Hi. Recently, I started to implement houdini in web applications. Currently, the best way for this is three.js + gltf loader. I checked gltf sop in houdini, it's working well for exporting shaders and geo, but there are no any options to export animations.

I checked Blender and Cinema and they added pretty good instruments [labs.maxon.net] to export animations, pose morphs and even baked animations. But I switched from C4d to Houdini because I think that Houdini is most innovative and powerful tool, I just don't want to go back to any other tool, so, I hope developers can look at this.

3d in apps become more and more popular and powerful, this can open a new era and new side for Houdini developers

I totally agree motionskill. WebGL is coming of age and has so many fun possibilities for a huge market. In my experience Blender has the best glTF in and export right now. Feels like a challenge for the sidefx labs guys wink wink

I made more testing and found the current possibilities of C4d and blender, so, I have now some ideas for Houdini developers

Gltf supports next basic animations in current point:

1. TRS (translation, rotation, scale) animations. I guess, Houdini can use keyframes from transform SOP to make this
2. Morph targets. Since Houdini has no such option, maybe GLTF out rop can follow Blend shape SOP for this purposes or somehow convert Point level animations to Morph targets
3. Character rig and skeleton animations

Also, I see that, C4D can import images in the same file (they are converted to binary code), but Houdini place data and images in separate files for gltf, this can be a problem, because some javascript functions require to have all data in the same file for proper working with textures. So, we need option to pack everything as code in single file.

In current point I found next way to use GLTF in houdini.

1. I make all animations in Houdini and export as Alembic and gltf (which gives me unwrapped UV textures and separate animated geometry file)
2. Import Alembic in C4D, then, I bake abc animations as PLA via Bake function in Time graph
3. Copy geo and make it polygonal, copy PLA from alembic geo to static geo. I create material and add all textures on new object with PLA and delete alembic file
4. Export Gltf from C4D with enabled PLA option

This is working for me, but I hope to have more easy workflow in the future.

Webgl has support for mobiles + I see new AR Kits which are also working with GLTF, I am sure that this will be new trends very soon.

Thanks for that motionskill.

Has anyone found a workflow for GLTF that doesn't require C4D?

modo has also a nice gltf exporter

I'm currently trying out Blender with relatively good results. I haven't tried the baking with PLA yet. I'll check Blender's forums and report back. Doing lots of A-frame and 8th wall work, so looking forward to animated meshes via GLB/GLTF formats.

Agreed. I am trying to export a model with point leveled animations to GLTF for days. I think this will be a great feature to add.

flamixin
Agreed. I am trying to export a model with point leveled animations to GLTF for days. I think this will be a great feature to add.

I believe gltf does not support PLA natively. I usually import my geometry into Unity and use the Megafiers plugin to get PLA to work. Not the best workflow as you need to buy the plugin.