Cycles OpenCL rendering on macOS is no longer supported

[BTolputt]

@bsavery

Is the cuda backend of cycles not also following a company down a walled garden rabbit hole when there is an open source alternative out there?

Not really. CUDA, when first implemented, came with benefits that the open source alternatives did not. There are graphics cards using their CUDA drivers that can do things it is hard (or impossible) to replicate using GLSL or similar. There is a reason that open-source projects like Torch, TensorFlow, and other deep learning frameworks still implement CUDA back-ends after all.

@bsavery

Regardless. This whole discussion is about replacing the opengl code all over blender with metal? It seems there is a better solution in all this to me. QT . Given their re-emergence of embracing open source, why does blender write all its entire UI in custom opengl when there is a industry standard and mature alternative out there? Obviously viewports are a different matter as well as rendering back ends but it seems unnecessary to have to worry about how UI is drawn when there’s a good abstraction layer that is cross platform.

From a project management standpoint… QT isn’t better. There is already a UI library in place. If completely rewriting the UI level frameworks was an option, it wouldn’t be as much of a chore (proportionally speaking) to have a generic Vulkan/Metal backend. Outside the desire for a Metal backend, there isn’t a need to redo the UI level of code.

When it comes to large software projects, a good rule of thumb is to not fix what isn’t broken. The UI code isn’t broken. At worst, the Apple change “breaks” Cycles as a GPU supported renderer.