Houdini V-Ray and Packed Alembic files

[stevejjd]

Hi all,

Im learning how to use Houdini as a scene assembler.

By far the best render engine for this workflow is Arnold. It's incredible. You can work with packed Alembics and assign attributes and materials based on rules. You can generate .ASS files (LOL) that are even more hyper efficient.

I'm not saying Arnold is better but it is stunningly good at turning Houdini into Katana. I hope V-Ray can be just as good in this respect.

Maybe V-Ray could use packed alembics and .vrayscene files to mimic the scene assembly workflow?

I think I need to put together an example for you to see what I mean. I will try.

Steve.

[glacierise]

I'm using packed alembics, point based instancing and rule based material assignments with VRay scene assembly on a project now, it does these things comfortably. Haven't done much vrscene loading and mixing up with other geometry lately but we did that on the previous project and it was working. It does take some understanding to get everything going though, I'm making guide docs for the team.
The one thing I'm missing from Katana is the multiple contexts for multiple shots. That does exist in Solaris so hopefully eventually we'll get it going

[stevejjd]

That's amazing. Thank you so much. Also this is good to hear..