Hi, >However, once Vulkan gets more support in the market it's inevitable that there will be a Vulkan implementation available for Mac, using Metal. Not sure about license matters, but this already exists and is maintained by Khronos themselves: https://github.com/KhronosGroup/MoltenVK
Regards, Nick Renieris Στις Τετ, 12 Δεκ 2018 στις 11:53 π.μ., ο/η Ton Roosendaal <t...@blender.org> έγραψε: > Hi Stuart, > > Thanks for reaching out. I understand the concern of Apple users. > However, going native with Metal in Blender is not the way to go. > > For example: > > -The amount of work (since 2014) to move old OpenGL in Blender to OpenGL > Core Profile was huge. Multiple person years of work. A decent generic > wrapper to support other APIs than OpenGL (Metal, or Direct3d) is going to > be even more work than that. Everything in Blender draws with OpenGL. Every > button, every editor uses it. It means you can only work on graphics apis > when all developers/contributors to Blender agree on it and will help out. > > - Maintaining such a dual or triple graphics framework is going to take a > lot of attention and support as well. We will often get situations where > functionality keeps working in Linux/Windows but then breaks in Mac OS. > > There are better solutions. > > - Blender should choose for supporting open standards. We align closely > with what Khronos does for that reason. > The future is to make Blender work with Vulkan. That should be the core > focus of development efforts. > > - Apple has refused to work with Khronos on Vulkan. However, once Vulkan > gets more support in the market it's inevitable that there will be a Vulkan > implementation available for Mac, using Metal. Supporting Vulkan then will > automatically bring us Mac support back. And we align with every other app > who prefers to keep working cross platform on Macs. > > But if you want to help us with Metal: > > Cycles has been designed from the ground up to support multiple graphics > APIs. > It has good Cuda and OpenCL support for that reason. Here it's possible to > add Metal as well. Cycles code base is much smaller and much better > designed (and newer :) than Blender code. > > Why not volunteer first to help with Metal for Cycles? If that project > looks like it works well, we (and you!) also get more insight in the > complexity of having this kind of work done for Blender. Adding Metal in > Cycles will take 3-6 months of work already. > > Last thing for everyone to know: Apple took back our Mac Pro dev system > loan last summer. My contacts within Apple can't manage to get approval for > sending us another system. Blender Foundation has to pay for the Apple > developer program (to sign binaries). > > Apple is clearly not interested in supporting open source or cross > platform openness in any way. If they would, they'd work with the industry > on getting decent Vulkan support for their systems. If they were, they > would give open source coders access to updated hardware. > > Thanks, > > -Ton- > > -------------------------------------------------------- > Ton Roosendaal - t...@blender.org - www.blender.org > Chairman Blender Foundation, Director Blender Institute > Buikslotermeerplein 161, 1025 ET Amsterdam, the Netherlands > > > On 4 Dec 2018, at 20:14, Stuart Carnie <stuart.car...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > Hi Blender 3D developers: > > > > Given the deprecation and poor support of OpenGL on Apple platforms, I am > > curious if there is any interest in my desire to develop Metal GPU > support > > for Blender 3D? > > > > I recently implemented Metal support for RetroArch (a cross-platform > > emulator front end). Some of the highlights of RA: > > > > * supports multiple GPU back ends, including GL, Metal, Vulkan, DirectX > and > > other esoteric APIs > > * a complex, shader pipeline for post-processing using a unified shader > > system of glsl shaders, some in excess of 20 passes ( > > https://github.com/libretro/slang-shaders). These are cross compiled to > > target APIs such as Metal, Vulkan or DirectX using glslang and > SPIRV-cross. > > > > I've had a bit of a peek at the blender 2.8 branch and imagine the place > to > > start would be the GPU folder. I suspect, given the abstractions, there > has > > already been some thought into multiple-GPU support and wonder if there > is > > any public information on this? > > > > Cheers, > > > > Stuart > > > > *Stuart Carnie* > > _______________________________________________ > > Bf-committers mailing list > > Bf-committers@blender.org > > https://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers > > _______________________________________________ > Bf-committers mailing list > Bf-committers@blender.org > https://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers > _______________________________________________ Bf-committers mailing list Bf-committers@blender.org https://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers