Alembic export issues?

[Anonymous]

I have an alembic I've exported from Maya and brought  into Houdini, I want to edit individual polygons in Houdini but I can't seem to do that with a Maya alembic. With a houdini alembic it works fine, is there a setting when exporting that needs to be turned on that would allow me to do this? Thanks

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous and welcome to the community!

I don't have access to Houdini so I can't reproduce your issue. That said, SideFx has an article on importing Alembics that may help you!

You can find that article here!

Let me know if this helps or if you need any more assistance!

If one or more of these posts helped answer your question, please click Accept as Solution on the posts that helped you so others in the community can find them easily.

Kudos are greatly appreciated. Everyone likes a thumbs up!

[Anonymous]

Through reasoning and narrowing it down, I believe this is not a problem on Houdini's side. Editing works when the alembic is exported from Houdini but not when exported from Maya. Leaving me to think that it's a setting that I can turn on. Problem is I don't know which one it is and I've tried a bunch.

[sean.heasley]

Hmm

Can you select any of the faces or does it not let you do anything with the polys at all?

[Anonymous]

In Houdini? Yes, in Houdini I can select the faces but if I try to delete or group the faces in Houdini it gives me an error. If I try to move the faces in Houdini it crashes. 

[sean.heasley]

I downloaded a trial of Houdini so I can try and help more with this.

When you get a chance, can you please zip and attach the scene file here or via dropbox/google drive or another file sharing program so I can take a look at it?

[Anonymous]

Thank you, 

So here are links to my alembic and a screen grab of the settings I used to export it. 

Alembic:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1-VouEJa4SFk0OvIxCyPJ5UKG4C9CPa94

Settings:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1rOM1RcKqk9bScCFpQ_T2vdb6gchpD2wZ

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous

Thank you for attaching the alembic file!

I just imported it into Houdini 16.0 and had no problems. I was able to move and delete faces and wasn't experiencing any crashes.

What version of Houdini are you on? Is there any 3rd party apps with your Houdini that could be causing this issue?

[Anonymous]

I am using Houdini 16.0.600. I am not using anything third party in Houdini but Maya I am using The Setup Machine 3. 

[sean.heasley]

It's definitely unusual that it loads fine in my version but not yours 

When you get a chance, can you make a video of the issue occurring in Houdini so I can see if I missed anything?

If you need a video capturing program, Screencast is a great option that we use here at Autodesk

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

for anyone else with the same issue:

So it turns out the name space in Maya (a colon ":") is the issue as this is an illegal character in Houdini. You need to get rid of the colon to edit it. 

[sean.heasley]

Ah yes bad characters like that have thrown of people before 

Glad you figured it out though!

[mspeer]

Hi!

Thanks, that's a really useful Info.