#Maya realflow series

DavidRindner RealFlow and Maya work well together. Hi Dave, Thx for the info, it helps me to better understand. I figure you know the BIN format, so it should be easy to covert point clouds into RF BIN particle files. What is needed is RF_Export_SOP that is appended to POP_Merge_SOP that exports Houdini's particle data into RF particle BIN file. Now you did a great job of importing RealFlow's BIN format as particles, which gives us point cloud data in SOPs that is then used for stamping instances or metaball for isosurface gen, and can also be used for working I3d.

#Maya realflow series

If we export POP_MErge_SOP to series of OBJ frames, those OBJs do not come into Maya, as Maya's OBJ import ignores point cloud data. Even on machines with 2gb of ram, the amount of OBJ frame objects that can be brought in is very limited due to Maya's memory usage. So the frozen OBJ meshes from Houdini can only be used with materials that don't need UVW coordinates.

Even with MEL that imports the sequence and assigns Visibility keyframes to obj files, we get no motion blur or UVW information, as Houdini isosurfaces don't have the usefull kind of UVW that RF generates. If we export the isosurface as OBJ sequenece. Lets assume a POPNEt that has metaball stamped on it using CopySOP with resulting isosurface flow. Simply exporting OBJ sequence is not a good solution as bridge between Houdini and Maya. For that I need a way to convert POPnets into RF bin files that come into RF as Emitters. Becouse of that I would like to use RF as bridge to bring in Houdini generated particle sims into Maya. Specifically RealFlow exports motion blur and UVW coordinates in its meshes, that are loaded through RF Loader in Maya. I just need a bridge to get Houdini's particle data into Maya. The shop's pipeline is solid when only Maya, RealFlow, Mental Ray, and Rushes are involved. My task is to make Houdini, Maya, RealFlow, Rush, and Mental Ray (farm) all work together for creation of liquid and particle effects.

I just joined a Maya shop that is bringing Houdini into its pipeline. May I ask is this for a вЂњrealвЂќ project or are you just вЂњplaying aroundвЂќ with RF/Houdini/Maya I'm trying get a sense of your needs. What you mentioned in your last post about exporting RF particle BIN files from POPs is something I've thought about doing but haven't had the time yet, but if you (and others) really need this soon I suppose I could start working on it, though I'd rather finsih the rest of the work on the current set of plugins and I need to re-work all the tutorials. obj files in SOP's and then import them into Maya? Second, RF's BIN format is for both mesh and particles, but you can only import particles into RF with it's BIN loaders, I don't know if they plan to implement mesh BIN file imports. First, if you'd like to make a вЂњHoudini->Maya bridgeвЂќ to get Houdini particles into Maya, why not just save out. вЂ“MarkДЄhh, OK, now I see what you want to do, though from reading the previous posts I think you may be mixed up on a few points, let me see if I can help make it more clear. Hope this helps, let me know if you continue to run into problems. Also, remember that sometimes Houdini doesn't convert some geo into tri-polys correctly, sometimes this requires checking the data via a. DavidRindner I would like to bring Houdini particle sims into RF, generate the RF_Mesh in RF, and then bring that mesh into Maya. So, turn your POP geo into spheres or something to your liking, append a convert SOP to turn the geo into tri-poly's, then export it to RF. RF doesn't have any way (yet) to import strictly point data, and if you think about it, you can't do any sims with just points, you need surfaces. Right, this won't work, not because the plugin isn't operating properly, rather you're not exporting the proper geometry. I cannot then bring that SD file into RF. Then append RF_Export_SOP to POPSOP, and export with animated ON. Then bring in the POP into Geometry via POPSOP. DavidRindner lets say I make a POPnet in Houdini. Remember, it's meant to export triangular geometry only. Sorry, but I believe it's your usage as it's been working fine for a long time. I don't know if its the SOP or RF or my use.