What is the latest way to get an After Effects Camera and Nulls into Houdini? Any ideas?

Vincent Griffith

I have not personally used this on the AE side, but there's a (commercial 3rd party) plugin that allows for import and export of FBX data in After Effects. https://aescripts.com/fbx-to-ae/ [aescripts.com]

Naturally you can script something like this yourself, but it may be worth exploring the FBX solution first.

I did a whole series on this, you can watch the main one here: https://youtu.be/b4A2Oh2uHsQ [youtu.be]

The Houdini plugin that I talk about still works, provided that you change the code as I also show in one of the other videos.

Alternatively for me, the next best thing (and perhaps the best solution of the bunch) is to export an Alembic to Blender and then use Blender's own extension to send it to AE.

Midphase
I did a whole series on this, you can watch the main one here: https://youtu.be/b4A2Oh2uHsQ [youtu.be]

The Houdini plugin that I talk about still works, provided that you change the code as I also show in one of the other videos.

Alternatively for me, the next best thing (and perhaps the best solution of the bunch) is to export an Alembic to Blender and then use Blender's own extension to send it to AE.

Hello thanks for the reply but I want to take After Effect's camera and Nulls into Houdini not the other way around.

protozoan
I have not personally used this on the AE side, but there's a (commercial 3rd party) plugin that allows for import and export of FBX data in After Effects. https://aescripts.com/fbx-to-ae/ [aescripts.com]

Naturally you can script something like this yourself, but it may be worth exploring the FBX solution first.

I tried it out and it totally works. Took a little fan-dangling with centering the AE scene to the houdini world but it'll work for sure.

VGriffith
Hello thanks for the reply but I want to take After Effect's camera and Nulls into Houdini not the other way around.

Oh cool...weird...why? Just curious.

Midphase

VGriffith
Hello thanks for the reply but I want to take After Effect's camera and Nulls into Houdini not the other way around.

Oh cool...weird...why? Just curious.

Well After Effects does have a 3D camera tracker so that would be a good reason. Also another thing would be if I have a null stuck to a character it would be nice to have the object stick in houdini. Like lets say a character walks in from out of frame and I wanted a particle sim or smoke sim coming off of them or something like that it would flow off of them based on their velocity.

Midphase
I did a whole series on this, you can watch the main one here: https://youtu.be/b4A2Oh2uHsQ [youtu.be]

The Houdini plugin that I talk about still works, provided that you change the code as I also show in one of the other videos.

Alternatively for me, the next best thing (and perhaps the best solution of the bunch) is to export an Alembic to Blender and then use Blender's own extension to send it to AE.

This works less hassle. I used this method: exporting from Houdini as Alembic to Blender, then exporting to an After Effects script with the help of a Python tool from a video guide.
Here’s the video everything works fast and simple, all in under 1 minute.
https://youtu.be/-XJ1_ZN4Qx4 [youtu.be]

Hello I am new to Houdini and seeing these posts makes me wonder if this is still the only way to transport Nulls & Cameras from Houdini to AE. Is there chance there are tools now or plugins? I am happy to pay for if it is custom build. Thank you

thisishka3d
Hello I am new to Houdini and seeing these posts makes me wonder if this is still the only way to transport Nulls & Cameras from Houdini to AE. Is there chance there are tools now or plugins? I am happy to pay for if it is custom build. Thank you

Nice timing, I couldn't find a working method so I decided to write a couple scripts.
Here is a tutorial I made to show how you can easily import Camera and nulls to houdini
https://youtu.be/wjtTvwmor-s [youtu.be]

I hope it helps someone.