Houdini to 3ds Max - V-Ray workflow for alembic and openVDB

[yolov]

We recently published a couple of new tutorials explaining the workflow for getting alembics and openVDBs from Houdini into V-Ray NEXT for 3ds Max. There's scene files you can download and follow the steps, as well. Hope it's useful. Thoughts and comments are most welcome.

https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/...embic+Workflow

https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/...n+VDB+workflow

[joconnell]

Do you think it'd be possible to add some functionality to the vray instancer to allow it to use an alembic point cache as a data source and let it read object ID, transform, frame and maybe colour data from the points and use them to drive cached animated objects as a way to transfer crowds? Maybe with not all the features / accuracy?

[vlado]

Do you think it'd be possible to add some functionality to the vray instancer to allow it to use an alembic point cache as a data source and let it read object ID, transform, frame and maybe colour data from the points and use them to drive cached animated objects as a way to transfer crowds? Maybe with not all the features / accuracy?

We were, in fact, just discussing this today...

Best regards,
Vlado

[joconnell]

I love you

* glares at all our shit, internal transfer formats *

[racoonart]

Thanks for the tutorials! Very useful and much appreciated
Also big plus to the idea with the instancer, that would be amazing!

[gandhics]

Oh.. Houdini to 3dsMax...
Welcome to the big data world!
Recently one of our lighting scene had 280G of alembic and vdb for "an" explosion shot.

BTW, one thing you should remember is...
Because of power and freedom of Houdini, Houdini can easily generate bad mesh data, especially dead verts.
That's the ticket to crash until 3dsMax 2018.
3dsMax 2019 is a lot better for that and even do automatic cleanup as much as possible.
But, at our work, most alembic import crash has been bad mesh from Houdini.
So.. make sure generate sound data from Houdini.