tl;dr can I import an alembic to Houdini, assign new normals to it, and then export it?
Context:
I’ve animated a figure in blender and now I want to clothe it in Marvelous Designer. I’m exporting my character from blender as an alembic, which looks fine in C4D (my native software). However when I open the alembic in Marvelous Designer I get these black squares all over the mesh:
It’s impossible to select the garments when this alembic is in use. If I delete the avatar, the garments can once again be selected.
This, and the weird pattern on the mesh, make me think it’s related to normals being flipped on some polygons, so that MD thinks the garments are “inside” the mesh and can’t be selected. However I’ve checked the alembic in different software and it renders as expected, leading me to believe that the normals are correctly oriented.
Is there a way for me to import the alembic to Houdini, and “re-calculate” or “re-assign” normals before exporting, so that I can import my alembic to MD?
Sorry if this isn't directly related to Houdini but I've asked on a few forums now and I'm running out of ideas!
Many thanks