Passing Aperture and Focal Depth to .abc

[jamnique]

Hi. I was hoping that since the plugin for Houdini is being developed, the developers would get the insight necessary to solve the Alembic-Aperture problem for Houdini.

Would you mind sharing how you manage to pass Aperture, Focal distance and other camera data to Octane in ABCs (or otherwise) from Houdini? I tried attaching custom Attributes to the Camera in Houdini, but I'm either using wrong names or this isn't the way to go.

The reason I'm asking is it's the only thing missing from my Houdini - Octane Standalone workflow. Sorry if this isn't the right place to ask this question.

[juanjgon]

This is something that must be supported by the Octane API, because the alembic exporter is a native function of the Octane core. This could be a feature request for Octane 3.

-Juanjo

[jamnique]

Hi Juanjo, thank you for answering so quickly. How about the Houdini's built-in Alembic ROP? Could it be made to write the camera data appropriately formated for Octane, or is it something that Octane simply isn't looking for in Alembic files?

[juanjgon]

I think that even if you could add this information to the alembic file, Octane would not be able to read it. The alembic support in Octane is limited to the available parameters.

-Juanjo

[jamnique]

I see. Forget Alembic then. May I ask how you pass camera animation from Houdini to Octane? Would it be something that could be used for Standalone?

[juanjgon]

You could try to export the full scene as an .orbx file, using the functions available in the ROP node:
https://docs.otoy.com/Houdini/?page_id=934

-Juanjo

[jamnique]

Thanks, but the whole reason I'm bothering with Alembic is I can't afford to buy Houdini FX, so I can't use the plugin Indie can export Alembic files, so I can benefit from Octane Standalone, but I can't control depth of field.

I'll try going this route (with LUA):
viewtopic.php?f=73&t=49960

Thank you for your help. I hope this will get fixed officially in Octane 3.