What is the point of caching the wind animation?

[GrowFxUser]

Hi all,

I was wondering why someone might need to cache the wind animation? We can use it natively with many of other plugins, and the wind calculated at render time, am I right about that? Does it speed up rendering?

thanks,

Ashkan

[Eduard]

Hi Ashkan,

 

To quickly calculate the wind animation, you need to apply all Wind modifiers into After Mesh Modifiers only.

Also you can use the caching, it can be as a native Cache Mode, where the tree models are saved in .gfxcache files, as well as you can use the PointCache modifier.

 

Cheers

[GrowFxUser]

Hi Eduard,

Thank you for your clarification. But, if I want to use it without caching the wind, does it have any impacts on RAM usage or render time?

Also, is there a file size limit on caching wind? I'm caching one, which writes a 5 GB file, however it gives an error loading it in!

Thank you,

Ashkan

[Eduard]

But, if I want to use it without caching the wind, does it have any impacts on RAM usage or render time?

It depends on the complexity of the tree, and in every frame GrowFX uses the same RAM.

 

Also, is there a file size limit on caching wind? I'm caching one, which writes a 5 GB file, however it gives an error loading it in!

What kind of caching method do you mean? PointCache modifier or native Cache mode?

 

Thanks!

[GrowFxUser]

"What kind of caching method do you mean? PointCache modifier or native Cache mode?"

The native Cache. But it's OK. I'll be using point cache for now.

Thank you,

Ashkan

[Eduard]

... which writes a 5 GB file...

 

The native Cache.

 

Maybe you don't use the One File Per Frame option? Try to use this option.

BTW, in this case the calculation of the entire animation is fully multithreaded. This is faster than with a single file.

 

Cheers

[wtchen]

I have a wired situation when cache in muti-thread mode (Native).

It's fast,but the animation is not continuous. 

When I use "one File" (or nember of thread=1), the wind animation is just fine.

 

Does anyone have a solution ? 

I'm really appreciated.Thx

[Eduard]

I have a wired situation when cache in muti-thread mode (Native).

It's fast,but the animation is not continuous. 

When I use "one File" (or nember of thread=1), the wind animation is just fine.

 

Does anyone have a solution ? 

I'm really appreciated.Thx

 

We'll check and try to fix it asap.

 

I think this is problem due to multi-threading...

 

Thanks!

[solarisn]

@Eduard Is there a way to export the cache as .pc2 format? If not, do you have a spec for your .gfxcache format? If I can get .pc2 I can use an existing Unity asset to import the point cache animation. If not, I would need to write my own parser/playback for your .gfxcache format. Any ideas?

[Eduard]

On 5/27/2018 at 2:50 AM, solarisn said:

@Eduard Is there a way to export the cache as .pc2 format? If not, do you have a spec for your .gfxcache format? If I can get .pc2 I can use an existing Unity asset to import the point cache animation. If not, I would need to write my own parser/playback for your .gfxcache format. Any ideas?

 

Yes of course, you can export to .pc2 format. To do this, you need to add all Wind modifiers into After Mesh Modifiers, then turn on the Convert to mesh in the Preference parameters rollout, and export as usual with the PointCache modifier.

Thanks!

[solarisn]

@Eduard and what if I want to export the growth animation into .pc2? I've found the following Unity asset to allow me to playback a .pc2 animation in Unity so if I can export the growth animation to .pc2 I would be able to animate the growth in Unity. Would be super useful for an ongoing project. Thanks.

 

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/integration/pc2unity-2-0-95233

[Eduard]

20 hours ago, solarisn said:

@Eduard and what if I want to export the growth animation into .pc2? I've found the following Unity asset to allow me to playback a .pc2 animation in Unity so if I can export the growth animation to .pc2 I would be able to animate the growth in Unity. Would be super useful for an ongoing project. Thanks.

 

The PointCache (format .pc2) stores only the movement of vertices, and it doesn't support the generation of a new mesh in each frame. You can only create a wind animation, for example. So, this format is not suitable for creating any growth animation.

 

Thanks!

[solarisn]

@Eduard

I found a working solution but need some help with how to export properly using GrowFX. I got one of our artists to make a simple tree growing animation and he exported it so that each frame is an independent .obj file. I then use this asset: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/modeling/mega-cache-26522 to swap out the series of models at a configurable rate. The code is highly optimized and seems to be working well in Unity in realtime. I've attached a video of it. If I want to export each frame of the growth animation as an independent .obj file, how would I go about doing it? Thanks.

 

 

[Eduard]

5 hours ago, solarisn said:

If I want to export each frame of the growth animation as an independent .obj file, how would I go about doing it?

 

I don't know exactly how, but it seems that you can do this with a MaxScript. Here's an example, but there is a description in Russian: http://xproger.info/export_anim.html

 

Thanks!

[Samuel]

I have kind of the same question, so I´ll just add it here...:

So for example: I ahve a shot where I wanna put 10-15 copies of some growFX plant with wind animation on them in a scene.
I´ve tried caching it as Vrayproxy, but I´m getting 8 GB files and bigger.
this will significantly impact rendertimes, since they are copies (to offset the animation), each will have to be loaded separately, as far as I understand.
Multiply that with 10 render nodes and I´m looking at a serious performance loss.

So I´m also wondering why I shouldn´t just use several copies of the original growFX plants in the scene, thinking that buildin the metameshes with after mesh wind effect would probably be much faster than loading the proxies or growFX cache files from disk.

Is this correct or is there some isse I am missing with this approach?