Export Alembic Transforms only

#1 · 10. March 2019, 16:17

I was wondering if there is a setting in the export that makes it possible to only export the transform information?

#2 · 10. March 2019, 16:30

In general or specifically in Houdini or Maya?

#3 · 10. March 2019, 16:34

Ah, from Maya to Houdini. I have many animations where the geo is not deforming.

#4 · 10. March 2019, 19:37

I haven't seen an option for this. But alembic is smart enough to tell whether an object is deformed or transformed. If it is transformed, the geometry will be saved only once in the alembic file, which gives a much smaller filesize compared to deformed objects, which are stored for every frame.

I guess if you don't even want to have a single instance of the geometry in the alembic file, you would need to make the shape nodes visible in the Maya outliner and delete them, so that only the transform node remains, which you can export then.

#5 · 19. March 2019, 9:26

Thanks for the reply Richard, that makes total sense. I'll do some more experimenting with the export, thanks!