Alembic Attrs from Houdini

[SteveMack]

Export alembic attrs from Houdini works great..... If the attr is a point or vertex attr.

Unfortunately what I am exporting from Houdini is instanced geo. point/vert attrs come through from packed geometry just fine, no work, with VRayVertexColors nodes. Beautiful and what I expect.

But this is too much data. 10k instances with 4k polys each on different part of sequence, for a single frame makes for 1.4GB data. If I use detail attributes, only 25MB instead. Obvious choice. I need 100k instances in the end, with 60+ frames, so there is no other option.

How can I access detail attributes with VRMesh node? Any way I can have attribs on the packed geo set attribs for the render? Any other workflow at all.....

Stuck and need a way out...

[bigbossfr]

Export alembic attrs from Houdini works great..... If the attr is a point or vertex attr.

Unfortunately what I am exporting from Houdini is instanced geo. point/vert attrs come through from packed geometry just fine, no work, with VRayVertexColors nodes. Beautiful and what I expect.

But this is too much data. 10k instances with 4k polys each on different part of sequence, for a single frame makes for 1.4GB data. If I use detail attributes, only 25MB instead. Obvious choice. I need 100k instances in the end, with 60+ frames, so there is no other option.

How can I access detail attributes with VRMesh node? Any way I can have attribs on the packed geo set attribs for the render? Any other workflow at all.....

Stuck and need a way out...

We got the same problem here with "packed geo". It doesnt work with Maya.

[SteveMack]

Any alternative workflows that might be acceptable? I need frame-by-frame instanced geo out of Houdini, to VRay in Maya but with custom attributes.. Some people on sidefx forum say to use the instancer, but I don't see how this can be used to get a similar workflow at all, so far.

[vlado]

The latest nightly builds can recognize and use instance ID attributes from Ogawa files to produce actual instances, so if Houdini can export that, it should work fine; not sure if this is what you need though.

Best regards,
Vlado

[SteveMack]

That sounds like what I need.
I emailed support for nightly build access awhile ago for the other issues we were having but no response.

[vlado]

Can you send that email to me at vlado@chaosgroup.com ?

Best regards,
Vlado

[SteveMack]

Trying to understand the data flow a little better here.
How does one put instance id attributes on alembic geo normally? At which level in the hierarchy is that data represented and what types does it support?
I know these attrs are making it from houdini to the alembic file (my file grows), but I'm not sure if or what I have to do extra to get it to show up in a buffer. I'm using VRayVertexColor nodes and this pulls up the attrs on the points that are directly on the geo, but not the attrs that are on the instances (as far as I can tell so far)