Hitfilm 4 Pro - the DS/Octane Intermediary?

[Spectralis]

Hitfilm 4 Pro has just been released with Alembic and full 3D animation support. I wonder if it's possible to export scenes in Alembic format from DS into Hitfilm for compositing and then into Octane Render Standalone? Perhaps that might be a possible pipeline while we wait for a full OcDS plugin release? I like the idea of being able to load DS animations directly for compositing without having to render first and then do a final render in Octane. I'm sure there are problems with all this shuffling about but it might offer an alternative to rendering directly from DS.

[linvanchene]

I guess we need someone who actually owns Hitfilm 4 Pro to answer the questions.

For now I can just provide some limited background information which points you need to consider to judge if a DAZ Studio to Hitfilm to OctaneRender workflow is going to be of use to you.

Side Note:
I did try out the very first versions of Hitfilm.
Sony tried to push Hitfilm in combination to Sony Vegas Pro as an alternative to Adobe products.

Nevertheless for me Hitfilm became obsolete the moment Adobe released CreativeCloud with an affordable subscription service.
Now it seems like Hitfilm version 4 might also offer some features that could be of use even if you do already have access to AfterEffects.

In general:

If you do not own any video editing software at all Hitfilm is certainly a great option to get started with compositing and editing your rendered image sequences or videos.

Some points of interest:

- Camera export / import with Alembic
It seems camera export and import is supported to various degrees in different applications with alembic
- some do not export and import camera data at all
- some only seem to carry over one static camera position but not animation like movement
- Things get worse when you also consider that different software applications use different formulas for camera values.

So the question is which camera values will be carried over in a workflow using DS, Hitfilm and OctaneRender?

- - -

Particle systems in combination with Alembic

It seems Hitfilm offers 3D particle systems.
Questions are:
- How do they interact with imported alembic files?
- Is it possible to export Hitfilm particle simulations to other 3rd party applications?
- Can 3rd party applications like OctaneRender actually read and render the simulations?

- - -

Currently I am under the impression that creating a scene in DS, adding some effects in Hitfilm and then exporting again to render in OctaneRender might not add many new options UNLESS OctaneRender can actually read and render particle systems created with Hitfilm.

SideNote II:
IF Hitfilm would add a feature like creating OpenVDB particle effects (that can be read by OctaneRender 3)

THEN Hitfilm would be of huge use to all those users who cannot yet afford software like Houdini FX.

compare:
http://www.openvdb.org/

What may work is:


- Create a scene in DS, render with OcDS plugin and then add some effects in Hitfilm.
Particle systems and the render engine could use the same 3D scene in both applications.
In theory that way it might be possible to do some interesting compositing tricks.

- In the long run IF Otoy is interested to gain more Indie film makers as customers it might be interesting to have an OctaneRender plugin for Hitfilm directly.
Then you could probably have a very interesting workflow combining the OcDS plugin with an OctaneRender for Hitfilm plugin.

Still at the moment I have no clue how big or small the Hitfilm user base is and what kind of plans there are to add even more 3D features to Hitfilm.
In any case I guess it is a good idea to keep an eye on Hitfilm to see what is possible.

[Spectralis]

Thanks for your thoughts on HFP4. I asked this question on the Hitfilm forum and it doesn't look like there will be much advantage exporting DS scenes to HF using Alembic. For a start, HF won't export to Octane so unbiased rendering of its scenes will not be possible. Secondly, matching lighting and camera info isn't straight forward or easy. It's very unlikely that FXHome will address any of this in v4 so I think I'll stick with v3 and then upgrade to v5 if it has greater compatibility. Where v4 will be useful is for those who want to import their 3D content into HF4 and then composite it but I can simply render DS animation using OcDS and composite it in Vegas Pro 13 which I prefer. Alembic is touted as this universal solution but it appears to have just as many inconsistencies and problems as all the other "universal" solutions in the past.