Prim Attr to group for material assignment

[dupevfx]

Hey,

Trying to workout a good asset workflow coming from Maya to Houdini.

Geometry wise we are using Alembic and I'd like to add an attribute in Maya (or similar method) to define what materials are assigned to what geometry (shape assignment, never face assignment). Then in houdini use that attribute to assign materials to the alembic cache.

So far I've managed to add a string attr to the shape nodes in Maya and export that into houdini fine. Once the alembic is unpacked I can see the attributes there.

I cant seem to get those prim attributes to be used in the material node downstream though, as you could do with groups for instance.

 

Any tips would be much appreciated, or other workflows that could be better.

 

Cheers

[aaronsmith93]

Hey mate, the syntax for using an attribute as a group is slightly different. If you wanted to use the string name attribute for example:

Or alternatively, if you wanted to use anything beginning with "prim_" 

Hope this helps.

Edited October 8, 2020 by aaronsmith93

[dupevfx]

1 hour ago, aaronsmith93 said:

Hey mate, the syntax for using an attribute as a group is slightly different. If you wanted to use the string name attribute for example:

Or alternatively, if you wanted to use anything beginning with "prim_" 

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the quick reply mate, thats exactly what I was after!

[dupevfx]

Another extension of this topic, right now I seem to have to unpack the alembic to be able to see the attributes downstream, is that normal or am I missing something?

 

[aaronsmith93]

Totally normal

Though you can save yourself the trouble of unpacking/converting every time in the Geometry menu: