Alembic Import From C4D Is Wrong

[Atom]

Hello All,

I have an animation in C4D15 that works fine.

I export it as .abc

I import that into Houdini15 and the model looks wrong and the rotations are off when the object animates.

Is this typical?

Does Alembic often fail?

Is there something I have to do in Cinema, prior to export, to insure correct transfer?

I was under the impression that Alembic is some panacea that is going to solve all our cross-package migration issues.

 

This is my first attempt at trying to use Alembic and it fails. Is it the C4D exporter or the Houdini importer?

[Funk_Wagnalls]

I too have dealt with the woes of C4D.

Maybe try FBX? That generally works best for me, C4D has some particularly bad exporting options.

[mart1jn]

I generally have good experience with exporting .abc from C4d to houdini.

I'm working  with C4d R16  and Houdini 14. So i'm not competely sure if my findings are relevant to yours.

In C4d, I usually set the exporter to "alembic HDF5(legacy)" Mind that C4D project usually start at frame 0 and Houdini projects at frame 1 . I make sure that the frame rates are the same in both projects. Camera's seem to be missing/misimporing a couple of settings: The aspect-ratio and aperture are set to 0;  I usually set them manually to the corresponding values from C4D.

[LukeLetellier]

I actually have better success with C4D R17 --> Alembic --> Hou vs. using FBX.

I use Alembic Ogawa, and always start at frame 1. I also use "Selection Only" to ensure I don't get any strange elements included.

What kind of animation are you transferring? Is it simple PSR object transforms? Mograph? Deformations? 

What happens if you take the Alembic you just exported from C4D & reimport it into C4D? Does it look as it should?

[shawn_kearney]

I too have had no problems with R17 going to H15, Clarisse 2 nor with Realflow 2015.

Could you screenshot your version's export controls for those of us using later versions?

[Atom]

I have attached my C4D export panel.

I did try and import the resulting export back into C4D and it looks broken in the same way. So I don't think it is the Houdini importer. Houdini does interpret the geometry a bit weird, however. I see a lot of extra points just floating around for some reason. I don't see that when I re-import back into C4D.

 

C4D import:

 

Edited April 29, 2016 by Atom

[LukeLetellier]

What it looks like to me is that your original C4D objects have some extra points floating around that aren't always visibile unless you're in point selection mode. If stray points aren't connected to the main section of polygonized geometry, C4D won't display them while in object viewing mode - so its easy to overlook them. By contrast, Houdini is obsessed with points - it shows them all the time.  

Go through each of the original objects in C4D, select them, and run the optimize function on each (Mesh --> Commands --> Optimize). That should eliminate any of the stray points. Then try exporting the objects again.

Edited April 30, 2016 by LukeLetellier