Can anyone tell me how will apple's announcement of metal on Osx El Capitan affect render and performance in Houdini ..will Houdini be able to utilize metal?

That has nothing to do with render. More with viewport performance.

SreckoM
That has nothing to do with render. More with viewport performance.

Thank you i'm not familiar with this stuff ..so that great to know. So basically it speeds Loading,previewing and working inside the viewport?

Yes, Metal is a graphics API, like OpenGL. Houdini currently uses OpenGL to draw everything in the viewport (and the entire interface).

Metal is a different graphics API than OpenGL. Developers need to port their applications to it. It doesn't automatically accelerate existing OpenGL applications, such as Houdini.

According to Apple, it is 50% faster than their current OpenGL implementation, which pretty much puts them on par with Nvidia and AMD's OpenGL implementations on Windows and Linux.

At WWDC, Apple's Craig Federighi cited Adobe, Autodesk, and the Foundry as being on board with adopting Metal for accelerating their graphics software in some capacity.



I get the impression that Apple would like to position Metal as a successor to OpenGL, or at least an alternative to Microsoft's DirectX.

https://developer.apple.com/osx/pre-release/ [developer.apple.com]

twod
Yes, Metal is a graphics API, like OpenGL. Houdini currently uses OpenGL to draw everything in the viewport (and the entire interface).

Metal is a different graphics API than OpenGL. Developers need to port their applications to it. It doesn't automatically accelerate existing OpenGL applications, such as Houdini.

According to Apple, it is 50% faster than their current OpenGL implementation, which pretty much puts them on par with Nvidia and AMD's OpenGL implementations on Windows and Linux.

Thank you for the quick response ..do you think you guys would implement metal as well ..is it hard to do ..meaning can it be done in an update or do we have to wait for Houdini 15 if you decide to try that route

twod
According to Apple, it is 50% faster than their current OpenGL implementation, which pretty much puts them on par with Nvidia and AMD's OpenGL implementations on Windows and Linux.

That's a pitty, so what goes for the opengl driver ? will it be stucked on 4.1 forever ?

Yup - it's stuck at 4.1, will test H when the Nvidia web driver is available.

OpenCL looks to have been worked a bit but GL looks essentially the same.

So having Houdini on OpenGL for Linux and Windows does it make sense for SESI to port Houdini mac on metal ?

MartybNz
Nvidia web driver

What's that thing ?

Can be better/newer than what's included by default in the OS:

http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx [nvidia.com]

The Nvidia OSX proprietary driver doesn't provide any extra OpenGL features or extensions. It might be more robust or faster, but the OpenGL core feature set is still what's provided by Apple. You won't get Nvidia's bindless graphics or path rendering extensions, for example.

This is one of the things many developers gripe about, since the core features are tied to an OSX OS version and not to a driver that you can install. Upgrading your OS just to get a GL graphics update is an obsolete practice on all other platforms.

The Modo guys have had very similar pains updating their OSX viewport from GL 2.1 compatibility to 3.3 core.

However they were able to port their 3.3 viewport to Metal in about 4 wks time. Their UI is QT now though, so not sure how that factors in.

Kfinla
However they were able to port their 3.3 viewport to Metal in about 4 wks time. .

Let me clarify this; they have an ‘experimental port’ version in their labs - not production ready, not released.