Hi,

I'm getting the feeling that importing alembic with File -> import -> Alembic Scene... is making my saved .hip way bigger like the alembic was part of the .hip file. Is that correct? I deleted it from my scene but I still get a big file size and I'm wondering if there's a way to flush that data. I tried a clear of the cache but, I think that's just for ram so...

-Olivier

olivierth
like the alembic was part of the .hip file. Is that correct?

No, none of the alembic data is imported to the scene, and the scene remains depenedent on the alembic file on disk. File -> import for alembics is the same as using the alembic archive node though, so it will instantiate a node network representing the hierarchy of the alembic. These nodes can increase file size.

Typically, alembic archive nodes are not used for reading alembic data, i.e. don't use import alembic scene with Houdini. The alembic SOP is used to read and alembic hierarchy as a set of packed primitives. The tools in Houdini are much better suited to working with geometry as packed primtives than to a bunch of nodes that must be destructively edited.

Deleting the alembic archive root node of an imported alembic would delete any nodes that were created by the import process and frees the file size. There isn't any data stored with the hip file other than these nodes.

Thanks for the info, jsmack! I'll give it a look.

-Olivier