I’ve done a bit of digging around to maxscript alembic tools in 3dsMax 2015 my findings are here.
maxscripting alembic files
alas I can’t find a way to affect the time options show in the alembic import or export dialogs
Am I missing something ?
I don’t think you are Kenneth. I found the same as you, and whilst I was excited about this in Max, its quite limited. The lack of having something like exocortex’s attach to node option makes it pretty useless in a pipeline. It might help getting fluids out of Houdini or Maya, but I can’t see us using it more that that in its current implementation.
The new 2015 max plugin supports standard links, and stack modifiers. Seems pretty cool to me. I’ve not used the exocortex plugin how does the attach to node work ?
I’ve yet to try alembic and pflow… but Max > alembic > nuke / fusion would be cool for me .
Another maxscript downside is ImportFile only returns true… so I have to grab the new objects using the current selection ( which I feel could be suspect … )
What is “attach to node option”?
From the Exocortex help:
Attach to existing objects: If checked, the operators are connected to existing objects. Otherwise, new objects are created.
This for me is really useful, as it is unlikely that meshes in animation files are the same as render meshes. We need the flexibility to work on shaders, texturing and UVW’s at the same time as animation is happening. So it means this can be updated and the saved alembic transforms attached to the final shaded asset. I’m sure there would be ways around this, but as a swap for pointcache it’s not a case of one in, one out. However, it would we useful for systems with changing mesh topology, which can be problematic from other software.
But I would want all aspects to be scriptable, like frame offsets. I’m not saying its not a great addition to max, it just needs a little more exposure in order to be truly useful or a shift in focus for our pipeline.
I guess we’ll have to file a feature request for proper alembic maxscript and see…
autodesk :banghead: