bgeo to vrmesh problem

[samuel_bubat]

Hi there,

first, this is not a crushial problem as i´m just experimenting. But maybe someone
who is more experienced has and idea what could be wrong or a better way get this into 3dsmax.
So I ´m trying to get a mesh from a Houdini flipfluid sim to max with ply2vrmesh.
In houdini I use a converter node to convert the mesh to polygon.
Otherwise ply2vrmesh gives me an error message. Than I export it to a .bhclassic sequence.
I use "ply2vrmesh *.bhclassic test.vrmesh -flipfacenormals" to convert it to an animated proxy.
Actually this worked quite well so far. Now I made a bit larger sim where each bhclassic file is between 20 and 130mb.
It starts but at frame 65 it stops and the whole computer gets slow. I can´t kill the ply2vrmesh (it doesn´t seem to use any cpu power at that point)
in the taskmanager and after a minute I get a bluescreen. When I start the conversion at frame 60 it will go over frame 65 without a problem
but than again crashes my computer after ~20 frames. The vrmesh file at that point was not that large, some hundred mb.
Any ideas ? I´m using the lastest houdini build btw.

[vlado]

Hm, can you get me that .bhclassic file? Also, what's the memory usage like? It looks like the converter keeps using more and more RAM.

Best regards,
Vlado

[samuel_bubat]

Sorry forget about it, looks like my harddrive broke.. shiaaat
Just wanted to pack a zip file for you and it crashed with a bluescreen while packing.
Tried to copy the files.. and it crashed again. Just running a chkdisk. I´ll export the same sequence to another harddrive
and see if this works. Sorry

[joconnell]

Samuel - do you know if there's a way of getting more attributes out from houdini when you're converting from their files to vrmesh? We're doing some dumb water stuff right now and the houdini ocean has some really nice things with it's cusp attribute - do you know if it's possible to take a bgeo file and convert it to vrmesh using other attributes that are in the points? For example could you get something velocity, uv and also vertex colour converted from bgeo into vrmesh?

Cheers!

[samuel_bubat]

No sorry I´m really just at the beginning with houdini. Also I´m not sure if vrmesh can handle anything other than mesh data.
But I noticed with newer versions you also can output alembic files from houdini. Maybe those can store additional informations ?
I made some of their tutorials and I think it was the waterfall tutorial where they would convert the velocity channel to colors.
So I would wonder if there isn´t a way to output those somehow as an image sequenece wich later could be used as animated texture within max.
I ´m currently trying to figure out how I can match the position of two exports within max. (Rigid bodies floating on a fluid mesh)
Maybe you have an idea ? I´d appreciate it.

[vlado]

Do you know if it's possible to take a bgeo file and convert it to vrmesh using other attributes that are in the points? For example could you get something velocity, uv and also vertex colour converted from bgeo into vrmesh?

Yes, all those things are transferred to the .vrmesh file and end up as UV or color sets on the proxy in Maya.

Best regards,
Vlado

[joconnell]

What about max? I presume the same? Is it just a case of using vertex colours and picking the appropriate channel?

Cheers Vlado!

[samuel_bubat]

Indeed they come as Vertex Color.. that´s damn awesome !!

[joconnell]

Perfect - what were you saving out from houdini in terms of bgeo or bhclassic? And which version of houdini?

Much appreciated Samuel!

[samuel_bubat]

I have 13.0.237 at work. At home I have a bit older version just some weeks old and it looks a bit different there. The ocean preview node is missing.
For those pictures above I created a splash tank. Inside the "splashtank_initial" node you´ll find an "ocean_preview" node. That´s where I attached the export node to.
In the ocean_preview node you´ll find parameters for additional channels like cusp, cusp direction, point velocity and so on. I export them as .bhclassic.
Of all these available attributes only cusp, cusp direction and uv are beeing exported. Be aware when the preview grid attribute is ticked it won´t convert to vrmesh later.

[joconnell]

You're a total superstar - much appreciated!