Load Alembic file sequence

[Anonymous]

Can't figure out how to load a file sequence alembic_file_####.abc. Using a single file for the sequence is crushing the render farm. Is this possible?

Edit : Is it possible to convert an alembic sequence to .ass file sequence using the exporter? It's a water scene from a Realflow sim so one abc is a mesh for the water and the other is a point floud for the foam.

[Anonymous]

Successful in the ABC to ASS conversion but can't figure out how to set the particle radius. Used an Arnold tag and set it manually but didn't work. Saw in another thread using an Operator would work but can't figure it out. Any help would be appreciated.

[peter.horvath6V6K3]

About loading a sequence, it should be possible with the syntax you wrote: alembic_file_####.abc

Can you reproduce the crash? If so, could you please send me the file which is crashing?

[Anonymous]

It's not crashing, just rendering so slow we thought it had locked up. We think its because it's pulling the full stitched abc sequence to each node for every frame. When trying to load the individual abc files the Arnold Procedural only shows the the first frame even with "animate in viewport" selected and the frame range set.

Converting to .ass sequence seems to work. Still copying to the farm so can't say if it works when distributed, but it works locally.

[Anonymous]

Using the .ass file sequence seems to render but crashes at the end, possibly when saving out the file ( exr ). Works locally, this only on the farm using Deadline.

Here's the end error from the log:

2022-03-08 17:43:21: 0: STDOUT: Progress: 95%

2022-03-08 17:58:42: 0: STDOUT: CRITICAL: SymInitialize failed with GetLastError 87 [windows_crashhandler.cpp(542)]

2022-03-08 17:58:42: 0: STDOUT: Error: application crashed

2022-03-08 17:58:42: 0: STDOUT: C4DUnhandledExceptionFilter: writing exception info

2022-03-08 17:58:42: 0: STDOUT: C4DUnhandledExceptionFilter: writing call stacks

[Anonymous]

Fill log attached.

log.txt

[Stephen.Blair]

The Arnold log verbosity is too low. Can you set it to Info?

I see the CINEMA 4D errors
error 87 is ERROR_INVALID_PARAMETER, so that's pretty generic and doesn't help unfortunately
last time we saw that, it was a scene-specific problem

[Anonymous]

Narrowed it down to the textures which weren't converted to .tx. Turned it off in a prior project and forgot to turn on auto-convert. Used the TX manager to batch convert and relink and everything started working on the farm.

What was confusing was that it would render locally, and even via the commandline version through Deadline but wouldn't save the file.

I still need to figure out why .abc file sequences don't load more than one frame using the Arnold Procedural.

[peter.horvath6V6K3]

Is that a single alembic file with multiple frames in it or multiple files (one Alembic file per frame)? If multiple files, using the #### in the file name should be fine, however the animation settings (Start Frame, End Frame, etc.) are used to describe the frame within a single Alembic file. So maybe that's what's causing the trouble here, that the plugin wants to read the current frame from the alembic file, but it has only data for frame 0.

You can try to set Start Frame and End Frame to 0 and Loop to repeat, see if that helps.

[Anonymous]

It's multiple files ( one .abc file per frame direct from Realflow cache ) that's not working. The stitched version with one file containing multiple frames works fine but still need the multi file sequence for the render farm.

Tried setting the Start / End Frame to 0 and Loop to Repeat but still didn't work. Tried every other combination I could think of but still nothing.

[peter.horvath6V6K3]

Can you send me some frames from the sequence to take a look at?