sebkaine Posted March 12, 2015 Share Posted March 12, 2015 (edited) Thanks for your feedback Gram. i don't know how alembic work exactly but - it really shine to spot / optimise / avoid redundancy of information, - this is why the intend philosophie of .abc is to be a ONE mesh file - .abc sequence is imo a hack and a bypass of this initial philosophie but it also work For size comparision try this - convert your sequence in .vrmesh make the sum of the size of each file - convert your sequence as a ONE mesh .abc in Ogawa - compare both size if you tell me that the sum of vrmesh is lighter than the .abc i would be surprise For the speed that couldn't be more logic, you give to vray what it excpect to render without the need of any extra operation ! That's good to know that this workflow work in "reality" thanks ! Edited March 12, 2015 by sebkaine Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gramx Posted March 12, 2015 Author Share Posted March 12, 2015 150 frame Ogawa single .abc = 14.5 gig 150 frames vrmesh sequence = 6.5 gig 150 frames bgeo sequence = 15 gig This is a meshed fluid so the topology changes every frame. The vrmesh must have some extra compression. G Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sebkaine Posted March 12, 2015 Share Posted March 12, 2015 (edited) very interesting gram , this could mean that .abc really suck for mesh with per frame topology change. what is also interesting is that i doesn't do any better than .bgeo for each export you don't have apply a smooth subdiv operation on the mesh ? this could lead me to think that for big FLIP export , choosing the native renderer format is the most efficient choice ? i wouldn't think that .abc would do that bad ... especially in ogawa ... it could be interesting to test how .bin handle this. you just have to subscribe for a trial http://www.realflow.com/try/ then download the Max Plugin + Houdini Plugin no need for realflow. you have a .bin exporter node in houdini and a .bin reader node in max if you have the time to check i would be curious to see how it handle things compare to .abc as a side node .bin is a pretty locked format you can't add custom var like in .abc http://support.nextlimit.com/display/rfrk/The+Channel+Concept Edited March 12, 2015 by sebkaine Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gramx Posted March 12, 2015 Author Share Posted March 12, 2015 The convert vdb mesh I am exporting has 2.5million polys, so no need to subdivide it any further. It looks like there isn't any compression going on in the alembic output. I think your right that the native renderer format is the most efficient choice for a changing topology mesh. I am going to switch over to .vrmesh from now on. When I get time I will test with just particles to see if that also works. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sebkaine Posted March 12, 2015 Share Posted March 12, 2015 .bin is not only a particle format you can also export a mesh. That's the mesh exporter that would be interesting to compare. in max you also have frost that could be worth a try http://www.thinkboxsoftware.com/frost/ you would only export particles and mesh in max. i have never use it but it's also an option that could worth a try ... i have heard good thing about it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gramx Posted March 12, 2015 Author Share Posted March 12, 2015 I have used Frost a lot, Its very good. I use PRT loader with krakatoa and then read this with frost. There is a PRT ROP exporter here: http://forums.odforce.net/topic/17218-prt-export-from-houdini-12/page-3 I am not using frost it in this case as I am doing several mesh displacements in Houdini before I export the mesh. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sebkaine Posted March 12, 2015 Share Posted March 12, 2015 Thanks for the link ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Posted March 12, 2015 Share Posted March 12, 2015 Not sure if it's mentioned somewhere in here, but you can set up ply2vrmesh in the GEOio table. I think you have to spool to $TEMP first because ply2vrmesh doesn't work with stdin natively, and then start you can start loading and saving .vrmesh format directly within Houdini. If you need more help on the syntax, I can help you out further a little later. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sebkaine Posted March 12, 2015 Share Posted March 12, 2015 (edited) I would be very interested by a detail description of the process Jason. Writing .vrmesh directly from houdini would be a killing features. Thanks ! Edited March 12, 2015 by sebkaine Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gramx Posted March 12, 2015 Author Share Posted March 12, 2015 Yes, I second that! It would save having to convert all the files again after exporting Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pazuzu Posted March 12, 2015 Share Posted March 12, 2015 +1 Jason!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edward Posted March 13, 2015 Share Posted March 13, 2015 seq.$F4.bgeo.sc is the new H14 way. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bunker Posted March 14, 2015 Share Posted March 14, 2015 ROP output driver SOP : myalembic.$F4.abc and read it back with an alembic SOP 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gramx Posted March 16, 2015 Author Share Posted March 16, 2015 .sc format looks good for compressing bgeo files I originally tried exporting myalembic.$F4.abc from the alembic ROP driver, but this didn't work. Just tried it with a standard ROP output driver and it does work! Cheers Graham Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sebkaine Posted March 17, 2015 Share Posted March 17, 2015 (edited) seq.$F4.bgeo.sc is the new H14 way. Guys i didn't get what is this one ? You can load this as a vrmesh directly ? What's the point of .bgeo.sc instead of .bgeo ? Gram have you suceed to write directly .vrmesh outside of houdini without the conversion step ? Thanks ! Edited March 17, 2015 by sebkaine Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gramx Posted March 17, 2015 Author Share Posted March 17, 2015 (edited) No, I can't write vrmesh's directly from Houdini yet. bgeo.sc is a faster compression format and replaces bgeo.gz these can't be converted by ply2vrmesh Edited March 17, 2015 by gramx Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sebkaine Posted March 17, 2015 Share Posted March 17, 2015 Thanks Gram ! so the working workflow is still - outpout to .bhclassic - then convert directly .bhclassic to .vrmesh ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gramx Posted March 17, 2015 Author Share Posted March 17, 2015 Yes, that's correct! I'm still hoping Jason will post his setup to output directly from Houdini though. G 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IvanPulido Posted March 17, 2015 Share Posted March 17, 2015 Hi Graham, i did an script to do exactly that in my last work, we had to render in maya and the houdini caches was super crazy size, and this script write a abc per frame, you can create a self button you only need copy/paste the python code and thats all.https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/30398202/alembic_shelf_ivanpulido.rar send me an email, for the password. ivanpulido7@yahoo.esCheers.Ivan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gramx Posted March 17, 2015 Author Share Posted March 17, 2015 Hi Ivan Thanks for your post, it appears that you can write per frame. abc files with a standard ROP output driver, instead of the alembic ROP. output: "myalembic.$F4.abc" I have tested this and it seems to work for now! I will email you if I run into any difficulties. Thanks Graham Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.