Hello! I've been doing research but I can't find anything that's simply answering my questions and I was hoping someone could help.

I have a camera, a super simply want to export the camera from Maya to Houdini.

I was told alembic files were the best, and importing via File -> Import -> Alembic was how it's done.

My question is I don't see the camera at all. If I hit the “T” key the transform controls just go to the center of the Houdini Grid and I'm confused. There's no form of camera node to look through and no real signs it's actually importing, I know you have to scale up your camera in order to import it because Maya is in centimeters but I can't see any evidence it's actually even importing.

Was wondering if maybe I'm missing a setting while exporting in Maya or importing in Houdini?

If anyone can explain or link to a tutorial (because I couldn't find anything recent enough on how to do it to be concrete) it would really be appreciated!

Thanks!

I haven't run into any issues importing Maya alembic cameras to Houdini, usually if there's a problem it has to do with a bad path variable. If you're using $JOB or $HIP make sure it's pointing to the right place, but if you're not even getting an alembic node something else is going on. In the Alembic Import Options try browsing to the camera transform node in the Object Path field

are any nodes created in the network when you import?

I get a geo1 node with an alembic node inside it that has the yellow warning that importing alembic geometry isn't always as accurate as unpacking Alembic primitive.

Figured out how to get the location to show up via changing to an Alembic primitive and showing transform controls. From here is it about attaching the camera to the position of the imported invisible geometry or?

That won't work. You can only import geometry that way. Use the alembic archive object for a quick and dirty way to bring in an alembic camera. It is not a great way though, because the camera is created at the bottom of a deep hierarchy, and makes using it cumbersome.

jsmack
That won't work. You can only import geometry that way. Use the alembic archive object for a quick and dirty way to bring in an alembic camera. It is not a great way though, because the camera is created at the bottom of a deep hierarchy, and makes using it cumbersome.

Okay, so if the way I did it is for importing geometry, and the alembic archive object is not a great way to do it either, what's the good/efficient way about it?

There isn't a good way, built-in. Go for the not-so-great way for now, it does work.

can you attach the alembic here to try out some things?

Here's a test. Frames 600-800 are animated. I'm pretty lost at this point, wouldn't think a simple camera export would be that complicated… xD

this file is the result of
file > Import > Alembic > your file
I then made a null and parented the archive to it
scaled the null by 0.01
dove deep into the archive and set the Icon Scale to 10000 on the camera

Ah awesome! Thanks so much, I get what you did. Now I don't see any of the animation that was on my camera, is there a reason for that at all or another setting I need to make sure of?

Thanks so much for your time!

You can't directly see the animation curves for alembic objects. If you really need to, you can use the ‘Object’ CHOP to import transforms as channel data in chops.

BTW with scaling the null you are scaling the camera as well and you will get incorrect results even bad renders (i have experience with random holes in alpha)

If you want to stick to scaling null above the camera, then you have to go to camera node it self and scale it to 100.

In that case the final scale of camera will be 1 (null 0.01 * camera 100)

How to export camera Maya to Houdini and how to import camera Maya to Houdini

I tried all the ways you gave but could not

Plz…
Share one tutorial

Hey guys. I wanted to know how does one export a camera from Maya into Houdini?

Thembisto
Hey guys. I wanted to know how does one export a camera from Maya into Houdini?

file->import->Filmbox FBX

Finally someone says to use the File > Import menu rather than a File node.

(for search engines) This is the way to get cameras to import to Houdini from Maya/ Cinema 4D

Thank you, Peter.