Good morning everyone!

I've recently joined the Houdini family, and I'm looking to learn this amazing program.

A bit of a backstory, I'm an experienced 3Ds max and vray visualization artist.

I apologize if I've missed this topic asked before hand, if there are answers around please do tell me and I will delete this topic.

I'm currently at a bit of a loss, say I have a Houdini simulation, and I want to export it as whatever file it exports as, say as an alembics file. What is the proper workflow to integrate that in to 3DS Max and get it set up properly with Vray in regards to materials and textures along with processes for rendering? In my limited experience of simulation and dynamics it doesn't seem something you can just go Import > Merge in to.

Welcome to the Houdini Family

There are actually a few ways to get data to max. You should take it with a grain of salt though, because we're mostly still stuck with max 2012 and 2014.

3dsmax native alembic importer:
- 3ds Max 2015 Extension 1 is needed. Did not try it yet, because see above. Alembic support is also listed for Max 2016.

Exocortex Crate Alembic Plugin:
Was a paid plugin, is now free -> http://exocortex.com/products/crate [exocortex.com]
We used it recently in production for animated characters and it works fine.

VRayProxy:
Proxies also support alembic files, but they are slower than native vraymesh files.
You load them directly into the proxy object or convert your files to proxies with the command line tool “ply2vrmesh.exe”, which should be somewhere in your vray install /tools folder.
For static objects you can export from houdini to .bhclassic ( vray 2.x ) or .bgeo ( vray 3.x ) and then convert them with ply2vrmesh. Keep in mind that bhclassic doesn't support VDBs.

http://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/VRAY/VRayProxy# [docs.chaosgroup.com]

PRT Caches:
If you want to use Krakatoa or Frost, you can export PRTs. The catch is, that you have to compile the ROP driver yourself or try one the prebuilt version from your friendly odforce community:
https://github.com/FictionIO/PRTRop [github.com]
http://forums.odforce.net/topic/17218-prt-export-from-houdini-12/page-3 [forums.odforce.net]

Last but not least.. render in Houdini
Mantra is a great production renderer and it's very memory efficient. I don't know what kind of simulations you have in mind, but you are much (!) more limited in Max, than you are in Houdini.

Hey Blackpixel!

Thank you for your response! Really helps me clear up with the questions I had in mind.

There's one more question I'd like to know, and it's kind of a grey area.

I might as well just work with Mantra and Houdini. but for instance if I'm taking a particle sim from Houdini to Max, how does Vray govern the materials? say the transition of smoke from fire going from a black to a grey shade?

Bit of a tricky question, I know, But hey, In the end I'll probably use Houdini and Mantra and comp it all together in an external program.

-Francis

I think you have to use Phoenix FD for volumes, but the last time I used it Max had a single digit version

You might want to ask one of the guys in this thread:
http://forums.odforce.net/topic/22330-vdb-export-from-h14-to-v-ray-problems/ [forums.odforce.net]

We had no problems mixing mantra with vray renders in comp though.