I would like to have better access to the geometry inside a Alembic cache file. If we would expand the hierarchy and assign materials directly to shapes and also turn off visibility for certain objects. There are a number of 3rd party solutions out there, but a native procedural would be better for most.
In addition to be able to assign materials and hide it would be very nice if it had something similar to what Pixar has with dynamic rules. If we could export a lookfile we could load or even reference in a lookdev file for each alembic.
And to expand on that idea a bit further. If we can have access to a alembic node as a real node in the node editor we can also switch and pipe whatever abc's and lookdev files we need. Since Alembic also can do layers (or soon at least) we could in theory also add in a Alembic Layer node which we can use to layer more complex animations.
Make sense?
