Radeon ProRender Discussion

[bollella]

Does anyone have experience building the Houdini 20.5 Plugin on MacOS 15? On GitHub I see assets for H19.5 on MacOS and RPR 3.0.0. I'd like to build the latest RPR 3.0.3, I believe, for H20.5.370 and would appreciate some guidance.

Thanks,

Greg

[MidnightRoller]

Hi Greg,

(I initially started writting this for you first post but I'm posting here after seeing the second)

https://github.com/GPUOpen-LibrariesAndSDKs/RadeonProRenderUSD/releases 

is where you can find the latest builds.  When I look at the release page the last build I see for MacOS is for Houdini is "Weekly Development builds v3.0.2" and as you will see that version of RPR is built for Houdini 19.5.640

If you want to use a different version of Houdini you will have to build the RPR plugin yourself, personally I found building the USD branch to be an absolute nightmare, mainly because Maya users need to use a seperate USD fork, but the documentation for MacOS isn't great either.  However, it seems that AMD has stopped releasing for builds for MacOS and just focusing on Windows so if it is important to you to be using a specific version of Houdini you will need to build it yourself or you may be waiting awhile.

(continued on second post)

I'd be happy to help if you want to try to build it, I think it will be much easier than building for maya as Houdini comes with it's own prebuilt USD, the download link is in the README .  Make sure to follow the step for setting the HFS environmental variable then run "echo $HFS" to make sure it's properly set prior to running cmake for the RPR build.

[bollella]

Hmmm....if the community isn't keeping up with Houdini versions not sure it'll be worth the effort to compile it myself. Certainly possible but I know, for example, the Redshift team has to produce a custom build for each Houdini production version. If there are code changes necessary to get RPR to compile or work properly likely out of my wheelhouse.

Any idea why the community isn't keeping up with Houdini on MacOS?

Greg

[MidnightRoller]

I know they are focusing on things such as HIPRTSDK and other SDK's.  Seems also like they put other projects on the backburner to focus on USD and materialX as well.  I am thankful that they did make plugins and I am sure they making decisions based on the market where they are going to get the best return but I'm often left puzzled why not go that extra 5% to stay relevant in this space when they have gone so far already.  I've seen countless people give up and just switch to Nvidia. I'm in the market for a new card but but the thing that is holding me back is when I ask myself why don't I just make my life easier and switch to Nvidia.

Maybe I don't know what I am talking about but I am pretty sure they should probably send a gift-basket this Christmas to the Redshift team.

As far as MacOS goes support goes, I think the switch from AMD to Arm64 has had a lot to do with it 💀💀