CRATE Alembic 1.1

Discussions concerning plugins for SOFTIMAGE©
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benoit81
Posts: 73
Joined: 03 Oct 2011, 20:51

CRATE Alembic 1.1

Post by benoit81 » 17 Nov 2015, 11:09

Hello,
I'm using CRATE Alembic 1.1 for Softimage 2014. When I import a model into Octane for rendering, materials are not exported. Is there a way to export each material ?
Kind Regards,

angus_davidson
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Joined: 20 Dec 2012, 05:13
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Re: CRATE Alembic 1.1

Post by angus_davidson » 19 Nov 2015, 09:21

materials are not included in alembics. (its is a major weakness that will most likely not be resolved before USD becomes the new standard).

In octane you can bring in OBJ's with materials (which should help for the static stuff at least)
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NNois
Posts: 754
Joined: 09 Jun 2009, 20:33

Re: CRATE Alembic 1.1

Post by NNois » 19 Nov 2015, 21:47

I don't understand you, alembic preserve material path (names) at least in houdini.
Are you speaking about obj bringing some basic material infos like diffuse color ? that's useless i think

angus_davidson
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Re: CRATE Alembic 1.1

Post by angus_davidson » 20 Nov 2015, 04:48

Alembic preserves polygon object names. There is normally a 1 to 1 mapping to a material inside of a 3d app though which is where the confusion normally sets in.

For example (currently using maya)

Let say you have a object called Ball in the outliner. its made up a of an object shape node called BallShape + Transform node + Shading node. Lets say you apply a material to it called Ball_Mat.

Now when you export it to alembic you will see a node created that is called BallShape-Material.

If you now go an create a new material and call it Brazil_2016 and apply it and re-export you will stil get a node called BallShape-Material. ie the applied material has no bearing on the export. It does export UV maps, but as far as I am aware it only exports the first one.

I dont have crate so it might be able to work around these.

In Octane the only way to bring in an object with Materials intact is via the mesh node (which only loads OBJ) In the upcoming version 3 it will import FBX along with materials.
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Technomancer at Digital Arts
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