this text file and read it from bottom up. For me, it always ends at Houdini drawing something to the viewport followed by a line that looks like “??? <some memory address> 0x0 + <another memory address>”, which smells to me like a GPU driver crash.

The stuff above that line (“sigtramp”, “coreDumpChaser”, etc.) is the standard stuff that allows Houdini to intercept the crash and save out the hip file and crash report before the app dies.

Regarding reporting crash bugs, SideFX is very responsive if you are able to submit a bug report with instructions for how to trigger it reliably and attach this crash file to your submission. I encourage you to do so whenever you come across a reproducible crash (which sadly is rarely the case).

BabaJ
“There really is. When it comes to software parity between operating systems, Houdini is pretty damn good…as well as being an equal-opportunity crasher.”

Having not used mac I don't know why or how often it crashes. But on windows(and by no means am I windows fan), but I've been using HOudini on windows since about 15.5 and the only time houdini crashes for me on windows is when I run out of memory. If it has crashed for other reasons I can't remember, that's how infrequent it does for reasons other than insufficient memory. After a while too one gets to know when it will and when it won't. I've just recently got a new machine with win10 pro (again not a win fan) and with only Houdini installed on a large SSD, I was impressed with how when I started pushing going over my RAM limit on scenes it would switch over to using the drive to help out, saving even on RAM crashes. I still think though lots of work needs to be done on viewport stability in terms of just being less glitchy - although I've never had any crashes from viewport issues.(that I can remember).

Hello BabaJ - Can you please share the configuration of your Win Machine? I am planning to buy one and would want to make sure it is compatible with Houdini for small films.

Super helpful, I was wondering where the logs were!!! Thank you.

ziconic
Whenever Houdini crashes on my Mac Pro, it's almost always viewport related. Upon crashing, it emits a crash log, which you can find by looking at the console (assuming you launched Houdini from the command line) and it looks something like /tmp/houdini_temp/crash.hipname.username_NNNN_log.txt. Open this text file and read it from bottom up. For me, it always ends at Houdini drawing something to the viewport followed by a line that looks like “??? <some memory address> 0x0 + <another memory address>”, which smells to me like a GPU driver crash.

The stuff above that line (“sigtramp”, “coreDumpChaser”, etc.) is the standard stuff that allows Houdini to intercept the crash and save out the hip file and crash report before the app dies.

By the way, not sure what voodoo has been baked into 18.0.499, but I've been using it for 3 days with only 4 crashes! This is as opposed to crashing once per hour on the previous version. I'm hoping this hints that there is a serious investment in stability happening at SideFX.

Weird…since updating to .499 it's been crash city for me, but I think it's mostly related to 3Delight at the moment. I am hearing that .501 is pretty stable (but not .502).

I think for the time being I'm sticking to .460 since it's been by far the most stable version of H18 for me.

Midphase
Weird…since updating to .499 it's been crash city for me, but I think it's mostly related to 3Delight at the moment. I am hearing that .501 is pretty stable (but not .502).

I think for the time being I'm sticking to .460 since it's been by far the most stable version of H18 for me.

Yeah, I’ve only had a few crashes with .499, though two of them brought my entire system down, which is new. It’s been about a decade since I’ve used software that freezes my whole Mac when it crashes. Houdini’s crashing is almost an art form.

Not that any of it matters now that Apple has officially announced their transition to ARM. I doubt smaller software companies like SideFX will invest in continued support for Intel Macs after the two-year transition completes. So my snazzy new Mac Pro is essentially obsolete. Unless I run Windows on it. Ha. I knew this was coming, but thought I’d have 5 years with the new machine. Investigating a return.

I wouldn't jump to conclusions. It appears that Apple is making it very easy for companies to release Intel/ARM versions of the software. I think your snazzy new Mac Pro is safe for the foreseeable future so I really wouldn't worry about it.

My prediction is that all of this hardware is going to go away soon enough, and we'll all be working mostly on fancy terminals. I really don't see it any other way, everything is pointing toward cloud computing and as far as I'm concerned it can't get here fast enough. All of this OS X/Windows/Linux BS talk will sound incredibly bizarre in another decade.

Yeah I wouldn't overreact. Apple's focus on ARM is primarily targeted at portable devices where they are trying to maximize the performance/battery consumption ratio. These ARM devices, at least in the beginning, will have specs similar to the iPad Pro, i.e. integrated GPUs, a modest number of cores, nothing like the server-class Xeon processors you have in your Mac Pro.

Somewhat surprisingly, Apple silicon will support both OpenGL and OpenCL, so I'd expect Houdini to run fine on Apple silicon devices as a “translated” app, without SideFX having to do anything on their end if they choose not to.

Anyway, all that is to say, if you want to stick with the Mac platform and want the highest possible performance, Intel CPU+AMD GPU remains the way to go for the foreseeable future.

Yeah all true. I had my moment of panic, but decided to keep my machine after reminiscing about the PowerPC to Intel transition and remembering how long I used my PPC Mac after that took place. I think Apple is making the right move overall, and I look forward to seeing what they do with custom silicon for pro devices.

ziconic
Yeah I wouldn't overreact. Apple's focus on ARM is primarily targeted at portable devices where they are trying to maximize the performance/battery consumption ratio. These ARM devices, at least in the beginning, will have specs similar to the iPad Pro, i.e. integrated GPUs, a modest number of cores, nothing like the server-class Xeon processors you have in your Mac Pro.

Somewhat surprisingly, Apple silicon will support both OpenGL and OpenCL, so I'd expect Houdini to run fine on Apple silicon devices as a “translated” app, without SideFX having to do anything on their end if they choose not to.

Anyway, all that is to say, if you want to stick with the Mac platform and want the highest possible performance, Intel CPU+AMD GPU remains the way to go for the foreseeable future.

I'm another one of the Houdini users that prefer Mac but last year I did a large project (for me) that had me switching to PC with redshift in order to get it delivered on time. (So I needed a fast renderer = redshift) But let me tell you it was a horrible crashparty there as well… Sure, the viewport was better with nvidia cards but still maybe mostly had to do with redshift but who knows. Hands down the most crashy software that I use. Sad since it is also the coolest and I could not have delivered the project without houdini. (climate change sciviz for fulldome projection).

Right now, with the ARM announcement, I am so confused. I was about to invest in a MacPro when Redshift and Octane X was out but since that has not happened yet I am still on the fence. I am quite sure that windows is not for me for ALL OTHER things at least and Linux (ubuntu) that I also run really is no better (Ubuntu/gnome cannot even scale the GUI fractionally to a reasonble size on a 4K screen while Apple/mac had awesome scaling for retina allready in 2012!)

So what to do? For production of animation I cannot see any solution except running windows or linux for houdini and do other things on a mac. Will this change soon? Who knows? There seems to be some announcement related to Octane X later this week so maybe things will clear up regarding renderers. But can we hope that SideFX will make a new viewport that uses metal? Maybe as a hydra delegate but that might be the only hope there is.

Have sidefx reacted in any way to the Apple Silicon/ARM announcement?

Just touching this subject again. How has things evolved for you mac pro 2019 users? Is the stability there? Any gpu that works better for the viewport? Trying to understand what is the best mac solution at this time for working in Houdini. M1 is unsupported and none of the currently shipping macs are recommended by sidefx so it is just through user reports that we can get some indication.

filipw
M1 is unsupported and none of the currently shipping macs are recommended by sidefx so it is just through user reports that we can get some indication.

I'm running Houdini on a daily basis on a Hackintosh modeled after an iMacPro 18-core CPU with an AMD 5700XT GPU (definitely unsupported). Everything is working fine, although I will be the first one to say that compared to other apps Houdini is crashy....but it's always been crash prone. Hard to watch a YouTube Houdini tutorial without witnessing at least one crash (unless the creator edited it out).

I also use Houdini on my M1 Mac Book Air and it runs fine under Rosetta. My understanding is that Heightfields doesn't work, but I haven't tested HF on the M1 so I'll have to take the word of whoever told me that.

All in all I would say that Houdini 18.5 is very stable and working on Intel CPU's and AMD GPU's and both Catalina and BigSur. Not quite sure why SideFX is dragging their feet on at least certifying some existing Apple computers officially, but I'm hoping that by the time Houdini 19 is announced there will be some new information.

It depends on the release, the project and seemingly the phase of the moon. I’m currently dealing with an insanely annoying viewport bug introduced sometime recently, with the viewport slowing down to a crawl after 30ish minutes of use. Houdini seems to be flooding vram and not letting it go, driving itself to slow and then eventually crash, but that is just my layman interpretation based on amateur stats monitoring. I’m probably wrong about the cause, but it feels like the software is very much doing something wrong. I use many other professional apps for heavy photography and video editing and there is no evidence to suggest this is a problem with the Mac itself.

SideFX support has unfortunately not been helpful. The response is typically “delete your preferences folder,” as if having preferences constantly become corrupted is a normal way for an app to behave. Not to mention the user inconvenience incurred by having to constantly reset the program. If SideFX wants to be more friendly to artists, they need to address these kinds of table-stakes usability issues.

Ultimately, this is a hobby for me and I rely on the Mac platform for 1,000 other professional things, so the trade off is fine. If 3D in general and Houdini in particular are the driving force for purchasing a machine, a PC is a much more practical and future-proofed choice. Sure, you have to deal with the draconian garbage that is Windows, but you benefit from much wider support (like access to Nvidia cards and PC-only specialty software) and being in the majority of users and thus a higher priority for software development and support. That added to the fact that the writing is on the wall for Intel Macs and possibly for external GPU support, I think investing in pro Mac hardware for 3D work is a risky proposition right now.

I’m sure Apple’s pro chip solution will be outrageously performant and leave competition in the dust, but that doesn’t help if the software support isn’t there. Given the limited market share for Macs, I’m not sure rewriting software to take advantage of the M1 is practical for a shop like SideFX. Time will tell.

Ok thanks for letting me know your experiences (again!). Been writing support and while they are nice in "tone" they will not answer an explicit question on how good the MP2019 works or why they have not tested on any current Mac except the M1 that they don't support. One would have thought they at least tested the w5700x and the Vega II.

You can keep sending in bugs etc and listen to others who say Mac works, but if it doesn't work for you tomzpot [tomzpot.com] mobdro [mdro.fun]