Studio and Graph › Exporters

Write Alembic

A single-sample poly mesh in an .abc archive, with every UV set. Alembic is at its best as a modelling handoff to Maya, Houdini or ZBrush.

When to use it

A single-sample poly mesh in an .abc archive, with every UV set. Alembic is at its best as a modelling handoff to Maya, Houdini or ZBrush.

This is the static-asset counterpart to Export Geometry Cache to Alembic: that node bakes a deforming sequence, this one writes one shape.

There is no skeleton in an Alembic file, so a rigged character has to go out as FBX.

Inputs

Pin	Type	Description
`Mesh`	Mesh	The mesh to save. Alembic keeps the shape, normals and UVs, but has nowhere to put vertex colours or materials.

Setting	Type	Description
`Scale`	Number	Multiplies every vertex position on the way out. Alembic records no units anywhere in the file, so these numbers are the whole story: the 0.01 default turns MeshMorpher's centimetres into the metres Houdini and Blender expect. Leave it at 1 and the mesh lands a hundred times too big in those - though Maya itself works in centimetres, so a Maya-only round trip may want 1. Set it to 1 for a file you intend to load back into MeshMorpher, which reads the numbers as they are.
`Y Up`	True/False	Stands the mesh up Y-up, the way most other packages want it, instead of the Z-up MeshMorpher works in. Either way the shape is preserved, not mirrored, and Load Alembic File brings it back exactly as it left.
`Flip Winding`	True/False	Reverses triangle winding, which is what keeps the surface facing outward once the axes have been converted. Leave it on: switch it off and the mesh opens inside out, and Alembic has nowhere to record that you meant it.
`Flip V`	True/False	Flips V so UVs sit the way Maya reads them. Get it wrong and textures come out upside down.
`Write All UV Sets`	True/False	Writes every UV set, not just the first. The extras come through named uv1, uv2 and so on.
`Mesh Name`	Text	What the mesh is called once it is inside the file.