So I just wanted to try to export my geometry from Scene Nodes to something like an Alembic file, but can’t find any way to do that. Is it even possible at this time to export geometry from Scene Nodes or can it only live within C4D and the Scene Nodes context?
I was basically trying to import some animated geometry from the OM using the ‘Legacy Object Import’ node, edit that geometry within the Scene Nodes context, then export that geometry as an Alembic.
No, at this time there is no export option for anything generated by Scene Nodes. You can only render.
Just an observation… Are you not able to select things created in the Scene Nodes in the Viewport?
In Houdini, as an example, even though you create a cube in your node network, you can still select, move and scale etc in the viewport… It looks like one can only control things like the position of an object numerically in the attrib. manager.
Currently there is no interaction in the viewport with scene node elements. They can only be displayed.
Going out on a limb in possible contradiction to what @srek has said and apologies if I’ve misunderstood your requirement, but Nikolaus Schatz from Nikomedia actually demonstrates what you’re trying to do and exports as Alembic from a Scene Node setup, albeit outside of Scene Nodes. It is with geometry only with no animation, so I can’t attest to your case exactly but I don’t see why not. He demonstrates import legacy geometry and exports after using Scene Nodes to an Alembic file and then reimports that file. There is nothing special in the way he does it, just exports/imports as you would any C4D generated .abc file.
Note: The video below should just start automatically at 1h08m to show you the export to .abc specifically, but watch the whole video to see his entire process of legacy import, working with Scene Nodes and then export to Alembic:
Thank you Drew for correcting me, i was not aware that Alembic Export would do that. We had an experimental scene node export during beta that did not turn out to be release worthy, but it seems the way the alembic exporter just grabs everything the renderer gets does seem to work.