Reference

ABC (Alembic)

ABC (Alembic) is an open 3D format for exchanging baked, animated geometry between apps. Instead of rigs and controls, it stores the final per-frame shape of a scene, making it a reliable hand-off format in VFX and animation.

Files & formatsGeneral

ABC (Alembic)

Also known as: .abc file, Alembic format, Alembic cache

Open format for baked, animated geometry
Stores per-frame shape, not rigs or controls
Used to hand off scenes in VFX and animation

What Alembic stores

Alembic bakes animation into geometry: rather than carrying a character’s rig, it records the exact mesh on every frame. This makes complex simulations and animation portable and consistent across software.

It is designed for interchange, letting tools like Maya, Houdini, Blender, and Cinema 4D pass heavy animated scenes to one another.

Alembic vs editable formats

Because it stores the result, not the controls, you generally cannot re-rig an Alembic file — you edit in the source app and re-export. For full scene description and assembly, studios increasingly pair it with USD.

Related terms

Keep reading the reference.

Files & formatsFBX (3D)FBX is a rich 3D interchange format owned by Autodesk that can carry geometry, materials, textures, rigs, and animation in a single file. It is the common pipeline format for games and film, and files tend to be large because they bundle so much.General Files & formatsOBJ (3D model)OBJ is a plain-text 3D geometry format that stores a model’s vertices, faces, and texture coordinates. It is one of the most widely supported interchange formats, but it carries no animation and stores materials in a separate .mtl file.General Files & formatsglTF / GLB (3D)glTF is an open, royalty-free 3D format from the Khronos Group, often called "the JPEG of 3D." It bundles geometry, materials, textures, and animation in a compact, runtime-ready form, and GLB is its single-file binary version used on the web and in AR.General