Someone used the "Alembic"-plugin?
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Someone used the "Alembic"-plugin? How does it work with C4D R15 or Maya 2014?
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I haven't used it, but what I understand of Alembic is that it is a file format that reproduces vertex data of an animated sequence. What this means is that you can export animated sequences from DAZ Studio, circumventing the other hit and miss file formats. Unfortunately the way the format works means it does not export rigging. Any software that supports the current version of Alembic (1.5 - I think) should be able to import the Alembic files exported from DAZ.
I'm actually wondering if this plugin also allows the import of Alembic files into DS. It would be very useful to be able to import physics simulations into DAZ Studio.
@Someone from DAZ: Could you confirm if we can import physics simulations into DAZ Studio? And what about exporting rigged figures?
Fine, don't believe me :D http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/35689/
If you Google you'll find everything you need to know about Alembic very easily. It is a standarised format. If something has real geometry it can be exported. No rigging, no surfaces, no weight maps. Just Vertex data. This is what makes Alembic so precise. It is sort of like exporting a .obj sequence, only much much lighter.
I grabbed the product. There is no import function included, so no, you can't import .abc files.
@jimzombie: About the exported file... in which programs did you import them?
Sorry for the delay Patrick. I've imported into LightWave 11.61. Lightwave's Alembic implementation has a number of shortcomings at the moment. Namely that it it only supports a single material. Maya is meant to have very good Alembic support. Not sure about C4D though. You'd really have to check with how thoroughly your software supports Alembic.
DAZ should provide a sample to their customers. One simple file. So everyone can see if their own 3d-program can import that simple sample Alembic-file.
That would be a good idea.
@jimzombie: The Alembic exporter also exports the shaders or just the 3D-model? I don't really want to buy a plugin that exports just the meshes without the textures.
In case that it does not export the shaders, do I have to add the textures to the mesh in a 3D-package such as C4D, Maya, etc...?
Only Meshes. And I think that is fine so.
Usually people use a tool to sculpt, one to create scenes and another to render. If alembic file would contain all textures/shaders than each existing program would have to know either all existing other programs (and what those programs think about shaders) or offer a new shader system which would be incompatible for all other systems.
The advantages of alembic are: You can export meshes and animations in a defined way. So alembic shall be able to do what collada was meant for :)
appart of that: The alembic implementation of DAZ seems to be broken. I cannot read the exported models into Maxwell Render nor RealFlow.
@Andrey.Behrens: Yay! Thank you for the information.
Okay, then I can export the animated mesh into Cinema 4D without shaders.
Is it difficult to add the original shaders again to the mesh? I do not want to UV-map all the stuff.
@Patrick: Sorry for the late reply, i was offroad.
I do completly ignore all DAZ shader settings. My render of choice is Maxwell Render. I import all objects as obj and create so called materials (=shader settings) within Maxwell. For me it takes just a couple of minutes to recreate a material. A material setup is a onetimer in Maxwell since all materials can be stored and reused later.
If course it took some time in the beginning to learn what I have to do.
@Andrey.Behrens:
So you export to Alembic and also export the shaders as OBJs (which also has the textures)? Then you add the imported materials on the Alembic figure?
Does the Alembic mesh have individual body/cloth parts such as "skirt", "head", "legs" or is it just a single mesh?
@Patrick: Well. I would like to use alembic but it doesn't work for me. At least for now. It seems that other companies have problems with Alembic too.
My tools of choice are:
- DAZ Studio for Modelling a scene
- ZBrush for sculpting
- Realflow for things which .. um .. flow
- Maxwell Render for rendering
My problems:
- DAZ seems to export stuff in a wrong scale. Everything is 100 times bigger than it should be. DAZ doesn't respect the material zones. For example "head" is one material zone in DAZ studio but will be splited to around ten zones in Alembic. (it's the same for obj by the way)
- ZBrush cannot use alembic
- Realflow can import but the animations don't work. I can see that there is a animation (figures jerk a little) but the animation is broken. And Realflow dosnt respect the surfaces. But that could be intentional since Realflow shall create fluids and uses imported stuff the do the fluids the right way (for example create water splashes if a person jumps in a pool).
- Maxwell render: Crashes quite often while doing the import, cannot import textures, cannot import animations. The surface parts seems to be correct.
My workflow:
- Setup a scene in DAZ
- Do sculpting in ZBrush via GOZ-Interface.
- Export everything as obj-File _without_ textures
- If needed: Load everything into Realflow and create particle for fluids
- Load everything into Maxwell and create _there_ maxwell materials.
It is sometimes painful but it is possible to reimport an obj. For example I can set Victoria into a pose in DAZ and export her to Maxwell. Do there some texture stuff. Can after that change Victorias pose in DAZ and update the pose in Maxwell (via export / import the obj-file)
Edit:
Sample scene
- (Michael 6 HD, rendered in Maxwell): http://www.flickr.com/photos/115845575@N04/12488976353/
- Workflow was: Copy everything from DAZ / runtime-somewhere directory to a new maxwell directory
- export Michael as obj
- import Michael into maxwell
- create 6 (i guess) materials. Each of them contains only one texture (no bumps for now, no SSS, nothing)
- The whole process took around a half hour and one hour to create a studio scene in Maxwell (a box as "photo studio", three planes as light source). Well and around 5 hours rendering time..
Its not that bad for now.
Edit 2: @Patrick: Which software are you going to use with Alembic? I could create a small sample and send it to you.
@Andrey.Behrens: Cinema 4D. A sample would be great! Then I could check if I'll spend my 90 bucks on the plugin. :P
@Andrey.Behrens : You can work around the splitting of objects/mat zones on OBJ export by ticking the "Remove Unused Vertices" option on export.
Could you perhaps post a screenshot of the alembic exporting options, if there are any? I would love to see what is actually available. If what you say is true and it does not keep material zones then this is clearly a bug or missed implementation on DAZ's end. A week ago or so I exported an alembic file from C4D to use it in OctaneRender and it kept all the material zones intact.
So hopefully if thats currently broken, they will fix it asap. Those things are essential if you want to have a good pipeline. And if you cant have that, whats the point in selling the plugin in the first place? :)