Alembic animation issue

[Dubbie99]

Sorry for the vague title.

We are seeing a problem where we have Alembics being rendered in the VFB completely fine.
However when we send them to deadline, the alembics stay stuck at frame 1.

There is a clue in the render log from deadline:

2024-10-29 14:30:43: 0: STDOUT: [2024/Oct/29|14:30:43] [277 MB] warning: Unknown property "anim_abc_time" in object "|data|geo|alembic|4BE93C1"

2024-10-29 14:30:43: 0: STDOUT: [2024/Oct/29|14:30:43] [277 MB] warning: Unknown property "anim_abc_time" in object "|data|geo|alembic|E5A64167"

2024-10-29 14:30:43: 0: STDOUT: [2024/Oct/29|14:30:43] [277 MB] warning: Unknown property "anim_abc_time" in object "|data|geo|alembic|D89FBAD"

2024-10-29 14:30:43: 0: STDOUT: [2024/Oct/29|14:30:43] [277 MB] warning: Unknown property "anim_abc_time" in object "|data|geo|alembic|6B40CD97"

2024-10-29 14:30:43: 0: STDOUT: [2024/Oct/29|14:30:43] [277 MB] warning: Unknown property "anim_abc_time" in object "|data|geo|alembic|4E77BFC4"

2024-10-29 14:30:43: 0: STDOUT: [2024/Oct/29|14:30:43] [277 MB] warning: Unknown property "anim_abc_time" in object "|data|geo|alembic|42D63836"

Digging into the VRSCENE file that gets sent to deadline, I see the following in the the abc sections:

GeomMeshFile |data|geo|alembic|9E1E06D0 {
file=interpolate(
(1029, "XXFILEPATHHEREXXabc.cache.geometry.animated.anim.hi.v1.abc ")
);
anim_type=1;
anim_override=2;
anim_abc_time=interpolate(
(1029, 42.875)
);
compute_normals=2;

It's not all alembics that do this, just some of them.

Pulling my hair out over this one. Can you offer any hints?


// Exported by V-Ray Plugins Exporter
// V-Ray core version is 6.20.20 built at Sep 6 10:39:09 2024 3bc6c4b1
// Exported at Tue Oct 29 14:29:21 2024
// V-Ray for Houdini [c37edf7]

V-Ray core version is 6.20.09

Everything running on Linux Rocky 9

[bdancer]

> Can you offer any hints?

Use Standalone shipped with V-Ray for Houdini, if you already do make sure it's the same version used for generating vrscene files.

[Dubbie99]

This worked.
Is it documented anywhere that this is how we should work?
In hindsight, there are about half a dozen issues that have been bothering us that this has fixed.