import alembic sequence

[desig...@gmail.com]

Hoping you guys can save my @$$ right now.

I was just handed a 300GB ABC sequence from a film studio that I need to light, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to import a sequence. 

A little research exposes a few tools to stitch together a sequence, but in my case, that would make a file way too big. 

files are like this:

blahblah.1001.abc

blahblah.1002.abc

blahblah.1003.abc

Does anyone know how to do this?

Thanks,

Ryan

[desig...@gmail.com]

I see that it's possible to import through Bifrost, though I must admit, I never use it. Any tips on that front would be much appreciated. Got this and it loads, but doesn't increment. 

[hernan.s...@gmail.com]

in the read alembic, it should be `blahblah.####.abc`  if you have a seq as you showed above. 

[desig...@gmail.com]

Thanks Herman!

You would think that Maya might want to give a hint about common syntax somewhere. I find their documentation impenetrable. 

R

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[hernan.s...@gmail.com]

Usually, all nodes core nodes have an info tab that tells you what they do and what they expect, change, attributes/properties, etc  
Compounds/OTLs from other people sometimes do other times not. 
The time node does not. Also, worth having a look at this

https://help.autodesk.com/view/BIFROST/ENU/?guid=Bifrost_Common_reference_html

[desig...@gmail.com]

Thanks,

Yeah, I'm trying now to get that alembic back into maya as an object that can render... another hour hunting down how to do this simple task. 

I've found this page
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2022/ENU/Bifrost-MayaPlugin/files/output-objects-to-the-scene/Bifrost-MayaPlugin-output-objects-to-the-scene-convert-mesh-html-html.html

but it doesn't seem to work. I'm sure I'm missing something fundamental here. 

Any ideas about how to do this too?

R

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[hernan.s...@gmail.com]

you can just write the alembic back, that should give you a mesh, if you want just a single make sure to have checked write single file. Also out of curiosity, what are you using for rendering? If it is Arnold you can keep the geo in BF which will be way faster and just assign a material. 

YOu can read attributes and use them for shading, etc. 

[hernan.s...@gmail.com]

bifrostGeoTomaya allows you to indeed convert amino obj/geo into a mesh for Maya to be further processed or rendered with other engines, as well as it should keep the data live, for simple or mid geo is ok. If you use more complex geo probably I would write the data back into an ABC. And if you use Vray, for example, you can use the ABC procedural or in RS you could write the ABC into a proxy as well. With that said SDK should come soon, they have been saying that they are working on it, so other renders besides Arnold can access BF directly which should open a bunch of doors. 

[desig...@gmail.com]

Thanks Hernan,

I can't write out new ABC files, as they would be more than 300GB for this cache. I need to be able to render the ABC sequence given to me. 

At present, I can see and apply a shader to the BifrostGraph object, but of course it won't render. So I have to convert it to a shape node that I can actually render with Redshift. I'm attempting to output the mesh from the graph and feed it into the inMesh of a shape node, but this doesn't seem to work. 

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[hernan.s...@gmail.com]

I will need to what you are doing but, it should work. Try adding a first in Array, get from Array or merge geometry from the ABC output, like this

Adding the RS_material won't work btw how you have it right now. Just in case

[desig...@gmail.com]

I really don't understand how to use this. "First in array" definitely returns the first mesh, but doesn't solve any problem. Get from array seems to transfer the name of the mesh???

Am I supposed to use this to switch the name of the mesh per frame? I'm not sure how to use the terminal, or how to make these things renderable. Ugghh..

R

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[hernan.s...@gmail.com]

Btw, these are just different ways to do basically the same. The merge geo can be used as well for example if you have a bunch of geo from Maya that you want to merge basically, so you could right-click on the geo and do a FAN IN the input to connect geo.  HTH. 

[hernan.s...@gmail.com]

so what is the end goal? to end up with one mesh or a seq? 

[Anthony Enos]

It does seem to work over here without the array, rendering redshift with a simple ABC import sequence after assigning the Redshift shader to the poly shape. This is all I've got in the bifrost and regular node graphs.

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[hernan.s...@gmail.com]

Indeed the above should work. Also, If you are not in 2.3.1 I would highly recommend upgrading. 

[desig...@gmail.com]

I'm also trying to use a "terminal" node, but this also doesn't seem to work. 

[hernan.s...@gmail.com]

The output should be used if you want to get a mesh. The terminal is great inside BF to see something or render in Arnold, etc. Also when you connect something to the final input by default it won't show it in the viewport it will just render, if you want to change that behavior go to the attr editor and check the box. However, I wouldn't recommend it. 

That way you add proxy or lighter geo to see in the VP and just for final render the heavy/more complex geo. 

If you could share a few frames of the seq would be the best. On my side is working correctly reading and outputting the seq to render either with RS or Vray. Or if you can not share a few frames of the seq try to make a repro scene that you can share. 

[desig...@gmail.com]

Thanks for all your help Hernan, and Anthony. I gave up on this but it might come back to me in the new year. I just updated to Maya 2022.3, so maybe there might be a change in functionality with Redshift, or the network that we have been talking about will work this time around. 

Thanks again,

Ryan

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[joiec...@gmail.com]

All that should be much easier if you were using Arnold. In fact you can use ABC directly with standins and shade with operators...., unluckily you are using RedShift :(