Hi everyone,
i don't know if someone recently asked already, but my question it's simple:
Is TOP supported in Houdini Engine in Maya, because it doesn't seems
Thanks in advance

Cheers

Hi Leopardob,

Unfortunately it is not supported at this time.

Could this be mentioned somewhere in the docs?

Perhaps here:
http://www.sidefx.com/docs/maya/_maya__compatibility.html [www.sidefx.com]

I am also interested in wedging and tops use in engine for Maya.
Is there a timeline on when tops might be supported?

Thanks!

Hi Peter,

It's not supported, but you can make it work, but there are caveats. Everything must be able to be run through an HDA processor TOP as the Maya plugin requires an HDA to operate on - not a hip file.

First, make an HDA that you want to wedge. Then create a new HDA. Inside, place a TOP Geometry node. Inside the TOP Geometry node, place down a wedge node, and configure it to your specifications. Then, wire it into an HDA Processor TOP. Point the processor to the HDA that you want to wedge, click Update HDA Parameters, configure the batch mode if required, set the HDA Type to Sop, enable Write Outputs, set the number of outputs to 1, set the output file name to where the generated bgeo files will be saved, and set the output tag to file/geo. In the HDA Parameters pane, set the attribute values to the ones generated in the wedge node. Make sure that the display flag is set on the HDA processor.

If you load this HDA into Maya now, it will bring in the wedged geometry as a single piece. If you want to separate them by wedge, you must put down some additional nodes:

In the Houdini Asset node in Maya, you can check “Split Geos By Group”. If your wedged HDA creates primitive groups, the geometry will be split according to those. In order to split by wedge, place down a Group Delete node after the TOP Geometry node and delete any primitive group. Then, add a Group Promote node converting from Points to Primitives. The group name should be “nameofhdaprocessornode*”, and the new name should be blank. By doing this, you will not be able to bring over any other primitive attributes, so you will need to convert them to another attribute type if you wish to bring them over into Maya.