sinarhp Posted October 21, 2015 Share Posted October 21, 2015 Hi guys This questions might have been asked several times before, But even after going through a lot of relevant posts and forums I didn't get a clear answer of what is the best way of doing this. Well basically I am working on an RBD sim for our current project atm and have some particles emitting from the impact points of my RBD shards when they hit the ground. I need to export these particles from Houdini and render it in Maya, using either Maya classic particles or nparticles attributes. I tried both exporting as alembic cache and fbx, but none of them worked, I can bring the caches back in Houdini with no problem but Maya just does not recognise particles exported from Houdini. I managed to bring the particles in Maya using Vray proxy but in that case the particles are imported under a geo node and are not treated as particles so I don't have access to any relevant attributes for particles. Based on my research people are recommending exporting .bin files using the realflow for Houdini plugin or using "Crate" to translate the particles alembic caches from Houdini into maya. But before convincing my company to implement any of these I was wondering if there is any easier way of doing this using native Houdini and Maya tools, as I am assuming that many people have had this issue before. Sorry for the long post I appreciate any help Thanks Sina Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Diego A Grimaldi Posted October 21, 2015 Share Posted October 21, 2015 How about H Engine? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sinarhp Posted October 21, 2015 Author Share Posted October 21, 2015 (edited) Hi Diego Thanks for your reply I have never tried H Engine before, Would you mind explaining the workflow? Edited October 22, 2015 by sinarhp Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Malf Posted October 22, 2015 Share Posted October 22, 2015 You can try using this set of tools by RedpawFX, it hasn't been updated in a while but it supports reading .bhclassic files.http://redpawfx.github.io/partio/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farmfield Posted October 22, 2015 Share Posted October 22, 2015 WTF is this BS? So Nuke and Fusion opens the Houdini (particles/points only) alembic files without any issues but Maya just don't import particles/points it seems. Also tried cleaning the attributes - and when that didn't work - even tried copying an add node point onto each particle so it's really stripped of all particle related attributes, but no difference. No clue what is going on. Importing Alembic meshes works great though. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xs2222 Posted October 22, 2015 Share Posted October 22, 2015 If rendering in Maya with Arnold , reckon H2A would do a good job of it, or H engine will do the job as well , and H Engine costs arent that high so it could be used to export HDA , export volumes , particles and geo , so would be a good investment Cheers, J Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deniz Posted October 23, 2015 Share Posted October 23, 2015 you can use partio from disney too http://www.disneyanimation.com/technology/partio.html=) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anthonymcgrath Posted September 26, 2016 Share Posted September 26, 2016 On 22/10/2015 at 3:16 PM, Farmfield said: WTF is this BS? So Nuke and Fusion opens the Houdini (particles/points only) alembic files without any issues but Maya just don't import particles/points it seems. Also tried cleaning the attributes - and when that didn't work - even tried copying an add node point onto each particle so it's really stripped of all particle related attributes, but no difference. No clue what is going on. Importing Alembic meshes works great though. lol your everywhere - class rant - this one is really rubbing my chuddies right now - got a really cool grains sim and i cant get it to maya in any usable way - is there any updates to this turkey that we call maya ? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anthonymcgrath Posted September 26, 2016 Share Posted September 26, 2016 subscribed Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atom Posted September 26, 2016 Share Posted September 26, 2016 Wayne Hollingsworth had some information on that in his presentation. He was moving simulations from Houdini to Maya and it just seemed to work. Jump to about 40 minutes into the presentation. https://www.gnomon.edu/community/events/destruction-and-simulation-fx-workshop-with-wayne-hollingsworth Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anthonymcgrath Posted September 26, 2016 Share Posted September 26, 2016 well i had some luck after trawling around and googling my back wheels off. i made a simple OTL with a file node in there that points to my exported bgeo grains cache sequence then loaded it into maya. unfortunately in piping out the bgeo there doesn't appear to be any colour info via the ROP output - anyone know how to fix this ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ValentinD Posted September 28, 2016 Share Posted September 28, 2016 Just came to say thanks to @Atom for the presentation ! I am really interested to find another way than using houdiniEngine, I have tested it and worked really well, unfortunately, some company doesn't want to buy licences. It's kinda frustrating when you want to make instances on Maya based on Houdini Sim. I eventually end up to export geo with Alembic, which is not a good solution... Thanks all for sharing your pipeline / methodology. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
garf Posted June 2, 2017 Share Posted June 2, 2017 Is this really still an issue? https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/maya-forum/alambic-importing-partical-erro-error-line-1-particleshape1/td-p/7040953 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
businesscat Posted June 2, 2017 Share Posted June 2, 2017 As recent as Dec it was still an issue. Haven't tried recently. There's 2 solutions I know of, both require 3rd party software. 1) get the PRT exporter tool for Houdini (google for it) import to Maya via Krakatoa. 2) Realflow Connectivity Plugins - Export particles at BIN files and import to maya via Realflow connectivity. I'd suggest Krakatoa method if you have a choice - smaller file sizes and you can map custom attributes with a degree of ease (maybe same is true of realflow too?). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lavitz01 Posted June 3, 2017 Share Posted June 3, 2017 you can use houdini engine or if that doesnt work, then try to export it as an alembic file format. (.abc) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
garf Posted June 7, 2017 Share Posted June 7, 2017 (edited) On 2017-6-3 at 10:03 AM, lavitz01 said: you can use houdini engine or if that doesnt work, then try to export it as an alembic file format. (.abc) That's the point. You cant import Houdini particles into Maya with Alembic. It seems that every other DCC on the planet has this ability but not Maya....... Even dead software like XSI can handle this. Autodesk are a shambles. Edited June 7, 2017 by garf 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anthonymcgrath Posted June 7, 2017 Share Posted June 7, 2017 On 6/2/2017 at 5:49 PM, garf said: Is this really still an issue? https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/maya-forum/alambic-importing-partical-erro-error-line-1-particleshape1/td-p/7040953 lol - yep - as said above earlier - Maya is a total turkey with things like this... its trying to be cinema4d of late with its fancy motion gfx tools embedded in it but apparently they're buggy as hell too! Its a total bombsite of mixed tools that have never really been gelled together in the wonderful way houdini is. I'm a long time maya user - i really like it to animate with and in vfx studios its the go-to place altho i would love to get more into houdini for animation which i will be doing after i'm finished on this show (currently on Thor Ragnarok in London at Framestore)... i think its high time more animation stuff was seen from houdini because every time i've animated something in it the thing is a joy to work with especially the scope and graph editor! anyway back to particles as i said above you can create a .otl to fire em out and i got them into my maya scene but its limited and doesn't bring colour info through it seems or i couldn't get it to. Either way its a clunky workflow. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sepu Posted June 7, 2017 Share Posted June 7, 2017 you cant with alembic, I believe engine can, I haven't tried myself. But you can do it with Soup or if you are using Vray you can use that as well, it works fine. Mash actually is one of the better thing in Maya right now. Not here to defend it at all, but Mash + Soup if you want to have procedural stuff in Maya and it works. Until Bifrost comes up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
makah21803 Posted June 10, 2022 Share Posted June 10, 2022 (edited) So I found a solution (yes, its till an issue after five years), but its really dumb that Maya requires this: note: My goal was to export locators from Houdini to Maya. If you require rotation as well, you would need additional fiddling and it might be easier to use Houdini Engine for export (for that just save a hda with the file node inside and import it to Maya through Houdini Engine, the instancing steps are the same) In Houdini: * have only the points * add the add node and in Particles tab check Add Particle System * create a path attribute on the primitive, that ends in particleShape1/particleShape2, i.e. /particles/particleShape1/particleShape2/ * use csCache Alembic set to single frame to export the points In Maya: * create a locator (just one in the origin) * switch to FX menus * import the exported fxCache note: it will only allow to import one particle cache, at a time. When you import second, it will be empty - sometimes deleting the current one will be enough to allow import new, sometimes you'll need a clean scene To check if it impored, select the group and press F, if it shows you points its ok, if it just zooms to origin, its empty * select the locator first, then the particle system in the imported hierarchy * in nParticles menu click Instancer * with the created instancer selected in MASH/Utilities click Bake Instancer to objects Now delete everything except the group that just got created and youre done Edited June 10, 2022 by makah21803 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sepu Posted June 10, 2022 Share Posted June 10, 2022 (edited) Do not need anything of that anymore btw. Just use Bifrost Graph and export them as pts from H. It will bring all attributes, etc. Edited June 10, 2022 by Sepu 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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