Alembic Points to control smoke/clouds

[marc0s]

Hello

I have a problem, using an alembic file to control clouds or pyro.

The points where animated in Softimage, exported as alembic, imported to Houdini and now I want create a cloudy storm with the velocity and Pointposition of these points.

I already tried some of the example files I found here and on the cgwiki page... with a normap popnetwork it works, but I just dont get it to run with my alembic file.

Since there are many ways, I thought about converting the points to VDB, use the VDB to controll volume like pyro and clouds.

One point I dont understand and dont know how to solve: does my .abc file have velocity information?
When I hover with middle mouse, it tells me, there is 'v'. But Using the vel is not working.
 

Another question is: Since I would like to slowly switch from SI to Houdini - how would I do a setup like these in Houdini?

In Softimage I used the tangent of a curve to move the points circular.
After that a gravity node with + values to push the points up in the are.
And a distance between emitter a point position to controll speed and gravity strength.

How would a setup like that look in Houdini?

Thank you very much!

marc0s

 

edit: the example.zip is an alembic file with some frames of my setup, just if you wonder.

example.zip

storm.mp4

[Tyfx567]

You have velocity information from Softimage and it came in just fine. You can turn the icon that is highlighted on to view velocity data in houdini. Can I see a hip file as to what you are trying to achieve? A tornado sim?

If you want a volume to keep the velocity information from points you can lay down a vdbfromparticle node, connect your object_merge1 (which has your alembic imported into sops) and then turn on point attributes and select "v". 

volume data.hipnc

Edited May 29, 2017 by Tyfx567