[Bf-committers] Alembic streaming

[Jeroen Bakker]

Hi all!

I am looking into realizing Alembic support in Blender. The biggest 
issue on this topic is the Alembic streaming.
Alembic is not a standard importer/exporter, but can be used as a 
read-only cache file.

My ideas are to use a placeholder (like an empty) and parent all objects 
that are inside the alembic archive. On frame change the data of the 
objects will be refreshed. I think that in the current architecture this 
is the most doable thing, but it has some drawbacks.

The objects are not read-only, they can be edited, but on a frame change 
they will be refreshed. We can make the child objects not selectable in 
the 3d editor, but when doing simulations you need to be able to select one.

Are there other ideas to handle this issue?

Greetings,
Jeroen