I'm curious if anyone knows of a Mac based workflow to export from MoI3D to Alembic file format?

It turns out KeyShot cannot import splines (not surfaces or solids) from MoI3D but does from Alembic. And KeyShot needs splines to render hair, fur, etc..

I am wanting to render some complex spline based graphics for a project, and of course MoI3D is the best program I know to build them in. Thanks for any help.

Hi Chipp - The only way that I know to get from MoI to Alembic via OS X is to export OBJ or FBX from MoI, then into Maya or C4D to then export to Alembic Cache (*.abc), not perfect i know since again you will loose those lovely smooth curves from MoI.

Martin
(TpwUK)

** Edit **

Oops forgot to mention that you will need to create a planar surface before you can export FBX or OBJ - My apologies Chipp

Hi chipp,

That might be a tricky one. I'm pretty sure .abc only works with splines, not nurbs curves ... and while I'm not a specialist in this kind of stuff, I think it's 2 different data type.
My best bet would be Maya or Houdini, they both can handle nurbs data (igs ? ...), and they both have good .abc exporter.

But I'm pretty sure you also need to somehow convert/resample the curves into splines before exporting them.

Hi Chipp, you might try DXF, STEP, or IGES formats and see if Keyshot will import curves from any of those.

I took a quick look over the Alembic documentation and it does look like it only supports a limited kind of curve, which looks like a cubic curve without any knot values or weights so a subset of NURBS.

You might try exporting to DXF format out from MoI and choose the option for export curves as cubic splines to generate that type of curve output.

Maybe ask Keyshot tech support if they can read curves from any format other than Alembic.

- Michael

Thanks everyone. I think it's best I just export surfaces, which will work fine. Really appreciate the help!