Blender and the new stand alone Tweet

[kavorka]

I have a fly through animation I have coming up soon and I was hoping to use the new animation features in Octane. But I don't think Blender has an alembic export, so is there anyway for me to export my camera path and bring it into Octane?
the camera will be the only thing that is animated.

I do own the integrated plugin, but haven't tried it yet and I'm not sure if I want to be learning on this project cause it might take too long. Also, I have 3 computers to render on but only one copy of the plugin, so I can render it all out faster if I use the stand alone.

If anyone can give me any tips to see if this is possible, that would be great.

Thanks!

[pegot]

One way to do it is by exporting your Blender camera animation as an FBX file and finding a program that can import that FBX and then export it to Alembic format.

Maya can do this. I have tried it with the free learning edition for students/teachers. However, I don't know if it is legal to use the converted Alembic file in a commercial project (even if you were only using Maya as a bridge to import / export your work).

I believe 3ds Max can also export to Alembic (if not natively then there is a free plugin for it).

Another option might be to see you can import your animation into Daz Studio. Daz has a relatively new Alembic exporter which goes for around $60.00. Not sure if it imports /exports camera data though.

If you do not need to export Blender camera data but just object vertex animations you could always use Belnder's MDD exporter. Although it is expensive, you can then import the MDD cache and your OBJ's into NewTek's Cronosculpt. Cronosculpt can export an Alembic file. I have successfully tested this route as well using the 30 day free trial of Cronsculpt.

Additionally, there may be some Blender plugins that export camera data (I think there is one for After Effects) and maybe there would be some way to convert that camera data to a LUA script - but I have no knowledge or experience in those areas.

[kavorka]

I have never tried importing an animation with the new stand alone, can you import the camera animation seperatly, or is it all bundled in together?

[pegot]

Depends on how you are exporting the Alembic file. For instance, when exporting to Alembic from Maya, you have a choice of exporting all animation including camera, or exporting just selected items.

If you are exporting FBX from Blender you have a lot of choices on what elements to export from Blender, or import into whatever app you are using for conversion to Alembic.

I'm not sure how useful just camera data would be in Octane stand alone though without the objects you originally used to animate that camera with. I did a test where I just animated a camera using a simple box in Blender. I exported only the camera data into Maya, and from Maya generated an Alembic file. I brought the Alembic file containing the camera information into an Octane scene node and then imported a completely different obj into a mesh node.

While the camera movements were all there from the Alembic file, there was no easy way to position my object as anytime I adjusted the camera it reverted back to its default positions when the animation was run. I suspect one would then have to position the object itself to match the camera movements and that seems kind of awkward.

FYI - an Alembic exporter for Blender is currently being developed. You can read about that from the following thread:
http://www.elysiun.com/forum/showthread ... in-Blender

[kavorka]

The only reason I ask is because if and when i do modifications, i would rather just export the .obj from Blender and update Octane and still have the camera work instead of going through 3dsMax.

I looked at that post and tried to email him, cause it looks like at the current state of the plugin, it might work for what I need.

Thanks for that info!