Houdini Indie geometry import / export

[kev2]

I get a "~obj name~ not writeable" when I try to export any geometry from Houdini Indie (13.498) as an fbx, including when the file was imported as an fbx and when created entirely within Houdini.

 

Also, I thought .obj exporting was supported in HI but there's no export option, just fbx and abc.

 

I"m wondering if this is a limitation of Indie, a bug, etc. 

 

Thanks, Kevin  

[Guest tar]

without testing I thought you could even export .obj from Apprentice with RMB in Sops, save geometry.

[kev2]

Wow, thanks Marty. SideFX you might want to consider adding that one to the help documents. 

Cheers, Kevin

[danw]

I was under the impression you could just use a .obj extention in a regular Geometry ROP output, and it would save as a valid obj file... I may very well be wrong though.

 

But yeah, there shouldn't be any specific issue with FBX under Indie as far as I'm aware... I understand it's a fairly integral interchange format for game engines, so it would seem fairly vital that Indie supported it.

 

I do recall that the last time I resorted to using it though, it proved to be a source of some frustration.  Since Alembic hit the scene, I've never gone near FBX again.

[kev2]

Alembic is great but we have a couple programs that haven't integrated it yet. Soon though. 

[Adam T]

.obj can indeed be output from Apprentice. You can export through a ROP or right-clicking on a node.

 

FBX exports only support object level (so /obj subnets). 

 

There's a few FBX caveats worth knowing for new users:

 

- Geometry-level animation won't be exported. Only object-level animation (transforms) will carry through. There may be an exception with deforming (point cloud/vertex cache) type exports but I've not had any need to try these so I'd refer to the FBX card if you have animation that changes vert counts or deforms.

 

- UVs are exported in reverse order. So if you're using a game engine such as Unity, you'll want to check Swap UVs on the import inspector in Unity.

 

- Groups are exported as child meshes. If you model a bed and have mattress and frame groups, these will show up as seperate objects in the FBX (and Unity). Sounds like a limitation but it can be very useful. If you don't want this, then stick a Clean SOP at the end of the network.

Edited August 24, 2014 by Adam T