Hi folks,

I am a novice pipeline TD trying to bridge the Alembic geo cache gap in order to carry animated displacement data from Maya to Houdini.

We're talking multiple, high resolution, ZBrush, wrinkle maps, animated in by Maya (2013), which need to be reapplied, after Houdini applied hair and lighting, in either Mantra or Arnold.

So far I've added a Python script into Maya's Pipeline Cache tool, which spits out a simple text file with my animation data. I can adjust it to make one file per channel, or bundle all the channels into one (once I learn how to handle them inside Houdini).

Being new to Houdini, I've got as far as hooking (or in Houdini terms Exporting) some animation data from a CHOPS file import to the Y axis translation of a test mesh.

I have also added a Mantra shader to a test mesh but, when I go to export my channel data to it, I can't find a displacement scale channel to pipe the data into.

Any pointers would be appreciated. As would any suggestion of a way to mix / process multiple displacement channels into the one mesh. The different channels will represent different wrinkle maps created by different facial expressions.

I love the low level access within Houdini but it's a bit daunting at first, going deeper and deeper.

Thanks in advance

Nigel
Byron Bay
Australia