The Blender 3D modeling software could enjoy better macOS support with better cross-platform code paths thanks to in-development work for leveraging KosmicKrisp for Vulkan API usage on macOS via Metal.

Blender has been making good progress on its Vulkan acceleration for the viewport rendering as an alternative to OpenGL. Blender 5.1 is aiming for Vulkan by default on Windows and Linux systems.

KosmicKrisp meanwhile is an open-source project started by LunarG in cooperation with Google and others. KosmicKrisp was merged into Mesa 26.0 and is currently Vulkan 1.3 compliant for Apple devices by implementing the Vulkan API atop Apple’s Metal API, similar in scope to the existing MoltenVK project.

Longtime Blender developer Jeroen Bakker who is the main developer of Blender’s Vulkan back-end and co-owner of the EEVEE/Viewport module is working on being able to leverage KosmicKrisp under macOS for enhancing the Blender Vulkan workflow.

This pull request from yesterday is now merged for Blender 5.1 to synchronize Vulkan features with KosmicKrisp. This new code allows for basic execution with Blender but some features like editing mesh overlays, GPU subdivision, selecting, and the wireframe shader node in EEVEE aren’t yet workign.

Bakker noted in the pull request that developers can work on Metal and Vulkan at the same time. There are currently no plans though to replace Blender’s existing Metal back-end with Vulkan due to other current restrictions. In any event nice to see this taking shape for those wanting to use Blender’s Vulkan code-path on macOS.