[Bf-committers] Alembic streaming

[Jeroen Bakker]

Hi,

The case I am working on is data interchange between departments, where 
Blender is one of the many tool-sets in use.
The use of alembic within blender is:
  * export baked animation data to an alembic archive.
  * use of alembic archive (baked mesh data) in a blender for vfx or 
rendering.

As you mentioned there are many other areas where Blender could benefit 
from alembic as cache system, like sims and pointclouds. IMO these are 
more blender internally managed. But sure, the system should be capable 
to handle these as well.

Jeroen


On 09/10/2012 01:34 PM, Ton Roosendaal wrote:
> Hi,
>
> You probably skip a step here; what do you (we) want to have alembic for in the first place?
>
> To me it seems we would need it for:
>
> - realtime playback of cached (baked) characters
> - smoke, fluid, cloth sims
> - general point cloud caches
>
> All these have a relationship with something in Blender, and can thus live or work within that context as well.
>
> If you consider to only use Alembic as import format it's barely interesting...
>
> -Ton-
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Ton Roosendaal  Blender Foundation   ton at blender.org    www.blender.org
> Blender Institute   Entrepotdok 57A  1018AD Amsterdam   The Netherlands
>
> On 10 Sep, 2012, at 12:20, Jeroen Bakker wrote:
>
>> 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
>> _______________________________________________
>> Bf-committers mailing list
>> Bf-committers at blender.org
>> http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers
> _______________________________________________
> Bf-committers mailing list
> Bf-committers at blender.org
> http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers
>


-- 

Met vriendelijke groet,

Jeroen Bakker

*At Mind BV
*

Telefoon: 06 50 611 262
E-mail: j.bakker at atmind.nl <mailto:j.bakker at atmind.nl>