animagic (12/18/2019)
A special thanks to Guy for noticing the Alembic API function in the first place and then showing that it works with external files../..Oh don't mention it, it's not like the LoadAlembic method was hidden or something, it's just there in plain sight and not even marked as "experimental", while the LoadObject (Props,..) is, which is kind of weird.
animagic (12/18/2019)
../.. I don't master Houdini at all, but I'm interested in learning it (it's on my to-do list). For me it would be great if we could import wave simulations for example.Yes Houdini is quite a beast, it opens doors to things you couldn't imagine doing with any other 3d application. It is not the easiest one to learn though, but nothing is impossible, with time and efforts, elbow grease and patience, it is certainly possible. But this is the kind of software if you don't read that (f*cking) manual, you won't be able to "guess" how it works ^^.
Regarding wave simulations, you can already import those into iClone through displacement and normal maps (using the Tesselation and Displacement features in iClone). You can create the grid (Plane/Floor) directly into iClone, activate Tesselation and use displacement and normal maps from Houdini (or from any other wave simulation software for that matter). You won't get vector displacement though, only normals displacement but that should already work pretty well for most of the cases. But of course now we know we can also import already displaced animated grids too. That said I believe that for this specific effect (wave simulation), letting iClone handle the Tesselation and Displacement through the GPU should be much more efficient than importing massive displaced grids from Houdini.
That's why I thought about crowds, because this is something much more challenging to accomplish in iClone. Houdini can do amazing crowd simulation from low poly, low end game quality to high-end, state of the art, movie quality. The challenge is to import the result into iClone, and clearly, FBX is far from being the most efficient mean. But with Alembic, this is clearly easy and very efficient. In my example I don't have materials but it is just a matter of defining those in Houdini and then addressing those once in iClone to the original *.obj imported file. Once that's set you can then import any alembic file (matching the obj file that is). And all the characters in my exemple are the same one but that is just a detail, I could have different humans running among a horde of Tyrannosauruses, or a bunch of cars and trucks on a highway, that would be equally as easy to import and use in iClone. Could be a flock of spaceships, of birds, anything.. Could be an entire city destroyed by a nuclear blast, that would be as easy too.. A forest of animated trees..(so you can use your own trees and not only rely on speedtrees). etc..
One thing I am thinking about too, is to have actual hairs and hairs simulations (or fur) for hero characters. Of course a mesh of "true hairs" would be quite heavy from an iClone Avatar perspective, but it all depends on what we are after, if we need that kind of quality, there is no reason not to push iClone and our graphic card(s) that far.
And all this is valid not only from Houdini, but also from any 3d application, Blender, Lightwave, XSI, Maya, 3DS Max, C4D, Marvelous Designer, etc.. as long as they are able to export Alembic files.
And this is a feature available TODAY
One just has to release a little plugin able to load those Alembic files on the MarketPlace or somewhere. I'll probably do that soon unless someone else does it first.
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guy rabiller | GOETZIWOOD STUDIOS
"N.O.E." (Nations Of Earth) Sci-Fi TV Show, Showrunner.