Calus, thank you
very much for that reply. It really helped de-mystify a lot of the process. Very
very much appreciated!
I did indeed set the "animator data" to "forced load" as part of the many and various attempts to export into standalone. When we were finally able to get the alembics working to a degree (not wholly) I realized other issues had come along for the ride. Materials suddenly not being assigned to a few of them (even thought the materials were in the scene in standalone) etc etc.
Understandably the scene was a bit complex to throw at Octane in one go (it's a scene with a lot of meshed fluids etc that we've been working on for a couple of months) , but the frustration comes from having it all working
great in Maya, only to find it was a complete mess in translation. I understand that the exporter isn't production ready, but dammit, it works great
inside Maya. All we really needed for this stuff was to hit the Maya "Render Sequence" button. Instead we run face first into a concrete wall of exporter issues.
I might add, that as a "new" customer it really wasn't at all apparent how much of a beta mess the current plugin is.
Having tried the official Demo (3.8) - one then assumes it's the same version you should run with when you invest in licenses.
We were completely infatuated by the demo and workflow right up until the ridiculous export mess. So close! Yet so far away from being usable.
Calus - you're obviously a hero on these boards - I really must say thank you again at least for your help and advice
/RH