Just wanted a general check up on this.

I'd like to have my maya shape node get vertex information along with uv's from an output node in Houdini.

Like, box -> polyextrude -> null(Output) >>> polyCube1Shape.

Via python or perhaps c++?

Ultimately I'd like to run an animated geo from maya through houdini, and back again for playblast in maya without the user knowing what's happening under the hood.

Is this an odd request?

I'm basically asking for the same connectivity between Maya and Houdini, as though Houdini were a plugin for Maya.. If one could write geo to disk, I'd imaging you could write it to memory, and from there maya could read from memory as if it were from disk. Only a bit faster.

It's an odd request because it's more of a Maya question than a Houdini question. While Houdini can write out geometry in a number of formats, including .geo, .obj, and .fbx, I don't know of a mechanism on Maya's end that would update a Maya node from that automatically (though I'm sure there are scripts/plugins to do something like that from the above file formats).

negow
Is this an odd request?

I'm basically asking for the same connectivity between Maya and Houdini, as though Houdini were a plugin for Maya.. If one could write geo to disk, I'd imaging you could write it to memory, and from there maya could read from memory as if it were from disk. Only a bit faster.

Oh no, you misunderstood. File formats isn't a question as I'm not looking to write anything out, the “write to disk/memory” was simply an analogy.

I'm looking for a direct connect between hou and maya. Like between Houdini and the graphics card. But instead of communicating with that, it communicates with Maya (or any other app, since this is in no way specific to maya) which in turn communicates with the graphics card like usual.

An outlet of vertex information from houdini, that would make Houdini look like a shapenode in Maya's hypergraph. Like any other of Maya's shape nodes.

Thanks though )

Well, for all practical purposes that's impossible. Unless you mean COM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_Object_Model [en.wikipedia.org]), which is Windows-only, highly over-complicated, and would still require an overwhelming amount of changes to both Houdini and Maya internally.

Out of curiosity, why would it be any better (aside from possibly speed) than going through a file format with automatic updates? I.e. if you had a node in Maya that was simply pointed to a file, with the node refreshing itself any time the file changes? The reason I mentioned file formats was because that's the most practical and robust way of interchanging data between any two given apps.

negow
Oh no, you misunderstood. File formats isn't a question as I'm not looking to write anything out, the “write to disk/memory” was simply an analogy.

I'm looking for a direct connect between hou and maya. Like between Houdini and the graphics card. But instead of communicating with that, it communicates with Maya (or any other app, since this is in no way specific to maya) which in turn communicates with the graphics card like usual.

An outlet of vertex information from houdini, that would make Houdini look like a shapenode in Maya's hypergraph. Like any other of Maya's shape nodes.

Thanks though

) Well, I figured it might not work. And yes, a file on disk might do the trick..

I assume channels and other simpler means of communication would be out of the question aswell then?

I've got this rig running in maya with animation only, and one in houdini that runs by the same animation and weilds some hou magic. For the animators to preview their final meshes, my current solution is to bake the rig (controls, joints) to disk, import this in houdini and have it perform the same animation along with some magic and do the flipbooking in there.

This gets very cumbersom for my lovely but fairly untechnical animators )

You get what I'm after though right?

Did some checking up on COM as well which looks interesting.

Please forgive my poor programming knowledge but, to use COM, one would essentially need to write plug-ins for both Houdini and Maya, right?

You can actually communicate two python interpreters (also embeded in Houdini and Maya). There are number of tools for that, from rpcxml to something so nice like Python Remote Object: http://pyro.sourceforge.net/ [pyro.sourceforge.net]

From a Houdini point of view it's straightforward, as it's trivial to pipe in and out any data from sops with python. From a Maya side afaik it's little more cumbersome (though definitely possible).

That look absolutely marvelous, SYmek. Will to some reading up on it.

I know this thread is a bit old, but I thought it's a good one worth asking about.

Have you guys made any progress with this? Now that Maya and Houdini both have Python, I've seen people using the commandPort in both to send data back and forth and to update. Until Alembic export is fully implemented for Houdini (not till H12, I hear), I'm looking for a good workflow to get Houdini geo into Maya. FBX seems ok enough, except when I have geo with a changing point count, the normals are not carried through, and Maya also does not permit you to change them

dangerweenie
I know this thread is a bit old, but I thought it's a good one worth asking about.

Have you guys made any progress with this? Now that Maya and Houdini both have Python, I've seen people using the commandPort in both to send data back and forth and to update. Until Alembic export is fully implemented for Houdini (not till H12, I hear), I'm looking for a good workflow to get Houdini geo into Maya. FBX seems ok enough, except when I have geo with a changing point count, the normals are not carried through, and Maya also does not permit you to change them

There are a couple of examples around of communicating Maya and Houdini via magical life link, look for it here, on cgsociety and odforce, but honesty all practical solutions I know depend on a file on disk in one of supported formats (and excluding fbx). There is a bgeo reader for maya, there are pc2/mdd readers for Maya, and Obj sequence to blend shapes for Maya too, so there are a couple of options. All these files can be exported or imported from Houdini natively or with a free tools.

Hey,

Thanks for the quick reply.

I've been loading OBJ files into Maya from Hou (just by using a simple script and a file reference) - the good obj scripts are not available for OSX or have not worked. It would be nice to balance or control the caching of the seq into Maya.

I've tried the houdinistuff.com .bgeo and .bgeoz plugin for Maya, it works quite well, except that it doesn't handle anything except moderately dense geometry.

FBX has been okay, except for changing topology (ie growing L-System), the points are all exported as separate, desipte a Fuse SOP at the end of the SOP chain.

I'll look into that magic life link you mentioned.

Any further thoughts are appreciated.

Thanks,

Matt

SYmek

dangerweenie
I know this thread is a bit old, but I thought it's a good one worth asking about.

Have you guys made any progress with this? Now that Maya and Houdini both have Python, I've seen people using the commandPort in both to send data back and forth and to update. Until Alembic export is fully implemented for Houdini (not till H12, I hear), I'm looking for a good workflow to get Houdini geo into Maya. FBX seems ok enough, except when I have geo with a changing point count, the normals are not carried through, and Maya also does not permit you to change them

There are a couple of examples around of communicating Maya and Houdini via magical life link, look for it here, on cgsociety and odforce, but honesty all practical solutions I know depend on a file on disk in one of supported formats (and excluding fbx). There is a bgeo reader for maya, there are pc2/mdd readers for Maya, and Obj sequence to blend shapes for Maya too, so there are a couple of options. All these files can be exported or imported from Houdini natively or with a free tools.

Not sure if this helps but I have seen where you promote a point attribute to a vertex attribute then fuse which seems to get rid of the overlapping point export problem when loading into Maya…