Easy Way to Separate Almebic export?

[seba]

HI, I've been working in houdini for 3 months

I made my first model using boolean and it is very cool, yet now I am banging my head trying to export an alembic animation with the layers separated to be imported in c4d for rendering. 

I read I need to add code using wrangles to be able to separate the paths that alembic understand and take into account the ptnum etc - this is just so complex. Why is it so difficult to export layers? 

is there a work around ? like maybe using hda? or a node that makes automatic paths?  

 

 

 

 

 

[Eckxter]

I believe what you're looking for is the checkbox 'Build Hierarchy from Attribute', which you can find on the ROP Alembic Output under the Hierarchy tab.

Provide a primitive path (or any string) attribute on you objects, which is unique for each object, and enable that checkbox on the ROP Alembic Output.
And of course make sure the 'Path Attribute' is the attribute you need.
 

[djangone]

I've been going back and forth between Houdini and C4D this the past week. Houdini exports groups without any special settings. When you import to Cinema 4D, the groups become polygon selection sets. So learn Houdini groups. The simplest way is to lay down a Group Sop and enable the 'bounding region' setting, then inclosing part of your geo in a box/sphere/etc. 

Also, Houdini attributes become Cinema 4D vertex maps, at least some of them. I haven't checked lately. The nice thing about the attributes as vertex maps is that you can bring those into a Redshift shader network. Generally, you're going to want to optimize your attributes and groups (attribute delete / group delete) prior to writing out to alembic, as with any Houdini scene file. Each attribute is costly for processing and storage as well.