Getting particles out of Houdini and into Maya was trickier than I thought but I found a working method using partIO! Huge thanks to the contributions by Disney Animation and Maya plugin dev/support by Redpawfx. Sadly I havent seen a compiled version for Maya 2016 from Redpawfx yet, but this is tested and working in Maya 2014 and Houdini 15. Before you start, be sure to first grab the plugin from http://redpawfx.github.io/partio/

Workflow

Maya

Load the partIO plugin for Maya (M2014 support only)

Load the partIO shelf: Q:\Tools\maya\plugins\2014\partio\0.9.6\scripts

Houdini

Cache your particles in the .bhclassic format

Adobe Bridge

Rename your .bhclassic files to .bgeo files (IE : magic..####.bhclassic à magic..####.bgeo)

Maya

Create a PartIO emttier

Create a classic Maya emitter (which will also create a particle system)

Delete the emitter

Source the Maya particles from the PartIO emitter via the dynamics relationship editor

Turn on lifespanPP, set Conserve to 0

Point the PartIO emitter to load the cached .bgeo files

Now when you press play in your viewport it will load the caches and act as if it’s a regular Maya particle system.

Plugin and scripting credit to

www.disneyanimation.com/

redpawfx.github.io/