Hi there,

Does anyone know if there's a plugin for Maya that will allow one to export geometry as .geo files?

Surely there's studios that have written something like this for internal use, no? It would make life easier in the Maya/Houdini shops to move stuff around …


–Mark

Polytrans does it, although it may be .geo only- no .bgeo. It is a standalone application, but there is also a “Polytrans for Maya” plugin that you launch inside of Maya and you can write out a veritable cornucopia of geometry formats including .geo.

One caveat: I discovered that Polytrans was written to support float2 for UV coordinates, so Houdini's float3 UVW's don't pass through properly. I made my own float2 attribute called uv and mapped my texture coordinates to that before exporting to .geo and it worked fine. There is a bug fix for this out that the programmer made for me, but I don't know when it will be folded into the release.

Cheers,
Craig Hoffman

Thanks Craig!

I think we have that here, I'll look into immeadiatley.


–Mark

By the way, I have been in contact with the programmer for Polytrans, and he has been very helpful and responsive with my problems/concerns. He told me the reason why there isn't more support for Houdini in Polytrans beyond .geo files is that the SDK used to cost a lot of money and the market was too small for him to invest more time and effort into Houdini support. Also, he said Side Effects wasn't interested in investing some time into creating the “hooks” that would make his implementation easier.

So now that the SDK is free, perhaps some genius programmers in the Houdini community could pool their efforts and work with the programmer for Polytrans as he does a ground up rewrite of Polytrans to really make Houdini interoperable with other packages. Can you imagine “Houdini to .fbx” or “Houdini to Maya character animation” or “Maya to SoftImage” converters? Or a character animation exporter to the DirectX Animation format to easily pull Houdini character animation into many different game engines?

I think the only way to make Houdini catch on at a lot of Studios is to let them move over to it incrementally as they see the advantages. Right now Houdini doesn't play well with other software, so Studios don't want to make a drastic transition over to a new package that they don't really know yet. That is one of the main reasons that most places that use Houdini only use it for Effects (where the advantages are so obvious) and why a lot of places don't give Houdini a second look. (Oh, and the price-tag, too…)

Cheers,
Craig Hoffman

xionmark
Does anyone know if there's a plugin for Maya that will allow one to export geometry as .geo files?

Hi Mark,

Digital Domain has written a full .geo and .bgeo import/export for Maya, including a FileSOP equivalent Deformer node -which I'm told was not the easiest thing to jam into Maya. So it's fully possible, but you need a massacist for a software developer to implement it. Luckily we have one.

In our experience with Maya and Lightwave, its not Houdini that doesn't play well. The open nature of the formats it can read make it the easiest and most malleable of all the solutions in house. Via the FileCHOP, plugins and GEOio table entries it is the most seamless of all three.

Heya Mark,

I've written a maya->GEO export plugin to facilitate communication between the packages. I've found that writing a full data-set is only needed for the first frame (UV's, prim groups, assorted houdini friendly attributes). Every subsequent frame only requires a point-cloud.

I tried to get permission to release it to the public - but it was a no go. :x

As it turns out, the Maya API is actually a lot less painfull to deal with then the rest of the application. :shock:

Cheers,

G

keyframe
As it turns out, the Maya API is actually a lot less painfull to deal with then the rest of the application. :shock:

Ha! That's good to hear!

Thanks for the info, we might go the Martian Glue route but it may also be worthwhile to explore the Maya plugin. Of course with Glue, you can go both directions.

Thanks for the tips everyone!


–Mark

Okay, when I said “doesn't play well” I should have made it clear that I was referring to things like character animation and cameras, not simple objects.

I don't think there is any easy way to get skeleton based character animation out of Houdini and into other packages or game engines, etc. without writing a fair amount of code or having some big workarounds. Maya and SoftImage and Max all have exporters or support in packages like Polytrans to allow this. (Maya even has camera exporters to Compositing packages like Combustion!)

Yes, Houdini is way easier to get a series of baked geometry files in than Maya, but right now a lot of people go between Motion Builder/Maya/Max/etc. and I think it would be great for Houdini to get in the mix there so Houdini freelancers can work in their favorite package and give work in an interchangeable format to the unenlightened still toiling with Maya…

-Craig

Ah right, I understand now You're right; there are very few tools that'll attempt to translate a skeleton to or from Houdini - although Dan Kramer wrote the most part of one translator which exists on the odforce codex somewhere.

We also have the point-cloud thing going which is great for preserving diskspace and for simple speed improvements but if you're going to be changing the point count (by blowing stuff up in Houdini) you will need to load the entire geometry detail in every frame change. Both capbilities are essential, for sure

I think Dan Kramer's stuff is in need of an overhaul..I tried to get some of it working a while ago but Houdini's bones have changed enough to cause some nasty stuff to happen…it's one of those ‘fun’ projects I was toying with when I didn't have a job…and now that I do have job I just think ‘bah…just do it all in Houdini and save yourself the trouble’