What is Alembic

ALEMBIC is an interchange file format for computer graphics used by visual effects and animation professionals. It was announced at SIGGRAPH 2011, and has been widely adopted across the industry. Its primary focus is the interchange of geometry (models) between different groups working on the same shots or same assets. This is often within different departments in the same company or different studios 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 is specifically NOT concerned with storing the complex dependency graph of procedural tools but instead stores the "baked" results.

Alembic was developed as an open source library primarily by Sony Pictures Imageworks and Lucasfilm.

What Does It Do?

• To bake sophisticated iClone animated results into compressed Alembic point cache format for reusing in other 3D tools.
• To render iClone animation in Maya, Max, Octane, LightWave, Cinema4D, etc.
• To export your iClone works to professional compositing tools like Fusion, Nuke, Isotropix, etc.
• To create static meshes from simulated soft cloth physics, or export them for 3D printing.
• To bake soft cloth physics in order to upload them to SketchFab.

Benefits Using Alembic

• Export Soft Cloth animations that cannot be done by FBX.
  
• Export vertex and mesh animation data in OBJ-level. The data can be from single frame, the entire project or part of the original animation.
  
• Create reusable animations for sharing between different 3D applications.