Alembics not importing as animated from .abc sequence (or stitched)

[Kouraib Abdmalek]

Hi Eric,

I don’t have Storm on my computer right now so I’ll try to download it to test that for you, however it would be easier if you could post the file you got from Storm here so we can work on it and try to import the alembic into the cinema properly.

[Eric Pereira]

https://mega.nz/file/cFgTFQLS#K8Vkqbbnqw41orQjguLzFQySROhDm_5SnbCnzaCiCU8

Here are the first 50 frames because it is a bit large.

I have tried using apps to stitch them, because I read that it needs to be imported as a single abc file, but I haven’t found a way that works.

I tried exporting as USD, which I can’t get to work with Arnold Procedural yet, and VDB, which I cannot get the surface channel to render out either.

Storm is free for the beta, so you could also try yourself. It is quite good at realtime fluids, as long as I can get it to import and render.

[Eric Pereira]

Ok, so apparently I can just use vdb if I use the c4d volume loader and mesher to create a mesh.

I really thought I needed to use Arnold Volume for Arnold render, but this works just fine.,

I don’t need alembic or USD or anything.,

[Kouraib Abdmalek]

This is about the mesh but still the problem of combining the sequences into one file isn’t it? I opened all the files using Merge and then recorded the animation as shown in the screen recording below, it may not be completely practical but I got 10 frames in less than a minute, you could calculate the time based on how many frames you have and see if it’s worth it, however there must be another way, I don’t know if it can be done with a specific script, I’ll let you know if I come up with anything.

2025-10-16-09-59-55.mp4 6 MB MPEG-4 - Click to view

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[Eric Pereira]

Thank you for that.

The only thing is, if my sequence is like 200 frames, then I don’t want to have to keyframe all frames to appear at the appropriate frame in the timeline.

I thought there would be a way to import the sequence and have it run as one file.

For Arnold in C4D, there is a Arnold Procedural object that can load the alembic sequence by simply adding #### in place of the file sequence number and it loads the whole sequence. The only problem is I still cannot find out how to render anything using that system yet.

It shows a point cloud in the viewport, but nothing renders.

[Kouraib Abdmalek]

It seems that the Storm plugin works well with Blender and with the latest versions of 3ds Max. If you export the simulation from Storm to one of these softwares and then export it from them to Cinema, you will be able to get a mesh and render it. Unfortunately, I could not test this because the plugin file did not load correctly for me I do not know the reason. If you can unzip the file and compress it to a new zip file and post it here, I may be able to open it for me and test it and report back to you.

[Eric Pereira]

I actually found a python script to make a tag that allows C4D to recognize alembic sequences and display them properly.

Let me know if you need it, too. It is fairly easy to use.

[Kouraib Abdmalek]

Yes, of course, that would be very kind of you to benefit everyone. Thank you in advance!

[Eric Pereira]

So this scene file contains a blank alembic file with a tag. The tag has python code that you can save as a preset or whatever.

Just import the first file in an alembic file sequence and move the tag onto the object.

MAKE SURE that the file sequence has absolutely no padding for the numbers. The number must start at 0.abc and not 00.abc or 000.abc, or else it will not work.

Click on the tag and in the File Setup tab there is fpath where you put the folder path for the files.

fname where you put the first part of the filename itself exluding the numbers, eg. TestFile_ but not the numbers or the .abc.

file extension is where you put .abc

And that should work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaI1xrQyWu4&t=1023s

this is the tutorial that the guy shows it, and he sent me his tag file because the link for the file no longer works.

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alembic-code-preset.c4d 178 KB Cinema 4D project files - Click to view

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[Kouraib Abdmalek]

Thank you so much, Eric! for sharing this with us. Have you tried exporting from Storm to Blender or 3ds Max to get the mesh and then exporting it to Cinema 4D? As I mentioned, I couldn’t download the plugin’s executable to try it for some reason, but I think it should work. I’ve read several people saying that Storm works well with Blender and 3ds.