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Deliver an Alembic that keeps its materials from one application to another

An Alembic carries geometry and UVs, but no Arnold or V‑Ray material network, and Maya’s Alembic importer ignores face sets. Everything, the CGfield conversion application, writes the Alembic with one shape per material, named after it, plus a materials.json file that describes each material. The native scenes it builds from it for Houdini, Maya, 3ds Max and Blender have their materials already assigned.

One shape per material in the .abc file

Everything splits the geometry into one shape per material and gives each shape the name of its material. That name is the key used for assignment, in the delivered scenes as well as when the asset is dropped from the panel: a single mesh would have only one material slot. UVs are written per face corner: Blender’s Alembic importer does not read UVs stored on points.

Next to the Alembic, Everything writes materials.json: for each material, its name, its textures by role (base color, roughness, metalness, normal, opacity…), its constant values and the maps to invert, such as a gloss map used as roughness. Without a USD component, it is the only file that describes the materials; it is written on every conversion, along with the textures folder.

Steps

  1. Install the CGfield launcher with a free account, then Everything.
  2. Drop the asset folder, or an .fbx, .obj, .glb or .usd file, into Everything.
  3. In the Delivery section, leave “USD component” off: the .abc format is ticked by default. Tick the native scenes you want, then the renderers: Arnold or V‑Ray for Houdini, Maya and 3ds Max, Cycles or EEVEE for Blender.
  4. Export, then open the scene of your application, or drag the asset into the scene from the AssetBrowser panel.

Materials assigned in each application

The Houdini scene reads the Alembic with an Alembic SOP in unpack mode, then a Material node assigns each material by the name attribute. A File SOP would have loaded the file as a single packed primitive, without UVs or materials. In the Maya scene, the Alembic is referenced, not imported, which keeps the scene light, and each shape gets the material that bears its name.

The 3ds Max scene is saved in meters with its geometry: it opens or merges at the right size whatever the units of your scene. Each object gets its material from its path in the Alembic, not from the node name, which 3ds Max changes when that name already exists in the scene. In Blender, the Alembic is imported and its materials are built as Principled BSDF, which both Cycles and EEVEE read; the asset appears in Blender’s asset browser.

Placing the Alembic from the AssetBrowser panel

In Houdini, Maya and 3ds Max, the AssetBrowser panel can also place the Alembic itself in the open scene: it reads materials.json again, rebuilds the materials in the renderer set for that application and gives each shape its material back. In Houdini, the Alembic goes through the unpacked Alembic SOP, and the material network built at conversion time is loaded as is when it exists.

Good to know

Everything runs on 64-bit Windows 10 and 11. The classic mode needs Houdini 20.5 or later, and each native scene needs the matching application on the machine; for Houdini, Maya and 3ds Max, tick Arnold or V‑Ray, as MaterialX alone gives no scene. No format other than USD carries an Arnold or V‑Ray network: another tool reading the .abc alone gets the named shapes, and the shader is rewired in that application. The delivered folder can be moved, but the Alembic reference of the Maya scene stays absolute, because Maya resolves references against the project: it can be fixed in the Reference Editor.

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