During an in depth discussion about Apple computers with my boss on the subject of why we don't use them I was informed of a pretty interesting tidbit. He opted to skip Apples because Houdini for Mac was “downgraded” to work on OSX, and the first thing to go was full openGL support.

I was taken aback by this idea and want to know if there are plans to make Houdini fully openGL compliant in order to advance on the new platform.

The reason is more likely that the Mac's OpenGL implementation is deficient. Houdini uses OGL and hence is by definition compliant.

I know at least one place where the Mac OGL is horribly broken - 3D textures. Doesn't matter if you have Quadro graphics you're limited to textures around 200-300 Mb. And there is no way to tell when you've run out of texture memory programatically, though practically the desktop crashing on an Intel Macbook gives you pretty clear notification :cry:

-Drew

drew
The reason is more likely that the Mac's OpenGL implementation is deficient. Houdini uses OGL and hence is by definition compliant.

I know at least one place where the Mac OGL is horribly broken - 3D textures. Doesn't matter if you have Quadro graphics you're limited to textures around 200-300 Mb. And there is no way to tell when you've run out of texture memory programatically, though practically the desktop crashing on an Intel Macbook gives you pretty clear notification :cry:

-Drew

I am about to purchase a MacBookPro to run Houdini, is that going to be a show stopper? I have read about the crashing, is it that widespread?

Regards

I can't give an informed opinion here as I haven't really pushed houdini on my Mac yet. I do know that one of my colleagues has used it succussfully for real work.

-Drew

Yep, It has open GL/Texture issues which is a huge disappointment; especially since the Mac platform has worked so great for me in times past. I am going to dual boot of ubuntu/OSX until the issue is resolved.

I just thought I would give this thread a kick . As I have just bought a mac book pro . Has anybody got any advice on getting the most out of the set up on a mac.

Rob :roll:

well, I also have one macbook pro, and I was excited to have 64bit sys with 4gib of ram, bla,bla… but, a big but.. it looks like only cinema 4d and modo works almost without problems (talking ‘bout 3d apps)… maya is a crap, and houdini is unfortunately full of interface bugs. And it’s not because of sidefx but because of apple… Hope that will change soon…