Hi,

I have this small, but working pipeline in Maya with Alembic files.
Animation is cached out, and imported back in. Than shading and rendering is set up.

But I cannot seem to import any of these Alembic files into Houdini 15.5.
I get a warning right away about not being able to evaluate the file.

tried every setting in the node, but no luck. Tried to find answers here, but so far no luck.
Is there a certain way to write out Alembic files for Houdini from Maya?

cheers!

rob

are you writing Ogawa?

Hi Michael,

Yes, I am.
This works for other 3D apps, not sure why Houdini is throwing me an error.

We normally have the geo inside a little hierarchy when exported, and is imported back into the same structure.
Maybe that is the problem here?

rob

Edit: Just to add, it's Maya 2016SP5 on Win7

Edit2: Copied some of the alembic files to the desktop to see what happens, and it works. I can load both Ogawa and hdf5 files from there. So it's something network related, and it looks like Houdini cannot find the path or something.
One down, one to go ;-)

OK,

Back at this.
Houdini refuses to import any files, Alembic and/or FBX, from server locations. We checked all relevant rights on folders and files, and there's no problem there. It doesn't matter if the files are inside, or outside the project structure.

We tried the File>Import route, and the direct approach of getting a Alembic/File node and loading the file from there.
In all cases we get an error in Houdini.

The File>Import route gives me a ‘Import failed, Z\Projects\Goat\caches\goat.abc does not exist’
The direct approach with a node gives a ‘Error: Unable to read file “Z\Projects\Goat\caches\goat.abc”’

Also, when browsing to the cache files, they are all grayed out, until you check the sequence box. Than you can select Alembic files with a number in the name.

Really stumped on this one.

rob

Do you load it from a NAS Server brand Synology?
We also had issue loading assets in Houdini.
If so I would need to ask what our network specialist has changed.

Hi,

No, it's a Win2012 Ess. server with basic shares and all the common rights set for users.
Like I said, we checked it all twice now, but Houdini just refuses to read in the files :\

But please just ask the network guy/gal, as there could be a ‘a-ha’ moment here

cheers!

rob

edit: It is something specific to Houdini, as Maya and Softimage can read in these files just fine. Odd.

strange - please log it as a bug with as much info about your network as you can gather…
just to get this out of the way - are there any spaces in the path/filename?

Hi Michael,

Everything has a ‘proper’ path and filename, so no spaces in between.

Not sure what to log here, but I'll pass it along to your team.

Is there any way to log stuff from the command window or such? To help with the search?

rob

Hi,

I asked this guy, he hardly could remember. There were some issues with ALC Server Settings.
In our case it was a problem with rights, all other software worked, just Houdini had it's read
problem…

I hope this might help. It was a very strange issue..

Hi,

Just got word from the support peeps.
It has to do with the HOUDINI_ACCESS_METHOD environment variable.

So if you add this line to your houdini.env file, it will work as expected:
HOUDINI_ACCESS_METHOD = 2

More on this to be found here. [archive.sidefx.com]

cheers for the reply though, much appreciated!

rob

tomtm
Do you load it from a NAS Server brand Synology?
We also had issue loading assets in Houdini.
If so I would need to ask what our network specialist has changed.

Thanks a lot! you just saved me a lot of time- I had this exact problem. I moved the alembic file from the nas to a local disk and it worked straight away. Cheers

I know this is a little old but for anyone with a Synology drive on a network with Windows 7 and Windows 10 machine, adding the access method to the env file worked!

Alembic files read on my render machine!

Thanks!!

Confirming in Feb 2020 that while using a Synology NAS, accessing Alembics gives an error in the alembic sop. Adding this line to houdini.env worked for me as well.

HOUDINI_ACCESS_METHOD = 2

How is this still not fixed?!
I just made an ABC (and an FBX to compare) in Syntheyes and saved to the server (Windows mapped drive). The alembic and fbx both fail to import. They both import fine to Maya.
I found this thread. I thought, surely not... that is from 5 years ago
I copied the files to my D drive and boom they both import fine.

Yes there is an environment variable patch - I tested and yes that fixes it.
But this should have been fixed years before I have to spend 20 mins fighting, testing, cursing, searching...
Please fix this.
At the very least put a note in the docs when you click on the '?' in the Alembic Import Window

thanks to RobW for posting the solution.

Houdini Indie v19.0.383

Haha. Same problem here.
I just found this post, and glad that it works.

Thanks for this.

H19.0.510

Still giving people a solution after I started this almost six years ago....

rob

Agreed, this should be fixed by default.

This is an inside joke or something?? Will never get this hour back.

sheez... can we get a lock on this one?
it keep calling me from the grave