I'm doing an assessment for uni and I'm using houdini apprentice. I have created different object and textured them by adding a colour node. THe colour shows up and even renders but when I export it as an fbx. and open it in maya to check if everything is at it should be, the colour is present.
How do I export the colour?

Hey, another way would be to attribute promote the color (Cd) from point to vertex. Than export fbx, import in maya and than toggle over the menu "mesh display -> Toggle Displays Colors Attribute" . This also displays the vertex color on your mesh like in houdini.

Hello All,

This topic is super timely for me, but alas I'm doing something wrong (probably several things wrong), and so I'm not getting the suggestions and workflow from @vik_lc to work out.

I have a texture I apply to a grid that I then thicken. I also have a frame that I create from the grid's borders, to which I apply point color. I can export the frame using ply just fine, but when I try to export the thickened picture in ply, the material does not come through. So I figured I try fbx for that. But when I export the thickened picture in fbx, no matter what choices I make in the rop_fbx node for converting units or choosing orientations, I cannot get the fbx to end up the same size and orientation as the ply-exported frame. It's ten times larger if I do not set the convert units toggle, and 100 times larger if I do. And the orientation is wrong.

If I merge the frame and picture together and export that in fbx, they end up at least in the same wrong orientation and size, but I lose the color on the frame. I tried creating a material as suggested (and setting use point color), but clearly I'm doing something wrong, because it isn't working.

So my questions are whether anyone can let me know what I'm doing wrong with the size and orientation of the fbx export and what I'm doing wrong trying to get point color exported somehow.

Thanks so much for any advice you can offer!
Mary

Here's the part in Houdini -- both thickened picture and green frame:


Here's the frame exported as ply and imported into Magics. It comes in green and the right size/orientation:


Here are the parts merged and exported as fbx and then imported into Magics. They are the wrong size and orientation and the frame no longer is green.


I also include the .hip file and the texture for the picture.

Hey,

just create UVs on your grid and create two Principled Shader Materials for flowers and border color.Assign them with "Material" Node.

In FBX Rop check "EMBED MEDIA" and all is good
As for the problem with scaling. In Houdini we work in meter. That means your picture is roughly 60m big. Just create a transform node before FBX Rop and rotate and scale before export. Just find out which unit system your 3D program uses and which axis is up axis and prepare it before export.




Hope all of this helps you. jaden

Thank you, Jaden! That works beautifully.

Can you stand one more newbie question? I created the shaders in the mat context. To refer to them in the material SOPs I had to use the path /mat/ I'm guessing that you managed to use your /obj/geo1/matnet1/ path instead because of the inclusion of the matnet sops I see. Clearly I'm going to go spend some quality time with the tutorials I see on building materials in Houdini, but in the meantime, I'm not sure I understand how to use the matnet sop, as it seems to have no parameter interface. How did you use it?

Regardless, using the different paths, it all works perfectly. Your help is deeply appreciated!

Best wishes,
Mary

Hi Mary,

the matnet sop is just a container to a material context which can live in SOP level. Personally I use it to organize my materials so that I have the materials next to the objects that I want to shade and I dont have to switch contexts back and forth but rather dive in and out a node. Also with matnet context it can get crowded if the scene gets bigger and ALL materials go inside one place. It's just a personal preference i guess how you want to organize yourself and your working script. Also other contexts are available also in SOP level like copnet or topnet. So basically you can have everything relatet to one object in one place..
Hope this helps.

regards, jaden

Thank you again, Jaden. That's very helpful.

Best wishes,
Mary