Hello guys,

got a little problem with the import/export functionalities I think. When I export a mesh from C4D as OBJ and load it back into houdini the scale is rediculous. Can't even see the beginning and end of the mesh sometimes. In a few cases I have to scale the mesh down to 0 but in this case the flip fluids doesnt seem to work that well. How do I know how large objects are in the houdini viewport since I can't find any measurements like meters etc.?
And is there any way to insure the right measurements when exporting/importing?


Thanks,

Christo

in SOPs if you middle mouse on a node you'll see a bunch of info:
like this:
sphere1:
Full Name: /obj/geo1/sphere1
Operator type: sphere
_____________________________________
42 Points
80 Primitives
240 Vertices
80 Polygons
____________________________________
Size: 2, 1.90211, 2
Center: 0, 0, 0
Bounds: 1, 0.951057, 1
-1, -0.951057, -1
____________________________________
1 Point Attributes: P

____________________________________
Memory: 16.62 KB

_____________________________________
Last Cook Time: 0.27 ms
Total Cooks: 2

_____________________________________
Created Time: 15 Apr 2015 10:50 AM
Modified Time: 15 Apr 2015 10:50 AM
Time Dependent Cook: No

just a default sphere…
but you can see that it's Size is 2, 1.90211, 2
so it's 2 units in all 3 axis - and a unit in Houdini is 1 meter
check your units in C4D (Edit -> User Preferences -> Units)
and either set them to meters or note what they are and put a transform SOP down after your file in and use the uniform scale to change the scale of the obj…
when we bring in geo exported from Maya we do this with a uniform scale of 0.01 - to convert from cm to meters.

HTH

thank you!

Thought 1 unit is represented in 1 little square on the grid - just like in c4d, but it seems like 10 units of the grid are representing 1 meter. good to know!

Was wondering why every simulation looked so weird.


by the way: do you know a way of exporting attributes to another 3d package for rendering?

for example I made this: https://vimeo.com/124851340 [vimeo.com] the melting parts have custom attributes which drive shaders. iIs there a way of getting them into c4d for rendering? Or maby there's a way of converting them to some kind of vertex maps. I know realflow exports vertex maps for rendering.

As you can see in this screenshot my fbx file is way too big however I don't know how to scale it down to fit when I use the scale tool it does not allow me to scale it down sorry it's my first day using Houdini i usually use cinema 4d does anyone know how to fix this problem or know of any useful tutorials ?

Hhmm,

I have a similar issue.
i was trying to test this.

I had an object/car that was a little smaller then the 2 x 2 meter standard C4D box. (I added a car as an extra object to not be dependent on the actual box size as a reference).

Step 1 - I exported as default alembic settings (c4d exports as centimeters) And it got in way too big in Houdini.
Step 2 - I then exported as meters, but it then got even larger still… so
Step 3 - I exported it as millimeters.

It got in almost correctly in Houdini. But the weird thing is that when I now create a 2 x 2 meter box in Houdini it's a little smaller than the Car, but in C4D the 2 x 2 meter box is a little bigger then the car?

I must be doing something very wrong here? or is there some kind of problem with this way of exporting alembic files from C4D to Houdini (and back). Specially when you need precision.