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I exported a mesh sequence to Houdini and imported it there as ABC sequence. In Realfow's Export Central, I checked all the channels (velocity, vorticity etc.) and now I was wondering howto access those from inside Houdini.

Inside the Alembicarchive, there is a Mesh Shape SOP Alembic Surface node, having that node selected in Details View I cannot see any attributes. Any idea what I might be missing?

I thought I would post to try to help a little in this ghost town.
From Export Central it seems that the only mesh file format that supports any attributes is the .md format...but I have no idea how to import that format into houdini or anything else for that matter.
One workaround could be to import the mesh sequence and also the particle sequence you used to generate the mesh. The particles have the attributes which you could transfer to your mesh...slow and not ideal...but could do the trick in a pinch.
Hopefully that helps.
All the best.
~Ben

Hi

Maybe this can help you

Regard

ben.fox@framestore.com wrote:I thought I would post to try to help a little in this ghost town.
From Export Central it seems that the only mesh file format that supports any attributes is the .md format...but I have no idea how to import that format into houdini or anything else for that matter.
One workaround could be to import the mesh sequence and also the particle sequence you used to generate the mesh. The particles have the attributes which you could transfer to your mesh...slow and not ideal...but could do the trick in a pinch.
Hopefully that helps.
All the best.
~Ben

No, you are wrong. You can and must use ABC format as it supports different attributes.

Hey Hector,
Marcelo Here.
How are you?
Good stuff for houdini and I will try to make it work in houdini.
Now do you have anything for maya (MR)?
Let me know
M

Thank you hector. The Parameter node was what I was looking for!!!

Marcelo, maybe this helps for RFRK with dental ray:





(in some browsers, you will have to open the images in a new tab)

atena wrote: No, you are wrong. You can and must use ABC format as it supports different attributes.

Wow, kind of a harsh response.
I am very familiar with working with ABC files and sending additional attributes between Maya <> Houdini.
Would be great to get a little more info on the right workflow of doing this from Realflow.
Here is a pic of my 2013 Export Central window. As you can see, ABC format doesn't have any of the attribute options that md offers.
I tried exporting an abc sequence and didn't have any luck bringing any attributes into Houdini.
I still only get velocity and uv when I import an alembic sequence...even with all those md attributes checked in Export Central.
Unfortunately the help topic on this subject doesn't say anything about additional attributes either:

Mesh sequence (.abc)
"ABC stands for the new Alembic format. Please be aware that some older software versions do not have any import or export filters for Alembic files."

Anyway, looks like there were some good suggestions made. Hopefully someone can post some more specifics on the issue of getting all those additional attributes.
All the best.
~Ben

###Edit###
Just started doing some Hybrido meshes and now I see the options...why don't those export options exist for the regular particle meshes?
I didn't realize that FlorianK was talking about Hybrido Meshes...or that there was a difference between the two. I have only done regular particle meshes.
Would be really nice to have the same options.

Ben, I'm so sorry if it sounded like a harsh answer. It wasn't my intention, I just want to go quickly over other things I was doing. Sorry about that.

In my answer I assumed also Hybrido and of course I was wrong doing that assumption. In the case of a Particle mesh you are totally right and we should add the list of attributes as we do for the MD file.

We will add that ASAP, bear with us.

Cheers.

Its all good atena, I assumed as much.
That would be a great addition!
I will keep a look out for it.
Very very cool!

@atena is there any update on this?
How can one get channels like velocity or vorticity exported with any type of mesh? I had this working with rfrk previously but am starting to become a little hopeless here as it just doesn't seem to work.