I have a suggestion/request that could attract a lot of other 3d artists to try out Houdini as well as making the transition easier from other programs.

I would like to see a step by step, explained, and supported set of plugins or functions that allow easy import and export of geometry sequences, basic particle export, and camera data to and from other major software like maya, max, xsi, etc.

Other software, for some reason, just hasn't gotten it together in the ability to import and export obj sequences reliably and without custom scripting. Yeah, there are some public scripts here and there that try to do this in maya, but haven't found one that really works successfully, efficiently, and preserves uv info as a single object.

Perhaps studios are just writing their own custom transfer solutions?

FBX isn't supported in Houdini, there is collada, but so far I haven't seen this publicized very much, or explained well in a step by step document to allow the transfer of info between these programs. If Side Effects took the lead in explaining how to integrate Houdini with existing pipelines, I think it would help everyone involved.

Thanks!

Perhaps one comprehensive paper about exchanging data between Houdini and rest of the world could be useful. On the other hand what kind of problems do you have with Collada? What explanation do you need?

As to me I use it with XSI constantly and it works. No explanation needed. Menu -> Import -> Collada. That's it.

From XSI side of view this should be prepared by Avid, and indeed all info is in XSI docs.

cheers,
sy.

PS There is also odforce/wiki on that.

Yet, trying to get things out of houdini and into xsi and 3dsmax is quite a challenge. xsi has a script written by a user to import obj sequences, but unfortunately hasn't worked in my tests of it.

http://www.grahamdclark.com/Studentresources/links/Resourcesframe.htm [grahamdclark.com]

There is a script also written by a user to import obj sequences from Blender fluids to 3ds max, however it also didn't work properly for me.

The thing is, I know these should be able to work, and as a 3d user (not programmer) I'm fairly savvy, but I haven't seen a good solution yet for this kind of data transfer.

It would be great to have Houdini support Collada export too. Right now the absence of this makes it somehow “isolated”, while competing software is making big efforts to be as easily integrated in existing pipelines as possible, in order to ease transitions. I hope SESI is watching that and working on something.
To be honest, the absence of Collada export was one of the major disappointments with H9 for me. I thought of Collada import as a first step and I (wrongfully) assumed that Collada export in H9 is the obvious next step.

Dragos

digitallysane
Right now the absence of this makes it somehow “isolated”, while competing software is making big efforts to be as easily integrated in existing pipelines as possible, in order to ease transitions (…)

Well, except XSI - which is pretty reach at this point - what do others do in this respect? Not too much actually. Autodesk promotes owned format which is particularly useful in between family…

I'd like to see Collada exporter in Houdini maybe under this general rule: “the more - the better” (or for this very rare purposes when it would be really helpful).

But this is almost useless effort. Most of Houdini's specific entities can not be translated into “normal stuff” thus effectively writing Collada exporter for Houdini equals developing world inside world. Freeze everything, and dump to disk. This can be done also without Collada. You can now export from Houdini any data you want, you know that for sure! Writing Collada module for that purpose is: not trivial in case if more advance stuff, unnecessary in case of basic stuff.

Houdini is also targeted by SESI to be the very last element in a pipeline. You know that also.

cheers,
sy.

PS I'd love to write Collada exporter in Python. I looked around. It's easy with basic (geometry/lights/camera) objects. What bothers me for now is that I hate XML programming. I stopped on studying SAX/etree/dom approaches to see which of them would fit better.

Dividing exporter module into engine and semantic schema for every possible object would make this challenge easier to maintain for community based project. One man writes engine, few others schema for different objects… who knows… Maybe we will wait for a realize….

SYmek
Well, except XSI - which is pretty reach at this point - what do others do in this respect? Not too much actually. Autodesk promotes owned format which is particularly useful in between family.

XSI is the competition.

Dragos

regarding the ‘autodesk only transfer between their own software’ point, fbx between maya and c4d works remarkably well. in maya i had a skinned character with blendshapes and camera animation, passed it all to the lighter working in c4d, all came through perfectly. not just baked shapes, i mean the full skeletal structure, skin weights, blendshape panel, all of it.

enyhoo, point oven is probably the most promising right now. its used in quite a few studios for their maya<->xsi and maya<->lightwave pipelines. the developer is working on a houdini plugin, hopefully it'll be ready soon.

http://www.ef9.com/ef9/PO.htm [ef9.com]

wow that will be very useful. Houdini might be marketed for the back-end but it can do tons of great things on the front/mid end too like crowd logic, character animations etc