tomwyn Posted March 2, 2015 Share Posted March 2, 2015 Hi all, I've spent a few days extensively reading & doing some brute force test of importing Alembics from 3DSMax into Houdini. But alas, I haven't managed to solve my issues. (I'm aware that this might not be the best place to post issues involving max, however I'm hoping that someone else has been through this process before on here, who may be able to shed some light.) My question is: 1: Is there a way to export alembics from MAX in such a way that they are grouped using their object hierarchy? (e.g left wheel, right wheel, windows of a car model.) Maybe attach some alembic metadata that Houdini could pick up? (I've already tried assigning a sequential material ID to every 'piece' in max and attaching it to indiv objects as metadata, but I'll be damned if I can find out how to read it in Houdini.) Ideally max wouldn't be part of my workflow at all, but I'm getting the geo from another artist, so I have to find a way. If anyone has any tips, they would be very much appreciated! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pbarua Posted March 2, 2015 Share Posted March 2, 2015 I doubt material ID can be read in Houdini. But object hierarchy in automatically gets exported if you select root of chain. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomwyn Posted March 2, 2015 Author Share Posted March 2, 2015 Hey Paradeep. Yes, I know the hierarchy get's exported, however I have hundreds of objects, so what I'm attempting to do is export the alembic with a collapsed hierarchy (i.e just 1 geo node in Houdini), but with the geo grouped based upon the 3DMax file structure, so I can delete unwanted geo by group. (rather than wade through hundreds of indiv nodes, manually grouping things) Again, I'm not even sure if this can be done in Alembic, but it seems to be default in formats like .obj. Another option may be to attach metadata to objects in max that identify the part of the model they come from, however I'm not sure if/how Houdini can read this metadata? I'd assume as attributes? I read some documentation stating that this metadata is stored in an embedded JSON file within the resulting alembic - Anyone ever dealt with these? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pbarua Posted March 3, 2015 Share Posted March 3, 2015 You can combine your geometry. This way combined parts will be read as groups in Houdini. Remember you have to load as Houdini geometry. But combining geometry isn't efficient way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fathom Posted March 4, 2015 Share Posted March 4, 2015 first off, how are you importing? you doing a "file import" or are you using the Alembic SOP? with the alembic sop, you can add the alembic hierarchy "path" as a string attribute which might be something you can use to help you group things. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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