APF Files from Massive and Skeleton from Maya

[particlefx]

Currently working on a Crowd Multiplication Sequence.
I will be responsible for creating Interaction Dust (Kicking Dust created while running on ground)for the crowd.

APF Files from Massive and Skeleton from Maya will be Provided to me.

I need to generate Dust from above information using Houdini.

1.Do we already have plugin to import APF Files inside Houdini.

2.How to apply the APF data (Animation information ) to the Skeleton.

Need your guidance for above workflow.

Or if there is any other better workflow to integrate Massive and Houdini

Edited July 28, 2016 by particlefx

[edward]

1. Not that I know of.

2. Don't know but I've heard of at least 2 studios which have written their own scripts which parse files from Massive for import into Houdini. Since this was before Houdini's agent primitives, I'm not sure what form the data looked like in Houdini. For one of the studios, I think they had their own Houdini plugin for crowds.

[particlefx]

Thank you Edward....

 

[jordibares]

APF is a text based file format and describes very little as it is intended to build the agent on render time thanks to a DSO, therefore is passing position/orientation information bone information, bounding box and little more and will force you to build the skeleton using the same parameters which is not trivial.

You would be probably better of if they provide a sequence of images (per frame) of contact in the floor which will allow you to do the sim easily.

hope it helps.