Whoops, realized I accidentally replied to you directly. Copying to the list... ------------------------------------------------------
Sorry, I should have been more specific. I'll add some more thoughts as well, partially for the sake of playing devil's advocate, but mostly because I'm interested in this as a discussion topic. If all I'm really after is a way to get geometry into Nuke from .abc files, a bundled plugin is easier to deal with from a pipeline standpoint. If the meshes I'm getting as an artist are sub-par or unusable, it's probably time for a changing of the guard in the asset department. In the context of the full pipeline, making Nuke fix topology for me is unfortunately too-little too-late. Plus, I can't imagine automatic topology corrections come with zero overhead. ;) Additionally, I'm sure you know how hard it is to make pipeline changes at a large (or even medium-sized) studio. If I had the ability to decide that everyone should get the AtomGeoReader and could roll it out myself, it wouldn't be a big deal. But we have a very unified software distribution system managed by our sys-admins (who are seemingly always short-handed), so it's not quite that simple. It's hard enough to get them to roll out new Nuke releases as it is, so adding another dependency that they have to add in and test just ends up slowing things down even more. Now, I know this all probably sounds like I'm ragging on AtomKraft out of boredom, but I'm trying to cover as many bases as possible. We recently switched to Alembic for anim exports, so naturally we've been evaluating options for reading them into Nuke. I wasn't previously aware that the AtomReadGeo node could be used license-free, so that definitely changes the landscape for us. Now all I need is some free time to try it out some more... :P -Nathan -----Original Message----- From: Moritz Moeller Sent: Friday, September 09, 2011 11:14 AM To: Nuke user discussion Cc: Nathan Rusch Subject: Re: [Nuke-users] Alembic support in Nuke Hey Nathan. > Well, realistically speaking, if I can get a bundled reader plugin that > does the same thing, Realistically speaking it doesn't. :) AtomReadGeo has one of the best automagic topology fixers built-in. Models with non-manifold topology will be fixed automatically on import into Nuke. We also have a bunch of other stuff in AtomReadGeo that the standard ReadGeo node doesn't do and which you all get for free (e.g. motion retargeting with proper motion blur support for animated geometry). And of course all this works with the built-in ScanlineRender node or PRManRender when you just pipe AtomReadGeo into a standard Nuke Scene node. Imho the topology fixing alone makes AtomReadGeo woth considering over ReadGeo, even after Foundry has added support for Alembic. That's just from the my whole previous career as a lighting/rendering TD. Having to deal with b0rked topology from the modeling department making it all through the pipe and then exploding into the face of people like me (or compers, in this case). Maybe I'm biased. ;) > doesn't need to be installed separately every time > a new point release comes out, and doesn't require me to talk to a whole > different collection of developers when I have bug reports or support > questions... it's a bit of a no-brainer. It still won't help with people having to enter a different email alias (but same message) when reporting a bug but we're working with Foundry to get AtomKraft into the PluginInstaller. It may just be 'push button' enough to convince some who are too busy to d/l & extract an archive and run an installer, once, every time a new Nuke dot release comes out, to consider giving it a try. :) .mm
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