ImageWorks & ILM Release Alembic Interchange Format

[oglu]

sounds usefull to me...

[playmesumch00ns]

Very cool. Retarded name though...

[AJ]

It will be interesting to see how the exported data looks when using motion blur & other subframe sampled effects.

[Strob]

Where can we download it? there's no files on the group pages...

[noizFACTORY]

I was just going to post this thread!

The files don't show up for download by default but they do when you hit the "all downloads" option thrown up by Google Code.
http://code.google.com/p/alembic/downloads/list?can=1&q=

This looks like a highly useful format to bake all 3d stuff. And great to see two biggies joining hands in developing something for the industry (and each one not reinventing the wheel or wasting their time in the process)!

This page has users listing out their asset baking requirements:
http://code.google.com/p/alembic/wiki/UserStoriesAssetBaking

[ThE_JacO]

It will be interesting to see how the exported data looks when using motion blur & other subframe sampled effects.
Nothing prevents export sampled more densely than once per frame. Every large place I can think of has dealt with point caches in the pipe going to lighting instead of rigged models, and all those proprietary formats deal with it just fine. More interesting to that effect would be the transform and interpolant(s) details though.
It still sounds like a geo cache with efficient serialization to me though, so either the PR is a bit obscure and glorified, or I might be missing something.
The fact it's industry backed and OSS is what's interesting to me. It might succeed where gto failed.

[AJ]

Nothing prevents export sampled more densely than once per frameIt's embarrassing, but I hadn't even considered that as an option... :blush:

[Strob]

The files don't show up for download by default but they do when you hit the "all downloads"


Thanks! got it.

[playmesumch00ns]

Thinking about it a bit more, it's a shame they didn't build a system on top of cortex for doing this.

[jtvergarav]

So Mari will support this?

sounds very exciting, like exr

[katisss]

Too good to be true: an open standard for geometry exchange.
Is it based on hfd5 or just supporting it?
Are objects with changing point counts supported? Most caching formats dont or dont do this reliable.

[rendermaniac]

Thinking about it a bit more, it's a shame they didn't build a system on top of cortex for doing this.

I was thinking that too - there does seem to be a lot of reinventing the wheel - especially as cortex already has Maya and Houdini plugins.

It is also interesting that it is built on HDF5.

Simon

[katisss]

Cortex has plenty of interesting stuff but i personally find it a bit unfriendly its close to impossible to compile for windows.

[philnolan3d]

I'm curious about he application independence. Does that mean a plugin would have to be written for every application, or I could say import a .max file and output a .LWS and .LWO files?

[ThE_JacO]

exporting to each app's native format (which isn't even possible for some apps anyway) would defeat the purpose.
It's its own format, which will be front-ended in each app.
Hopefully they have Python bindings for it too, haven't looked much into it yet.

[instinct-vfx]

They have (Python bindings). Overall looks like a nice effort. Tho due to it's nature i can't see how this would become like an openEXR vs. DPX for 3d formats as i read somewhere.

[noizFACTORY]

I'm curious about he application independence. Does that mean a plugin would have to be written for every application, or I could say import a .max file and output a .LWS and .LWO files?

A plug-in has to be written for the app from which you are trying to export the data and also for the app wherein you are trying to import the data. From the Google code page:

Alembic Is Not…

A dependency graph, nor a procedural data transformation tool
A replacement for native application scene file formats
An asset management application
A general rigging storage solution


I think the source provided has some plug-in examples for Maya and PRMan.

[instinct-vfx]

A plug-in has to be written for the app from which you are trying to export the data and also for the app wherein you are trying to import the data.

Not necessarily a plugin for the application but eventually rather it's file formats (or supported export formats). Alembic Pipeline is supposed to enable you to provide wrapper scripts for common tasks so that conversion to/from alembic does not necessarily need an application plugin but rather an ADS portal to automatically go to alembic

Regards,
Thorsten

[FreakWizz]

So this is the basically what .mdd files have been doing with plugins like pointoven for a decade?

[philnolan3d]

I haven't messed with LW Motion Designer much, I thought it's .MDD files only stored point data, like the location in space for every point on every frame?

[ThE_JacO]

So this is the basically what .mdd files have been doing with plugins like pointoven for a decade?
The base idea, yes. The concept isn't new, geo caches have been around for a long time, and most places have their propietary formats.

The difference is that this is OSS, might gather momentum giving where it's starting from, and is, apparently, very efficient and well served (and rather full featured).
It's the difference between a standard and a software, even if such standard obviously requires software to implement it :)

I don't think anybody claims it's novel in any way.
More than pointOven though, I find it similar to GTO, just more refined and advertised.

[lunat1k]

I'm in the same boat as playmesumch00ns and Simon regarding cortex.

Great to see more oss vfx projects coming out. Props to ILM/SPI.

[earlyworm]

The press release has a few quotes from various companies and studios...

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sony-pictures-imageworks-and-industrial-light--magic-join-forces-on-alembic-99337884.html

I expect the big VFX studios will start adopting this - even if it is as a secondary cache format to compliment their current format of choice - very useful for cross studio collabration.

The real test is whether the software industry (Autodesk, SideFX, Foundry, etc) fully embraces it, as having an open source geo cache format with wide software support would be REALLY handy.

[josh3light]

It would be nice if there could be a format that could support voxel/ volume stuff too... for example transferring between Houdini fluids, Fume fx, and even 3dcoat voxel modeling... is it possible?

[ndeboar]

sony has an open source format for volumes,
http://opensource.imageworks.com/?p=field3d

[philnolan3d]

3D-Coat has an importer for Raw Voxel Data. I'm not sure exactly what that is but it might be something like what you mean.

[josh3light]

those both seem like steps in the right direction. It would be cool to procedurally model a volume in houdini, throw it into 3d coat and tweak it a bit, push and pull etc.. then back to houdini, max, or whatever to render...

[MDuffy]

So this is the basically what .mdd files have been doing with plugins like pointoven for a decade?

Except that MDD files can only contain animation for a single asset per file, have a size limit of 64 megs (at least for Lightwave), and only store positions, not other baked data. Plus there's an entire extra frame of data at the start of MDD files which I've never figured out the use for (motion blur for the first frame? Dunno).

The page for Alembic seems a bit sparse on info at the moment, but this is definitely something I'll be keeping an eye on. Hopefully the file format is straightforward so it is easy to write separate tools (not big app importer/exporters) that generate cache data. Every studio I've worked for has had some method for baking out data that is passed from one department to another, so if this project can create a common and useful cache format for use by multiple studios, then more power to them. :-)

Cheers,
Michael

[noizFACTORY]

Found one Siggraph demo video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6M063pr-VA

[katisss]

http://code.google.com/p/alembic/wiki/Feedback

[mindsample]

Not sure if there are answers to my questions out there already, but ...

In regards to the frontends in applications such as Maya ... has anybody got any clue if this will use "referencing" ? I really hope this will not just be a cross platform format but actually allow real referenced caching with live links from within the 3d application to the stored data.

Who is writing the front-ends, is there a plan for this or are we waiting for the oss community to pick this up?

[katisss]

They are disscussing Houdini integration here
http://groups.google.com/group/alembic-discussion/browse_thread/thread/57265ea04f2ffee8

Nuke
http://groups.google.com/group/alembic-discussion/browse_thread/thread/f34f31a600bda116#

[mindsample]

it seems they will release windows compatible front ends with v1.0. Thats great!

[underearth]

Alembic point caching has been implemented in maya 2012 subscription advantage pack,
if anyone can get hands on it could compare the solution with maya's point cache.

also i hope same way we can get data to and from softimage, max using alembic

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.