magneto Posted January 12, 2012 Share Posted January 12, 2012 (edited) I have a few dozens of splines that aren't NURBS in Max, and want to import them into Houdini using the File SOP. I only have Max at work so would OBJ format be the best choice? Also I want to turn them into NURBS in Houdini, either on import or afterwards, if that's possible. Thanks. Edited January 12, 2012 by magneto Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rdg Posted January 12, 2012 Share Posted January 12, 2012 http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini11.1/io/formats/geometry_formats Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andz Posted January 12, 2012 Share Posted January 12, 2012 my best guess would be to convert them to mesh in MAX and try OBJ so you can have some points and edges. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hopbin9 Posted January 12, 2012 Share Posted January 12, 2012 You can do this. Export the splines in Max to an Illustrator file (AI) and then use a File SOP to load it into Houdini. The splines will come in as Bezier shapes, but you can use a Convert SOP to change them to NURBS. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
magneto Posted January 12, 2012 Author Share Posted January 12, 2012 Thanks guys, I was beginning to think I would have to write a maxscript to output the coordinates into a Curve SOP. Max -> AI -> Bezier -> NURBS should be fine as Hopbin said. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kubabuk Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 That list on sesi website is incomplete. They missed iges which is unbeaten when it comes to exchanging Nurbs (worked great for me in Houdini <-> Rhino workflow) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
magneto Posted January 13, 2012 Author Share Posted January 13, 2012 Thanks kubakuk, that's why I always like to hear people's experiences first. Max also supports IGES out of the box. Never used it though, so will try it tonight. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andz Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 You can do this. Export the splines in Max to an Illustrator file (AI) and then use a File SOP to load it into Houdini. The splines will come in as Bezier shapes, but you can use a Convert SOP to change them to NURBS. Just out of curiosity, this also works for 3d splines??? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kubabuk Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 That list on sesi website is incomplete. They missed iges which is unbeaten when it comes to exchanging Nurbs (worked great for me in Houdini <-> Rhino workflow) Forgot to add, you may want to remove colour attribute which may slow down viewport for some reasons. On the the other hand it is a cheap way to exchange groups. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
magneto Posted January 13, 2012 Author Share Posted January 13, 2012 Thanks IGES does really work the best. Although it seems to automatically surface closed curves. Also when I split my closed curves from its 4 corners, the import brought like 500+ curves where I only have 50. Lots of dups on top of each other. That happened when I converted them to NURBS in Max. I couldn't try the split method without converting to NURBS because Max always crashes on export. Still I got the curves. Thanks all Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kubabuk Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 Thanks IGES does really work the best. Although it seems to automatically surface closed curves. Also when I split my closed curves from its 4 corners, the import brought like 500+ curves where I only have 50. Lots of dups on top of each other. That happened when I converted them to NURBS in Max. I couldn't try the split method without converting to NURBS because Max always crashes on export. Still I got the curves. Thanks all You could try recreating curves in Houdini. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
magneto Posted January 13, 2012 Author Share Posted January 13, 2012 Yes that would be the cleanest way. I might write a small script to output curve input data the way Houdini does when you create one interactively. It's also pretty easy to write this as a file and have a python importer that could create these curves in a network for you. Although I am not gonna do that, if I actually write a maxscript, I will share it with the forum Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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