alembic hidden objects

[gah5118]

Did some searching on the forums and couldn't really find much on this. I am exporting alembic files out of maya for use in octane standalone. The issue I am having is when am object is supposed to be hidden, it isn't. I have octane plugin for maya, however, its up to 7 times slower than standalone so I am sticking with using standalone for rendering. This issue is while using the export to octane alembic file. If I use octane materials, then everything functions well and as intended in standalone regarding materials but not hidden objects. However, if I use pipeline cache> alembic cache> export and select "write visibility" then it works with hiding objects but the materials do not work well at all.

[gah5118]

Found a possible solution to this headache. will post tomorrow after some test to be sure.

[calus]

I can't reproduce your problem here. When you export a scene from maya as "octaneRender scene" or as "OctaneRender animated scene"(with the option "export scene as merged alembic in orbx package") none of the hidden objects or objects in hidden layer or objects in hidden group in maya are exported so they obviously are not visible in standalone as they are not even exported.

I'm not sure what is your problem here, you have to be more specific !

And if you need some objects to be exported but not visible in standalone, you have to set them visible in maya and set their "OCtane: General Visibility" to 0 (also they must have another geometry type than "Global" for example "scatter").

visibility.jpg (7.58 KiB) Viewed 5943 times

[gah5118]

attached are some files to demonstrate.

alembic examples.rar

(34.57 KiB) Downloaded 248 times

the name format is as follows
(exporter used) - (settings) - [some use octane materials via the plugin for maya][one uses octaneplugin camera]

take note that the 3 squares are all assigned the same material in both versions with maya materials and with octane materials.

Process of exporting:
file>export all> octanerender alembic (default file extentions checked and preserve references - although, i have tried different checks/unchecks here with no change in results)

for exporting using maya's alembic exporter:
cache>alembic cache>export all to alembic...
settings: (noted on file names)

in summary, the octane alembic exporter is 90% usable. It lacks one essential feature which is hiding objects. I have tested the suggestion of changing the settings of the object with no change in result. However, even if that did work I would rather not have to fiddle with those settings since I do a lot of hiding/showing objects. The maya alembic exports proves, it is more than possible to use maya's native hide/show and send to octane with success. It just needs to be implemented in octanes exporter. Then it would be (i think) 100% usable and fully featured.

also I would love to hear more about this ("export scene as merged alembic in orbx package") feature. I can't seem to find it anywhere.

Thanks!

[calus]

If you don't have this option to export from maya, there must be something wrong with your plugin, it's here since 7.19 version of the plugin.

"OctaneRender scene" option, export the scene as .obj embeded in the .orbx file.
"OctaneRender animated scene" option, export the scene as an alembic file embeded in the .orbx file.

These two options works really well now, just export with the first option for still frame or the second one for animations and cameras, and just select the render target(2) in standalone to render your scene out of the box.

I didn't use the third option "Octanerender Alembic" since a long time now, but it might still be useful to update the geometry of orbx exported with the "OctaneRender animated scene" option ... checking this now (and also the visibilty issues you had with this "Octanerender Alembic").

[gah5118]

I was running the older version (latest stable releases from the download section). It does add the options you were showing, however, it doesn't change anything regarding the functionality of the alembic file that is exported or embedded. The visibility of the object remains.

[gah5118]

it would be great if a snip of code could be taken from maya's exporter regarding visibility and pasted into octane's. then it would be "whole"

[calus]

O so you use the 7.14 version !!! it can explain a lot !

I remember the exporter was almost broken in previous version.
Despite what tells the Download section, the 7.24 version is way more stable and bug free than 7.14, I think this section has not been updated since a long time...

can you post a example Maya scene with your visibility issue ?

[gah5118]

as the last post said... I have updated, and the problems remain the same. I have posted alembic files in that zip file in previous post to show how it behaves with different exports...

not the same scene, but just another quickly created scene in the same manner.

also to note, I have tested all of this in 2.25 release as well as octane3 alpha 6

test.rar

(12.23 KiB) Downloaded 259 times

[calus]

yes i saw the alembic file but they are pretty useless as I still can't reproduce them, I need a maya file and maybe I could see what's going wrong.
testing now...