Updating procedural file paths with string_replace

You can use an operator to update file paths before an ASS file or ABC file is loaded, then use another operator to replace the geometry loaded by that procedural. For example, suppose at render time you want to replace 'trex_proxy.abc' with 'trex.abc'. You can easily do that with a string_replace operator:

The scene and .abc files can be downloaded here.

• .(@node=='alembic') selects all Alembic procedural nodes
• Match matches any file name that ends with '_proxy.abc'
• Replace replaces '_proxy.abc' with '.abc'

That all happens before the .abc file is loaded. We can see this in the Arnold log (Debug verbosity). First, the string_replace operator is applied; then after the .abc file is loaded, a set_parameter operator is applied to the nodes loaded from the .abc file.