I would start with a minimum version of the current version which will make it easier to test.

This may be of interest regarding Blender.

Apple joins Blender Development Fund [www.blender.org]

SideFx always seem to be very keen to improve their product, so I would have thought that they would want to know if a Houdini user was having issues on a new MacBook Pro so that they could get them fixed.

If they were not going to support Houdini on new Apple hardware then why appear on stage with Apple at the 2019 WDC?

But if anyone is worried that they might not get support before splashing out then they could always contact support to check that they will receive support using Houdini on a new Mac.

I would be very surprised if they did not support any current Apple Mac model, particularly the MacBook Pro.

QuickLook is the MacOS feature that I missed on Windows 10 the most.
I found that QuickLook by Paddy Xu, available in the Microsoft Store makes the experience of using Windows a whole lot better.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/quicklook/9nv4bs3l1h4s?activetab=pivot:overviewtab
QuickLook

Windows does support Vulkan directly. On Windows Vulkan is a native API, as are OpenGL and DirectX, it allows developers to write programs that run on the GPU.

On Mac the situation is different as Apple does not support Vulkan, they want everyone to use Metal. MoltenVK is a runtime library that maps Vulkan to Apple Metal.

The Mac Pro has not been released yet, so you have to decide if you want to be an early adopter.

In your first post you say that you would like to move back to a Mac, are you currently using a Windows or Linux workstation?

OpenGL ES is for embedded systems, so moltengl does not make any difference.
Running OpenGL on Metal makes no sense.

Yes you want quad channel to maximise the bandwidth to memory.

The environment looks fantastic too.
Great scene.

Mjag007
This thread is interesting,

After posting that Im looking for an updated system
I decided to try both scenes on my current system.
Which is sort of an old system and the numbers really surprised me.

Mantra 1:49
Arnold 2:25

Win 10
Dual 2683 v3 12 core
64 gig mem
1080 8 gig

According to the Intel Ark your CPUs have 14 cores each for a total of 28.
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/81055/intel-xeon-processor-e5-2683-v3-35m-cache-2-00-ghz.html [ark.intel.com]

Are you sure you have quoted the correct specification for your workstation?

Houdini works fine without the MMB on MacOS, you need to add the following to the “houdini.env” configuration file in “~/Library/Preferences/Houdini/17.0/”:

# HOUDINI MIDDLE MOUSE PAN ENABLE/DISABLE
# Tuesday 13th November 2018
# Source: Houdini Forum Topic “Middle Mouse on Macbook” 14th Jun 2018
# https://www.sidefx.com/forum/topic/56426/?page=1#post-252948 [www.sidefx.com] (penultimate post)
# System Preferences > Trackpad > Point & Click > Secondary Click set to:
# Click in bottom left corner or Click in bottom right corner.

HOUDINI_MMB_PAN = 0

I have included my comments (the lines preceded by a #).

Moving from my current systems, two laptops, one based on an Intel 2nd Generation i7 4C/8T CPU running Windows 10 and the other based on an Intel 3rd Generation i7 4C/8T mbp should give me around 5 times better Multi-Core performance.

I don't find that single core performance has much impact on my workflows, so that not a main consideration for me.

The main bottlenecks in my current workflow are making test renders in Planetside Terragen where better Multi-Core performance would greatly speed up the process by reducing test render times by around a factor of 5 and working in Unreal Engine.

I don't use ZBrush, so I can't comment on ZBRush performance on TR, I have evaluated it in the past and didn't get on with it, I'd probably look at 3DCoat if I wanted to do sculpting.

In general I only make decisions based on hardware that has been released and where test results are available with software that I use or software that I would anticipate to have similar performance to software that I use, so I tend to ignore all the rumours!

tardigrad3
https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/2265?vs=2283 [www.anandtech.com]

I am considering building an AMD TR2 workstation based on the 2950X and have done quite a bit of research into this.

In your Intel AMD comparison the AMD Threadripper CPU is almost half the price of the Intel CPU, so it is not a fair comparison at least for considering the price performance ratio.

A better comparison would be:
Anandtech CPU 2019 Benchmarks [www.anandtech.com]

Overall the AMD Threadripper CPUs have a much better price performance ratio than the Intel CPUs.

On the GPU side the current generation of AMD GPUs (Polaris and Vega) are much less power efficient and generate a lot more heat and noise than the NVidia 10xxGTX and RTX 20xx series.
They do however come in somewhat cheaper.

There is currently a glut of GPUs resulting from the collapse in demand for GPUs for mining Crypto and the launch of the new NVidia RTX series, so it is possible to get the NVidia 10xxGTX series GPUs at very attractive prices.
By the time the software supports the Ray Tracing features of the NVidia RTX series NVidia will probably have released upgraded GPUs which may well have 16GB.

The GPU is not supported.

https://www.sidefx.com/Support/system-requirements/supported-graphics-cards/ [www.sidefx.com]

A link to the laptop model specs would be helpful.

The Intel HD 4000 is not a separate graphics card, its is part of the CPU die.
I don't think it draws any power if a discrete GPU is operating.
On macOS all the recent MBPs have this and automatically switch to the discrete GPU for applications that need it.
High end Windows laptops also have this arrangement.

It sounds like a clean install of Windows 10 would most likely be necessary to get the laptop working again.

I reported the issue.

Support suggested installing the qt4 build which fixed it for me on Windows 10.

In addition, with the qt5 build I found that the issue was only occurring if I closed the Help Window and then reopened it.

RobW
Support reported there's a Houdini 16.0.504 - Qt4 version for download as well.
I'll give that a try, or just use the online help if that doesn't fix it.

Never had any issues before on this, v14 or 15.x

I have the same issue where the Help pane randomly breaks in the release build.
Has this been fixed in a daily build?

OK.
Thanks.

I'm trying to test the Alembic export from Houdini.
I've created a very simple scene with a couple of geometry objects, a camera and a light.
I created an Alembic ROP in the Out context and set the output file to output a file output.abc to the $HIP folder.
When I click on render the Alembic ROP turns red stripped and no output file is created.

Can anyone suggest what I am doing wrong?

Does the OpenGL 3.2 Viewport work with Mountain Lion?