Houdini to Nuke - 3D

[chazfest]

Hi,

I'm very much a beginner here so many apologies if this is a basic question

I'm not yet running Apprentice HD, I'll be buying it very shortly, so at the min I'm getting to grips with the freebie version.

I've managed to (eventually) save out single basic objects from Houdini (ie. spheres and basic shapes etc) as .obj files and import them into Nuke successfully. One issue here is that they seem to be brought into Nuke with no shaders or textures etc, just the bare bones of the shapes. Any ideas what I'm doing wrong? - I'm just going into the SOP and right clicking the node then selecting 'save geometry'.

My main question though very much relates to this same point, only difference, I'd like to know how to export the objects with their animation properties. For example, say I build a basic chimney with a particle emitter inside, resulting in a steady flow of particles flowing out of the chimney. How would I then get this into Nuke whilst maintaining all of the 3D aspects, enabling me to control it's coordinates and even MatchMove it all within Nuke? The result? Hopefully the chimney, in this case, would still be animated once imported into Nuke, and I would have full control over the cameras rotation and position (exactly as I would within Houdini).

I really hope there's a way, I'm assuming there must be. I'm really excited about the possibility of MatchMoving the 3D elements from Houdini inside Nuke.

Thanks in advance.

Chaz

[titor]

Hello Chaz.

To answer about your first question, in Nuke when you import your geometry you must have some node name

ReadGeo

.

You must pipe in your texture,or any image, or if you want to assign some shaders, you can create them inside nuke via the shader menu.

I've never tried to export shaders to nuke so can't really help on taht point.

To get your animation i suggest you use FBX export so you can get all your animation inside nuke.

You need to tweak the parameter of the exporter to get what you need. Can't remember waht exactly, but test it

Edit :

To get your animation you just need to export it in FBX and select a valid frame range it will then export your geo with a key on each frame.

To import it, you just have to put a readGeo node and then load your FBx file

Edited October 25, 2010 by titor

[chazfest]

Fantastic! Thanks so much for that! I've heard of the FBX format but always assumed it was 'AutoDesk only'! I'll try that and see how I get on.

Thanks again amigo

[chazfest]

Fantastic! Thanks so much for that! I've heard of the FBX format but always assumed it was 'AutoDesk only'! I'll try that and see how I get on.

Thanks again amigo

Just thought, I'm currently running the free version of Apprentice which (as far as I'm aware) doesn't support FBX exporting. Do you know if HD supports it?

[titor]

Hey Chaz !

Sorry for the late reply. Have been busy.

I don't know really about the differences between Apprentice and HD but seems from sidefx website that you can import FBX in both version, can't really tell if you can then export it.

You can try to find on nukepedia.com a script called FromHoudini2Nuke, might do the trick.

[chazfest]

Hey Chaz !

Sorry for the late reply. Have been busy.

I don't know really about the differences between Apprentice and HD but seems from sidefx website that you can import FBX in both version, can't really tell if you can then export it.

You can try to find on nukepedia.com a script called FromHoudini2Nuke, might do the trick.

Thanks Titor! I've downloaded the plugin but cannot seem to get it working yet, a few teething problems it would seem. I'll persist, maybe I've not set it up correctly initially.

Thanks again for the tip.

[pberto]

Hello Chaz.

To answer about your first question, in Nuke when you import your geometry you must have some node name

ReadGeo

.

Hello there,

for completeness sake, in AtomKraft we have node, AtomReadGeo, which imports native Houdini GEO/BGEO, with support of animated geometry, deformation motion blur and weighted motion re-targeting.

We should shortly hit beta2 and soon an open beta.

Last but not least, the first license will be free, even for commercial usage.

Paolo