So I know currently that packed primitives are not supported inside of the Houdini plugin. However if I export packed primitives via the alembic export strait into the standalone it is able to make use of them as alembic instances just fine, loading only the geometry for an initial instance, in a packed primitive structure that contains multiple instance types and attributes.
So my question is if packed primitive support could be added to the Houdini Plugin, it seems the standalone is quite capable of making use of it.
A packed primitive is basically a packed alembic when it comes down to it, and since they added it, object instancing has become more or less obsolete. That being said object instancing is still very useful, but in terms of how memory is handled, using packed primitives isn't that much different, its just more streamlined with everything else in Houdini. There are even alembic based plugins like Multiverse that specifically make use of Houdini's packed primitives.
http://multi-verse.io/plugins/houdini/
Anywho, it would be great if this could be added so that I could use copy networks with packed primitives again, and not have to separate each instance variation into its own geometry node in order to use it.
cheers!
-N
Packed Primitives
Moderator: juanjgon
Hi,
Some kind of support for packed primitives is in my roadmap, but currently I don't know how far this support can be completed.
In short: the packed primitives are Mantra procedural objects, that are loaded and expanded at render time. To support packed primitives using a external engine we must write a Octane procedural with the same features that Mantra has, that from the development point of view is something really complex, perhaps even impossible. Alembic in the other hand is an open format that has a public library that has been integrated in the Octane core, this is why you can load an alembic in Standalone. Something like this is not available for the Houdini packed primitives.
I have several ideas about how to support at least some features of the packed primitives, lets see what can be done.
Thanks,
-Juanjo
Some kind of support for packed primitives is in my roadmap, but currently I don't know how far this support can be completed.
In short: the packed primitives are Mantra procedural objects, that are loaded and expanded at render time. To support packed primitives using a external engine we must write a Octane procedural with the same features that Mantra has, that from the development point of view is something really complex, perhaps even impossible. Alembic in the other hand is an open format that has a public library that has been integrated in the Octane core, this is why you can load an alembic in Standalone. Something like this is not available for the Houdini packed primitives.
I have several ideas about how to support at least some features of the packed primitives, lets see what can be done.
Thanks,
-Juanjo
Thanks for the reply Juanjo, I'll keep my fingers crossed. 