Alembic: Exporting several objects as a single object

Question

Lets consider this example:

Having a destruction simulation composed of several objects in Blender.

I want to export the scene using Alembic animated format.

It works correctly, it exports 1 single file with animations and stuff. BUT the alembic file is composed of all thousands of objects separated. This is immediatly noticeable when trying to reimport the alembic in Blender, because the viewport becomes very, very slow.

Is there any solution / addon / workaround / script to somehow "join" all geometry in 1 single object when exporting?

It used to be possible in the very old Blender version 2.79b (Blender Fracture Build), but apparently not in all the recent versions.

Having the possibility to export an Alembic as a single object instead of thousands, makes a great difference in performances for Blender viewport, I made some tests and its impressivly huge the difference.

By doing that, I used to be able to re-import the same simulation multiple times, which is way more convenient instead of using an Alembic file composed of thousands of objects, that instead is very very slow.

Note: I already tried to use geometry nodes "join geometry" but it doesnt makes any difference for Alembic files.

Thank you

Answer 1

I faced the same task today - export complex alien station animation to single object in alembic. The solution I figured out was pretty siple:

1. Create any mesh object.
2. Put geometry nodes on it.
3. Add collection info node.
4. Connect it to realize instances node, then to output.
5. Export your object. Beware of heavy weight!