I've read many times that Houdini is best at providing FX for the existing animation/modeling.

But I've run into a problem: I know how to export models from Houdini to Maya et al., but how do I export Fire or Smoke particles?

Or, if this is not possible: how would Pixar or other animation studio *unify* assets created with Maya (or others) with PyroFX from Houdini, in order to have a project ready for rendering?

One of the simple way for exporting Pyro FX (Smoke , Fire and …) from Houdini to Maya is Houdini Engine.

You should put your Pyro simulations into Digital Asset , Then Load them in the Maya with Houdini Engine ,It can convert them to Maya Fluid Effect type.

Also you can export your pyro to bgeo files on the Disk and Import them with Houdini Engine ,Just you should create a simple Digital Asset for loading these bgeo files.

Of Course Mantra in the Houdini is one of the best and fast Rendering Engine for rendering Volumetric !

Houdini Engine is a possibility, but I'd like to know what did animation/movie studios use *before* Houdini Engine became available in 2013.
There are plenty of animations featuring fire and smoke made before HEngine. How'd the pro studios do it?

Another alternative if you know programming would be using the Field3D ROP code that's available in the HDK.

FumeFX for Maya has a Field3D importer, you can get the format spec from Sitni Sati, and you should be able to change the code so that it exports Field3D files that are compatible with FumeFX.

Another alternative is the new OpenVDB plugin, which should help unify things.

Edit: Then yeah, most studios would use a volume file format to get data across the pipeline, Hence Field3D was created at SPI and OpenVDB started off at DD and then became what we know as OpenVDB at Dreamworks, although OpenVDB has more tools available in terms of volume data manipulation than Field3D does.

-Rick

Ratmann
Then yeah, most studios would use a volume file format to get data across the pipeline, Hence Field3D was created at SPI and OpenVDB started off at DD and then became what we know as OpenVDB at Dreamworks

I have seen both of them; but what would be the general workflow, from downloading field3d's/openvdb's source, to having a PyroFX in Maya?
PS: I don't want to use FumeFX.

dtdf

Ratmann
Then yeah, most studios would use a volume file format to get data across the pipeline, Hence Field3D was created at SPI and OpenVDB started off at DD and then became what we know as OpenVDB at Dreamworks

I have seen both of them; but what would be the general workflow, from downloading field3d's/openvdb's source, to having a PyroFX in Maya?
PS: I don't want to use FumeFX.

Well the Field3D source code includes code for a Field3D plugin, so you can implement your own plugin for your needs.

There is also some code at:

https://github.com/magic-box/Field3DMayaPlugin [github.com]

https://github.com/GermanMentalRay/GMR/tree/master/maya/plugins [github.com]

Is houdini engine method of data translation to maya production ready?

When i was doing little teting before , it was slow etc.

ginodauri
Is houdini engine method of data translation to maya production ready?

When i was doing little teting before , it was slow etc.

Houdini Engine is so slow for reading pyro data in maya for now ,Also I thing rendering pyro in the Maya (for example Mental Ray) is so slower than Mantra !

There are OpenVDB plugins for maya, though you'll need a renderer in maya if that's what you want. Unless there is a tool to convert vdb to maya volumes, but I haven't looked at that.

http://www.openvdb.org/download/ [openvdb.org]

If I understand what you mean by “integrate”, at DWA (and many other studios) it doesn't matter what packages you generate data & render in, as we utilize deep images per post-render cutouts or deep compositing.

However, if you do need to hand off a volume, it should be VDB. It's incredibly compact and widely supported: many studio-internal renderers, Maya (via openvdb plugins), Houdini, Arnold, Renderman, Realflow, and many others.. Houdini Engine still converts VDB to a dense Maya volume, hence you would likely run into memory issues very quickly.