Cached particle sims won't read properly

General questions and troubleshooting SOFTIMAGE©
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adrencg
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Cached particle sims won't read properly

Post by adrencg » 29 Jan 2014, 16:58

I was trying to render a scene with a color pass and Ao pass. Once the color pass is done, and it switched to the Ao pass, the particles stopped reading. Then they stopped reading on the other pass too. Is there any special trick that'll make the cache on file node work properly?

adrencg
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Re: Cached particle sims won't read properly

Post by adrencg » 29 Jan 2014, 18:01

If this helps any for a diagnosis, sometimes I get the red error message at the bottom that says x cache file could not be found. But it exists and is in the right place.

NNois
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Re: Cached particle sims won't read properly

Post by NNois » 29 Jan 2014, 18:57

how do you cache the particles and how the cache is applied ? environment-cache/cache-manager/cacheonfile/mixer ?

adrencg
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Re: Cached particle sims won't read properly

Post by adrencg » 29 Jan 2014, 19:06

I was using cache on file node to write and then read. And it has worked for me many times. But now it works when it wants to.

I've also tried using the cache manager and mixer, and everything seems ok until I open the scene again. Then there's nothing there when the sim plays.

I've had this issue in the past, and I can't remember but I think maybe there was some kind of workaround to make it more reliable.

adrencg
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Re: Cached particle sims won't read properly

Post by adrencg » 16 Jun 2015, 02:47

Can anyone uses caches on a regular basis with success describe what you do to make it work? I might have to render a 1080p animation with one computer.

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Mathaeus
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Re: Cached particle sims won't read properly

Post by Mathaeus » 16 Jun 2015, 14:19

This sounds like frame padding that doesn't match. Should be always the same padding - for example, my_pic.000 and my_cache.000 is good, my_pic.00 and my_cache.0000 is bad. Or, something else with file paths...
Generally, my recipe was, cache through menu on left side (that's cache manager, I think). Create new point cloud, load cache, using ICE 'file on cache' node. This was mainly to allow re timing in ICE tree - never was free of fighting against ICE habits to kill some attribute ( but your problem doesn't sound like this). There are nice tuts on Andy Nicholas site about ICE caching.

adrencg
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Re: Cached particle sims won't read properly

Post by adrencg » 16 Jun 2015, 15:06

I think its a frame padding issue now that I try a few things. First, I can't change the frame padding in the caching. If I add ### inside the [frame], it won't number the frames at all. Since I can only seem to write cache files with no padding (the default), I'll set the scene frames to no padding also -- which I don't like doing, but at this point I'll do whatever works.

Now when I reload the scene, it says can't find frame 751 -- which happens to be one above the end of the sequence. Does that sound like something familiar that could tell you what's wrong? Why it would be looking for frame 751 if it doesn't exist?

The last thing I tried was to use save cache on selection and then load cache from selection, and that works best. Sometimes the cache will be invisible upon opening scene, and sometimes it's there.

There's nothing in Softimage that has driven me to the brink of madness in the last few years more than this buggy ridiculousness. Actually, it's the only thing. Does 2015 have these issues also? I'm using 2014 sp2.

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Mathaeus
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Re: Cached particle sims won't read properly

Post by Mathaeus » 16 Jun 2015, 15:35

I think the caching system follows the scene frame padding options (or, current pass, don't know) - if padding is set to for example 000, ICE cache gets the same. In any case, all render passes where cache is used, need to have the same padding.
About non existent frame warning, sow this many times. I guess the last scene frame is 750 or something. Perhaps some simple trick could be enough, like setting the last scene frame to one less, or just to copy and rename the last cached file, to frame number 751.

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