Drew Whitehouse
drew
About Me
SciViz programmer, have been a SideFX user since Prisms. Minor claim to fame: I wrote the original Houdini Ocean Toolkit which has now been ported to pretty much every 3D platform under the sun. SideFX have released their much better Ocean Tools for Houdini since then :-)
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Australia
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Recent Forum Posts
NVidia Digits Jan. 6, 2025, 11:40 p.m.
A stack of these could make for a decent small Karma renderfarm! Assuming the software ran on what I assume will be ARM Linux.
https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-puts-grace-blackwell-on-every-desk-and-at-every-ai-developers-fingertips [nvidianews.nvidia.com]
https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-puts-grace-blackwell-on-every-desk-and-at-every-ai-developers-fingertips [nvidianews.nvidia.com]
Vulkan Viewport and macOS silicon ? July 18, 2024, 1:42 a.m.
Why don't you have the luxury? It would make no difference if Houdini was written in Julia. You'd still have all the same problems having the software running optimally on all the platforms. In fact Julia being so immature you'd have a vast number of far more mundane problems as well. Don't underestimate the difficulty of writing large software systems, in practice pushing the bounds of computation is insanely hard. Even with Julia on a Mac 
It's taken 27 years for Houdini to arrive at it's current sophistication. And the devs don't have a blind spot, it's your job to adapt the (incredibly flexible) tool to your use. Most current systems "pushing the bounds of computation" are developed in fortran and C/C++, sometimes scripted from python. I.e. just like Houdini and AI training. But I'd also note that pushing the bounds of computation is not the same thing as building complex DCC tools like Houdini.
It's taken 27 years for Houdini to arrive at it's current sophistication. And the devs don't have a blind spot, it's your job to adapt the (incredibly flexible) tool to your use. Most current systems "pushing the bounds of computation" are developed in fortran and C/C++, sometimes scripted from python. I.e. just like Houdini and AI training. But I'd also note that pushing the bounds of computation is not the same thing as building complex DCC tools like Houdini.PHENOMDESIGNdrew
choose your hardware and OS to support your software
In my "Industry" we do not have that luxury. It is standard to use a literate programming language closer to the math and plain language such as Julia and compile to the specific platform.
The "Software" should handle this abstraction. Apple platforms performance is so students can learn, other researchers can on-board, and scientific systems can be crafted for immediate implementation using physics-based learning.
I think that there is a really big blind spot in understanding that Houdini is used in vital and mission critical systems design scenarios of which push the boundaries of computation. One application with the new rigging system is applied medical animation research.
Like I posted earlier from Steve Jobs:
Steve Jobs Interview 1981
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbfejwP1d3c&t=496s [www.youtube.com]
" -- Interviewer asks -- "
Is there any basis for comparing you to say Mattel and Atari, or is that like comparing Apples to Oranges?
""
" -- Steve Jobs -- "
We describe our business as making tools not toys....other people are interested in an entertainment value, which is valuable of course too, but that is not our business.
""
Vulkan Viewport and macOS silicon ? July 17, 2024, 8:05 p.m.
I'm sorry but wouldn't it be reasonable to expect one of the largest and richest companies in the world to have rock solid support for industry standard graphics APIs? Consider bringing this up with your Apple representative. In the meantime choose your hardware and OS to support your software.