VDB export from H14 to V-ray problems

[gramx]

Hi

 

Has anyone tried exporting VDBs from H14 and then tried rendering then in 3DS-Max V-Ray? I am reading them with Phoenix, I have been doing this successfully with H13 but I cant get the same setup to work from H14. Its as if the vdb export has changed???

 

Thanks

 

Graham

[gramx]

Looks like the VDB format has changed, this is from help-

VDBs with vector values now apply transformations to the voxels as well (depending on the vector type). This breaks backward compatibility and may result in scenes changing when loaded into Houdini 14 if you use vector VDBs.

Is there a way to export the old VDB format? I can't even load a VDB from 14 into Houdini 13!

[jkunz07]

I think  HOUDINI13_VOLUME_COMPATIBILITY env needs to be set to 1 in houdini.env

[gramx]

I think  HOUDINI13_VOLUME_COMPATIBILITY env needs to be set to 1 in houdini.env

 

Your right John!!! I just set this env value and it now work. )) Thanks!

[Farmfield]

A bit off topic but for exporting Pyro to Max for rendering, try 3delight (just released for 3ds Max), it's blazing fast for rendering volumes - and it's free for a 1 workstation, 8 core license.

 

Edit: Oh, I forgot, the 3delight plugin for 3ds Max has it's own VDB importer that imports H14 volumes just fine without any need to set compatibility or alike.

Edited March 28, 2015 by Farmfield

[edward]

For the record, the reason for older OpenVDB versions not loading the ones output from H14 is because they are now output with blosc compression by default. Hopefully, you should notice a difference in size of the .vdb file with and without HOUDINI13_VOLUME_COMPATIBILITY.

[gramx]

For the record, the reason for older OpenVDB versions not loading the ones output from H14 is because they are now output with blosc compression by default. Hopefully, you should notice a difference in size of the .vdb file with and without HOUDINI13_VOLUME_COMPATIBILITY.

 

Thanks for the info, I have also been told that the nightly build of V-Ray can now read the new VDB format, although I haven't tried it yet. 

[LukeLetellier]

Glad to hear that this pipeline is being developed. Still waiting for the Vray 3.0 SDK to be released for 3rd party devs, as C4D users like myself are still on Vray 2.xx.

[sNITCh]

Cool, it works !!. Houdini 14 to Maya without this HOUDINI13_VOLUME_COMPATIBILITY doesn't work, with env, works well. Thanks.

[sNITCh]

Cool, it works !!. Houdini 14 to Maya without this HOUDINI13_VOLUME_COMPATIBILITY doesn't work, with env, works well. Thanks.

[anthonymcgrath]

I just thought I'd add to this. I did a quick off the shelf Pyro test in hou ..blasted it out as a vdb sequence and used the vray volume node in maya to load it in. I can get it to render in maya altho don't seem to be getting fire and wotnot from the explosion.. almost like it's a dust cloud but I need to twiddle more.

But I thought I'd mention that the environment variable up there works perfect and I was getting much more accurate results once I imputed that into my houdini.env file thanks!

Btw hou 15.5 and maya 2015 with vray 3.05 fyi