Applying different xform to indivitual objects in alembic

[ashe]

Hey guys,

I am quite new to Houdini and struggling with accessing individual objects in the alembic file.

Clouds were positioned in Maya ( I know it is easier to do it in Houdini ) and I was told to make each cloud hovering up and down in a different way. How could I access individual objects in alembic file, so I can apply transform node with rand() parameters for the movement?

Now when I apply transform node to alembic, the movement of all clouds is the same. What I want to achieve is: one cloud moves up, another one moves down, another one is very lazy so it moves only slowly, etc.

I am attaching the scene with my alembic file, to make it clearer for you guys.

Thank you for your time :3

~ashe

individual_cloud_movement.hipnc

4clouds.abc.tar.gz

[Hudson]

Hello!

For this specific task you can simply apply some expressions to the transform nodes for each geometry. These are already created by the hierarchy from your 3D-application you cached the clouds from.

Just double-click your alembic node in the obj-level and you will see one alembic X-form node for each cloud shape. Within those you have one transform node which you can manipulate a single cloud at a time. Look at the file attached.

Instead of manipulating the alembic nodes inside the main Alembic Xform I usually cache the geometries with a "rop output driver" SOP-node and bring those in using a "Dop I/O" SOP-node. If you haven't used those so take a look because you will be using these a lot

It is worth to mention that in houdini you want to keep your creations it procedural. If you had let's say 100 or more clouds I would probably approach this task differently.

Good luck!

individual_cloud_movement_manually.hipnc.hip