Packed geo instancing + alembic crashes houdini

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doca
Licensed Customer
Posts: 93
Joined: Sat Mar 13, 2010 12:12 pm

Hello,
There is a crash when Packed geo instancing property is turned on, and there is alembic file inside geo node. Error says it's Houdini memory allocation problem.

The point is that I have a scenario where I load alembic in geo node, and do simple rotational transform. Imagine car wheel animation. Motion blur is not correct, although there is transformation over packed alembic file.

But, if I convert alembic to poly, then pack it, and do transform then, with Packed geo instancing turned on, I get proper motion blur. So, why there is difference if I pack geometry in scene and load packed alembic? Later one crashes Houdini.
Is that a bug or some limitation?
Best,
Doca
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dom_otoy
OctaneRender Team
Posts: 112
Joined: Mon Mar 17, 2025 9:33 pm

Oh interesting. The reason you're running into this is because packed alembics are different to normal packed objects and current octane plugin doesn't support packed alembics.
But this shouldn't cause a crash. Instead it should probably just ignore it and send an error message.
I think you can also convert packed alembics to normal packed objects!
Happy Rendering!
Dom - Octane Houdini QA Engineer

:!: Btw did you know Octane has a discord? https://discord.gg/F4WENTG :!:
It's a great place to get very fast feedback or support from me and other Octane Houdini users.
I'd highly recommend it!
doca
Licensed Customer
Posts: 93
Joined: Sat Mar 13, 2010 12:12 pm

Yes, I figured out that packed objects work. But, from the production perspective, it would be better if alembic works. Is there a reason why the plugin do not recognize alembic but do recognize when the geo is packed in scene? There is so many scenarios where streaming alembic from disc. AFAK, most of other render engines just read alembic path on the disc and bypass Houdini, so it is very effective when loading in engine.
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dom_otoy
OctaneRender Team
Posts: 112
Joined: Mon Mar 17, 2025 9:33 pm

Will see if this is an option. Octane supports alembics so In theory should be possible. But not sure that this would be a quick thing to implement...
Happy Rendering!
Dom - Octane Houdini QA Engineer

:!: Btw did you know Octane has a discord? https://discord.gg/F4WENTG :!:
It's a great place to get very fast feedback or support from me and other Octane Houdini users.
I'd highly recommend it!
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