Happy new year Magicians! Happy new year Sidefx!
So far i could only thanks Houdini for saving my vfx's life from boringness after more than 20 years, in addition to some already requests addition, Am the only one who is actually missing CAD import feature?




________________________________________________________________
Vincent Thomas (VFX and Art since 1998)
Senior Env artist & Lighting & MattePainter & Creative Concepts
http://fr.linkedin.com/in/vincentthomas [fr.linkedin.com]

i all so want good cad importer and still waiting

i posted this back in 2016 see link below

Please suport openNURBS .3dm format Side FX

https://www.rhino3d.com/opennurbs [www.rhino3d.com]

The nurbs import is very hit and miss with Houdini

Houdini does not have standard format of iges. eg 143

99.9% Of All CAD Software can import and export .3dm

Many of us use CAD software would be HUGE benefit for us all if we had

standard Nurb Format for Houdini.

“There are no restrictions. Neither copyright nor copyleft restrictions apple”

i cannot stress this enough its so badly needed.

Your text to link here… [www.sidefx.com]

At least standard .step format will be welcomed. Even Maya could handle it
Even to model procedurally with curves and surface would open some interesting new horizons…

In 2016, i believe Sidefx didn't hve the same ambitions and target the same market as today. I hope they are listening

________________________________________________________________
Vincent Thomas   (VFX and Art since 1998)
Senior Env artist & Lighting & MattePainter & Creative Concepts
 http://fr.linkedin.com/in/vincentthomas [fr.linkedin.com]

i also would love to have have cad file import, just today would have used .step import - hopefully this will happen soon

thanks in advance :-)

I worked as a product designer for a while and had to handle .step and CAD modelling. There's a way around but it's kinda a pain process.

Download the Lumion Keyshot, he handles pretty good .step files, .stl and even directly importing some solidworks files. Use the keyshot to import your file and from there you can export to .obj

Works most of the times when I needed.

thank you, did never try Keyshot - i use Maverick which also handles .step perfect (wanted to ask if they could add an export function anyways - so good to know Keyshot does that)

i tried to import .step in Fusion 360 and export .iges but Houdini import seems to mess it up

also found out you can inmport .step in Unreal Engine via Datasmith plugin and then export to .obj

I always use the power translator from Modo. Cinema4d, Moi and maybe meshlab are also good options from what I heard.

I’m more curious on how you work with these files. I cracked the initial stage of learning Houdini, but in these months I still couldn’t find a good way to organize complex many item files.

I was used to an outliner/itemlist ect. with drag and drop options. I tried several of these „Tree views“, bundles and Node Groups in Houdini.

There are tutorials popping up every day, but I couldn’t find anything regarding organizing. Any tips on this topic and I will be very happy:-)

All the best
Christian

Still not a native support, but there is also Datasmith
https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/Engine/Content/Importing/Datasmith/Overview/index.html [docs.unrealengine.com]

The less i will have to jump to third party software the happier
Same with Marvellous designer

gfxfx
Please suport openNURBS .3dm format Side FX

https://www.rhino3d.com/opennurbs [www.rhino3d.com]

I wonder if this even supports Linux.

UE4 datasmith cad importer works rather well.

If could be possible to open .step files natively (and natively, not converter to polygons), I would never use again any CAD program, but houdini, as per today is the best DCC out there. Huge mistake that CAD stuff is not supported. And I am pretty sure much more people would do, as it is procedural which is pretty CAD-esque.
I don't understand you SideFX, it doesn't make any sense you still not have it implemented, you are losing business.

We've had a need for CAD imports many times. Support for some formats (top priority: .step) would be massively helpful.

I use rhino or moi3d to convert CAD formats to a reasonable polygon mesh. Solidworks and fusion and onshape all can export formats that can be imported in rhino or moi.

What also works reasonable well.. Install unreal and use datasmith to import all sorts of stuff into there, then export selected from unreal as fbx. There is actually quite fine control over how to mesh various non polygon surfaces and all.

That being said, support for a few CAD formats and sketchup would help a lot for the generalists among us. Right now I'm actually doing VR archviz stuff in Houdini and got the .icf cad file into Houdini using the above mentioned method. Material names/basic colors even survived the whole contraption

As Epic Games is now a minority investor in SideFX.
Would be nice have “datasmith cad importer” built in to Houdini in some form
But still waiting for standard format of a .iges File eg 143

I'd like to add my voice to the need for Houdini to be able to import common CAD formats, especially .step and .3dm. Maybe in Houdini 11.0? That would be awesome.

Hi all - also adding my voice here to be able to import files from Inventor! Inventor is becoming really popular with younger engineers these days. I'm going to try the UE4 route and see if that works; I've seen it suggested before.

Has anyone tried the IGES support in Houdini?

As much as I would like to see a CAD importer, without the accompanying tools for multi renaming, restructuring and scene analysis like "which element has which material", quickly isolating one or a group of elements, editing across multiple objects in separate hierarchies, hiding sets of faces and so on, a CAD importer would be pretty useless - at least for more complex data sets.
You can do some of that in Houdini, but when importing a dataset with hundreds or thousands of elements with part names and multi-nested hierarchies, you quickly realize that you made a mistake importing into Houdini. Digging your way through nested hierarchies without a proper scene tree is a pain in you know where. Not even to mention the time it takes to redraw a scene every time when you come back to object level.
CAD import is more than just reading a format.

I use MOI 3D for conversion. It has one of the best meshers you can get and it is fairly cheap. I also model stuff there.
For scene cleanup, shader reassignment and restructuring I still use Softimage.

no go in 19 gezz plz come on 2021 and no good cad import no .step or even standard Nurb Format for Houdini.
eg iges. eg 143
19.5 ???? <<<< this in important that's why Unreal did it with there "datasmith cad importer"
why not Houdini ?

yes I am still pushing for this because it would be genuine ,handy ,practical, convenient, extremely ,highly ,deeply, absolutely, profoundly ,
Useful