Alembic Documentation
Alembic
For our purpose, the important is the very last sencence of definition above. We use Alembic to bake complex animation into the vertices animation and play it in the engine – for example explosion of Tamlberk gate after being hit with cannon ball. This explosion was simulated in 3ds Max and then baked into vertex animation. Another example is the sand inside the sandglass.
How to export Alembic
Alembic export should be very straightforward, however we experienced problems instead. Not every Alembic file works in the engine, you will probably have to play with different exporters, different formats...
- 3ds Max built-in Alembic exporter
- External Alembic plugins – Exocortex
File format: .ABC
Alembic in Editor
- Insert Alembic via Entity -> GeomCache.
- Load the .ABC file into the File property of entity. Compile Alembic window pops-up:
- You can keep default parameters and hit OK. If everything goes well, there should be no error displayed and the .ABC file in the entity properties is replaced with compiled.cax file.
- From now on, you will use this .cax file unless you need to recompile .ABC again .
- On your harddrive, you can notice one more file – .cbc file contains parameters used to compile .cax.
- Submit all three abovementioned files.