Houdini export to Blender

   11498   4   2
User Avatar
Member
45 posts
Joined: Nov. 2016
Offline
Hello guys,
I'm really curious of how to properly export my houdini geometry and animations efficiently to Blender.
For years now I exported Alembic from Houdini, and recently I started combining Houdini with Blender, but the Alembic is really slow.
I also cleaned my setup and only exported geometry, no extra/useless attributes, but it's very very slow.
What makes this situation more weird is that in Cinema4D the Alembic works perfectly, I can even play it realtime in the viewport; while in blender the same file takes a few minutes to load (if it doesn't crashes it). I think I need to do something to optimise the export for Blender.
Have you tried exporting from Houdini to Blender?

What is the best way to export for Blender?

Thank you.
User Avatar
Member
2629 posts
Joined: June 2008
Offline
Blender gets slow with large object counts in the scene. Instead of exporting your Alembic with a unique name for every object, use one name, but give them all unique materials (or however many materials your mesh requires).
Edited by Enivob - Oct. 4, 2021 14:43:01
Using Houdini Indie 20.0
Windows 11 64GB Ryzen 16 core.
nVidia 3050RTX 8BG RAM.
User Avatar
Member
86 posts
Joined: Oct. 2015
Offline
Make sure you always unpack before exporting with Alembic. Get rid of attributes you do not need with an attribute delete SOP. And just like Enivob mentioned use name attribute and inside the ROP Alembic Output enable "Build Hierarchy from Attribute" and write name to the Path Attribute. If you do not use a path attribute Blender will import the whole alembic as one object and it will create materials based on the groups you have.

Also maybe Entagma's tutorial can give you some ideas: https://entagma.com/exporting-alembics-for-blender-a-few-hacks/ [entagma.com]
User Avatar
Member
651 posts
Joined: Nov. 2013
Offline
I don't think blender is much slower than c4d.There maybe is something wrong about it. Could you upload a sample abc file?
User Avatar
Member
26 posts
Joined: Aug. 2012
Offline
Finding no way to export pivot points to Blender.
Managed getting it to work to Unreal Engine, but not Blender...?
Houdini Indie 18
Win 10 64-bit
  • Quick Links