Can an alembic cache drive existing geometry?

Development Character & Animation
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Is it possible to import an alembic cache to drive an existing object in the scene? For example, I have some papers modeled. Then I save out an alembic file with cloth simulated to give them movement.I can import those alembic caches of the cloth, but they come in as a different piece of geometry. I have to reassign shaders etc.

Can I somehow import that alembic and have it drive the motion of the existing geometry that has shaders etc? Kind of the way I can have fbx animation drive the skeleton of an existing character.

Thanks!

1 Like
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No.

And Yes, with some work.

Skeletal animation is a data, it’s UE4 engine drives it. It’s UE4 attaches it to skeleton,

And Alembic cache is just a data. UE4 interprets it.

UE4 have no means to deform a mesh with alembic cache.
Yet. You could deform object with a World Displacement shader, driven by the data acquired from alembic cache. The simple way will be to use render target; render the depth from the animated plane, then use that depth to control the displacement shader. It would probably work only for flat deformations.

The proper way will be to get the data from alembic itself and then feed it to shader. Well, that requires some major c++ coding.

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Thanks for the reply. I just needed confirmation as I set up my workflow. Much appreciated.

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Also, consider that UE4 Alembic support is relatively new. And file after import become huge in size (UE4 asset may be 10 times larger in size).

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Hmm. I’m glad that alembic is at least importable. I don’t know how else to efficiently bring in deforming geo.

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Actually yes based on what I’ve seen in this video around the 6:30 mark, It generated an mesh, skeleton, and animation all from a Alembic file. My question would be if one can place this animation into the montage and combine with other animations. In Maya I have a complex simulation I want to play on a character at all time which involves something like this .