Alembic Animation Support?

Weird there is no answer from Apple or other dev. It's very strange that there is not much documentation on Alembic. I am trying to execute it as AR using ARKit.

So far, I manage to show it by placing as SCN object. But animation that I am not sure how to check.

I would be happy if there is one example using Swift and manage to execute the Alembic animation.

Wonder if Unity and Unreal plugin can actually take advantage of Alembic, I think they did show it in the demo?

I have the same question.

- I have an Alembic .abc file containing a mesh and a vertex animation (created with C4D)

- I can open this Alembic file with Blender, and the animation plays fine.

- If I drop the file into my SceneKit project, I don't see any animation.

I have similar problems, with one additional wrinkle. Some alembic files are able to be read, displayed, and even converted to SCN, but others simply display as statues. None animate. I have tried numerous export options and 3D packages as source. Thus far, DAE format seems to be the most reliable way to get animated data to SCN format.

Is there a publicly available SCN format specification? I'd love to be able to simply export directly to SCN without all this fuss. Too many dependencies and too long of an iteration loop in the current state of affairs.

I was able to read geometries from Alembic files but not animations -- of any sort.

+1
Had exactly the same issue. This is very annoying and frustrating...

If you can still reproduce the problem, file a bug or use one of your code level support credits. Or maybe both.

Anyone had any luck with this yet? This is so broken its not funny anymore.

This is how you import an Alembic file (with or without animations) into SceneKit:

1. First make sure that you import SceneKit.ModelIO

2. Drag your .abc file into your project (make sure you check the box for the file's Target Membership)

At this point, you should be able to see your model (with its animations) in Xcode, if you can't there is an issue with your model (or animations)

3. Initialize an MDLAsset using the URL of your file: let asset = MDLAsset(url: Bundle.main.url(forResource: "name of your file", withExtension: "abc")!

4. Initialize an SCNScene from your MDLAsset: SCNScene(mdlAsset: asset)

This method is fairly robust, I won't claim that it will work 100% of the time, but I just tested it with 10 random .blend files (with animations) that I found on the internet. Then I exported the models as .abc from Blender. They all worked in SceneKit.

This sounds promising but once I drag the .abc file into my art.scnassets the target memberships options dont appear on the file inspector an theres no play button to activate animations. Also tried dragging the .abc file straight into a .scn file without any luck either.

Any more ideas?

Hey JeremyRaven,

Don't drag it into your asset catalog, just put it with the rest of your files somewhere in your project!

Hi everyone and gchiste,

Could you please specify how an Alembic (.abc) file should be exported from Blender?

We've successfully imported Alembic (.abc) files found online into Xcode that play their animation from a Mesh Sequence Cache Modifier, but our own liquid simulation when baked and exported as Alembic only appears as a static mesh in Xcode, but still use a Mesh Sequence if re-imported to Blender. We're not sure what's different in our files from the ones we've found online.

Could you please explain what settings you used to bake, export, and import an Alembic file? So that our artist can make our final animations work in the app.

Thanks,

Deger