This is a quick tip on how to take creases information from Maya to Houdini to be rendered with Arnold. If you are like me and you are using Houdini as scene assembler this is something that you will have to deal with sooner or later.
In Maya, I have a simple cube with creases, on the right side you can see how it looks once subdivided twice.
Not only you can take creases information into Houdini, you can also export subdivision information and HtoA will interpret it automatically. Make sure you add catclark subdivision type and 2 iterations, or whatever you need.
When exporting the alembic caches you need to include the arnold parameters that take care of subdivision and creases. Actually there is no extra parameter for creases, by including subdivision parameters you will already get the creases information.
Note that the arnold parameters in Maya start with ar_arnold_parameter, for example ar_subdiv_iterations. But in Houdini arnold parameters don’t use de ar prefix. Because of that make sure you are exporting the parameter without the ar prefix.
All this can be of course happen automatically in your pipeline while publishing assets. It actually should to make artists life easier and avoid mistakes.
That’s it, if you import the alembic cache in Houdini both creases and subdivisions should render as expected. This information can be overwritten in sops with arnold parameters.