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  • Published 10 Jan 2019

Open VDB - Blender time?

I was looking for a way to correctly export VDBs in Blender. Found this: blenderartists.org/t/openvdb/644125/31

Q: Will there be an exporter for VDB in Blender 2.8? I would like to export volumes to Modo or Houdini.

vdb.png

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Development Status: Open

Upvote 18 Downvote 0
3dcinetv
10 Jan 2019

9 Comments

nalexnp

I believe this is quite an important feature too. Here at Unit Media the lack of open VDB implementation is one of the few things not allowing us to further use and integrate blender in our pipeline. But not only for volume export but also, and for us mainly, a VDB volume reader that can be used with cycles. Eg. Simulation done in Houdini rendered in cycles

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3dcinetv Author

@nalexnp: I am doing a tutorial at the moment. Will post later or tomorrow. How to get those VDB files out from blender. Stay tuned.

Carlosan

@3dcinetv: Hi. Any link to your tutorial ? Thx

3dcinetv Author

* @Carlosan * hi. I´ve been very busy preparing a conference on Blender I´ll be giving on May, also some client's proyect. I´ll move export VDB tutorial to the top of the list once I get out of those things. Thank you for your interest. Blender can only EXPORT not import VDBs at the moment.

mantissa

For import, maybe it's possible to take some of the Mantaflow VDB meshing code and transplant it to a separate modifier?

And then build on top of that ecosystem with multiple modifiers::

  • VDB Cache: Modifier to load OpenVDB sequence
  • VDB (Re)mesh: Turn VDB volume to mesh (like Mantaflow) or remesh using OpenVDB
  • VDB Boolean: Use volumes to do boolean calculations.
Vyach

I hope, Blender will work with voxels once… Bot now i feel that devs haven`t enough time even for metaballs…

Blenderon

It would be useful to get exporter in engines. For example if you make any simulation in Blender you could export it to Unreal or Unity :

Houdini to Unreal

3dcinetv Author

@cyseal1: you can subscribe to my channel to check my next tutorial about VDB: youtube.com/user/activemotionpictures

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3dcinetv Author

* @cyseal1 * I recently exported from Blender to Softimage. Voxel resolution is still a mistery to me (from Blender) but currently you´re limited to density, combustion, and emission.

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