Alembic cache does not render in Sequencer

Hi everyone

I was playing around with the new alembic feature in 4.13

It is working terrific but I cannot figure one thing out;
When I try to record an animation through sequencer the alembic object will not appear in the render.

Is this something that will find it’s way into the 4.13 release or am I just doing something wrong?

Best

Hiya,

I’m glad you’re finding the Alembic importer to work well, and if you have any feedback let me know! Currently there is no support for using GeometryCache actors/assets in sequencer yet, however you might be able to use the Skeletal Mesh import type option (which does support sequencer).

Cheers,

Jurre

Hi Jurre

Thank you for your answer.
Is it planned for implementation with 4.13 proper or is it still far far in the future?

I’ve tried the skeletal import method and the animation comes in fine.
However, there are significant shading errors on the mesh that I just cant get rid of.
Is this a known error?
I’ve tried all the recalculate normals options at import, tried meshes from C4D as well as Maya 2016.5
Tried exporting with and without smoothing groups
Tried exporting with the no normal option
Tried both exporting formats that Maya offers and every time

If it weren’t for this problem, everything would work great.

Support for sequencer will be, sadly, added after 4.13 is released, however if you are able to compile the editor from source I can notify this thread when the fixes make it to Github.

In regards to the shading problems, this is a known issue caused by the way morph targets can alter the face/vertex normals. For now you can bypass this problem by using the (experimental) skin cache feature, to enable this add the following to your ConsoleVariables.ini file:

r.SkinCache.CompileShaders=1

r.SkinCache.Mode=1

r.SkinCache.RecomputeTangents=1

This should recompile shaders the next time you start the editor, and when you open up the skeletal mesh asset you should be able to tick the Recompute Tangent option for each material/section. Now drag the animation file into the level and hit simulate and should see correct tangents/normals (which are now recomputed on the fly) :slight_smile:

Cheers,

Jurre

That’s a great idea, please add me to the notify list.
In the mean time, the recompute tangents took care of my issue.

Thank you so much!