Alembic Procedural

When using the Alembic Procedural, Redshift will search the scene for any Houdini Alembic SOPs in an OBJ node. If found, the alembic file name and other parameters are used to build a procedural alembic object for this file which is read by Redshift at render time without further extraction or processing.

Materials are assigned to the alembic facesets from materials available in the scene that match the faceset names. For example, if in the alembic file you have a faceset named "/mat/myMaterial", the plugin tries to find a material with this path in the Houdini scene to assign it to this faceset. If not found, a default material is assigned.

The supported parameters are:

• Alembic file path/name

• Frame

• FPS

• Transform Geometry to World Space

• Use Visibility

• Object Pattern

• Load Polygons/Curves/Points/Subdivision Surfaces

 

Installation

Before the Alembic Procedural can be used it must be manually installed, this is accomplished by moving the correct "RSProceduralAlembic.dll" file into Redshift's "Procedurals" directory.

 

Step 1: Copying the Alembic Procedural

Close Houdini and navigate to the following location on your hard drive:

Here you will see the Alembic procedural dll.

 

Now copy the "RSProceduralAlembic.dll" file to the Procedurals folder located here:

 

Step 2: Enable the Alembic Procedural in the Redshift render settings

Now enable the Alembic Procedural in the Redshift ROP as pictured below and you are ready to use the Alembic Procedural.

Enabling the Alembic Procedural

Packed Alembics

Enabling Packed Alembics

Redshift can render packed alembic files by setting the Alembic Procedural Mode to "Packed Alembics." This option can be found under the "Plugin Options" section of the Redshift ROP's "Main" tab. This option controls the way alembic procedurals are configured throughout the entire scene.

When set to Packed Alembics the following workflows are supported:

• Render multiple alembic primitives inside a single OBJ node

• Assign shaders per-primitive

• Transform each primitive individually

• Delete primitives inside any ABC file

• Mix packed alembics with other geometry inside the same OBJ node

• Render from a stash node

• Packed Alembics support the "time" and "fps" primitive attributes

 

Example

Solaris

To create an Alembic Procedural in Solaris create a "Redshift Alembic Procedural" in the stage and select a file in the "Alembic File" field as pictured below.