Tokyo, Japan -- Digital Frontier has released a free plugin for importing files in the Alembic format into 3ds Max. The plugin, called Alembic, was developed for use on the movie Resident Evil: Damnation.

The Alembic plugin imports models exported in Alembic format, complete with character animation and including support for modifiers and hair, and now supports 3ds Max 2013.

The Alembic format is an exchange format from Lucasfilm and Sony Imageworks. Although still in its relative infancy, it has already had a dramatic effect on CG content in its primary market of films and huge datasets. It is able to recognize repeated shapes and saves them as one instance:

“Alembic is an open computer graphics interchange framework. Alembic distills complex, animated scenes into a non-procedural, application-independent set of baked geometric results. This ‘distillation' of scenes into baked geometry is exactly analogous to the distillation of lighting and rendering scenes into rendered image data.”

Watch the demo, which includes a cameo from one of the Resident Evil characters:

To download the plugin visit: dfx.co.jp/alembic/

Source: Digital Frontier