Import PDC into Maya

[Jason Fox]

Hi,

Can you explain the procedure to get exported PDC Maya Particle cache files playing into Maya?

As far as I know, you copy the PDC folder into the 'cache/particles' directory of a Maya project. You then create a particle system and use the 'DynGlobals' tab (created with Solvers>Edit Oversampling or Cache Settings...) to point that particle system to the folder containing the Brekel PDC files.

I cannot get this to work!

The main thing I can see that may be causing a problem is that the Brekel PDC file sequence goes frame_00001.pdc, frame_00002.pdc, frame_00003.pdc etc... whilst the data from a Maya particle cache goes particleShape1.250.pdc, particleShape1.500.pdc, particleShape1.750.pdc etc...

Can you help me please?

Thanks in advance,

Jason

[Brekel]

Hi Jason,

Sorry but I'm no expert on that in Maya at all.

In general the (free) Realflow plugins are an easier way to get particle data into Maya.

Greets,

[Brekel]

Btw, does renaming a few of those files manually to comply with Maya's naming convention work?

If so I can probably adjust that for the next version.

[Jason Fox]

Unfortunately not, I tried renaming to the same convention and that didn't work, so I then re numbered the files 250, 500, 750 etc. and still no joy !

[Brekel]

Hmmmm sorry but I'm afraid my Maya particle skills are too limited to suggest anything else.

Maybe someone else here (or on more specialist forums) knows something that works, and if so I can always try to adapt the software for that.

[Greg Nelson]

Hey Jason. Did you ever have any luck doing this? looking to import to maya myself. 

[Brekel]

The easiest way to get particle data into Maya is to use the free Realflow plugins which you can download if you sign up for their free demo application.

[robe santoro]

Hi Brekel, trying the trial here with your file example.
Tried Realflow plugin in maya 2015 to import .bin file sequence doesn't work:

// Error: Invalid BIN file 'C:/Users/robes/Desktop/TEST/maya/data/Color_particles_BIN/frame.0001.bin' used by RealFlow mesh node 'realflowMeshSource1'.

I've already tried also to rename the exported sequence with the "." instead of "_" that maya usually prefer...

I can easily import Alembic .abc as mesh with colored texture and as a GPU cache without texture...
... but I need it as colored particle data

Can you shade some light on this, before I buy the software, please
Thanks in advance

[Brekel]

Sounds like maybe something changed in the Realflow format, I'll put it on the buglist to be checked.

PDC files are old-school Maya particle caches, I'm not an expert on particles in Maya but there must be something in Autodesk's manuals on how to use caches right?

Unfortunately the newer nParticles cache file format was proprietary the last time I checked.

[Mike Catt]

What I was reading in another post online is that the particle system in Maya needs to be named exactly as the particle system in the PDC file before it can be displayed.  Can you please provide the name of the particle system that you write to the PDC file?  I'm not sure how to read it.

Thanks, 

Mike

[Brekel]

PDC files are exported using the PartIO library, as far as I can tell there is no way to set any name for the particle system, looking through the source code of that library it seems this is not part of the PDC file either.

Maybe Maya uses the filename?