Alembic is an interchangeable computer graphics file format developed by Sony Pictures Imageworks and Industrial Light & Magic. It was announced at SIGGRAPH 2011, and has been widely adopted across the industry by visual effects and animation professionals.
Its primary focus is the efficient interchange of animated geometry (models) between different groups working on the same shots or same assets, possibly using different applications. Often different departments in the same company or different studios are working on the same projects. Alembic supports the common geometric representations used in the industry, including polygon meshes, subdivision surface, parametric curves, NURBS patches and particles. Alembic also has support for transform hierarchies and cameras. With the latest version comes initial support for materials and lights as well. Alembic specifically is not focused on storing the complex dependency graphs of procedural tools but instead stores the "baked" results by sampling the model data at different points along an animated scene's timeline.
Tools which support Alembic
Tools with native support Application As of version Vendor Flame 2016 AutodeskAdobe SubstanceAdobe Inc Maya 2012 Autodesk 3ds Max 2016 Autodesk KATANA 1.1 The Foundry Houdini 11.1 Side Effects Software iClone 6.5 Reallusion Inc. RenderMan ? Pixar Arnold ? Solid Angle MARI 10.2v1 The Foundry MODO 10.2v1 The Foundry NUKE 7.0 The Foundry Cinema 4D R14 Maxon V-Ray 2012 Chaos Group Guerilla Render 0.15.2 Mercenaries Engineering RealFlow 2013 Next Limit Maxwell Render 3 Next Limit Clarisse iFX 2012 Isotropix LightWave 3D 11.6 NewTek Keyshot Pro 4 Luxion Octane Render 1.5 Otoy Blender 2.78 Blender Foundation Fusion 7.0 Blackmagic Design Unreal Engine 4.13 Epic Games Unity Engine 2018.1 Unity Technologies EmberGen 0.7.5 JangaFX Marvelous Designer ? CLO Virtual Fashion
Plugins Plugin Applications supported Vendor Crate Suite 3DS Max, Maya, Softimage, Arnold Exocortex AtomKraft Nuke, After Effects Jupiter Jazz Ortholab Mudbox Ortholab DF Plugin 3DS Max Digital Frontier Alembic Exporter Daz Studio Daz 3D
References
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