Anyone doing any regular particle work in Softimage should spend some time (or money) on a command-line caching system. It gets rid of all custom attribute related issues and gives you unlimited processing licenses. Even if you don't have a farm it's just simpler and faster to run sims in a dos prompt. The programming hooks are all available for it and it's a matter of about a day of work to implement a batch version of the Cache Manager. If you absolutely want to stay within Softimage, remember that the Cache Manager is an addon, so fairly easy to customize. The rest is just fine-tuning depending on your preferred workflow. Everyone has different needs and methodology. I think the Cache Manager inside Softimage is pretty decent for the average user. It's got a clear listing of all the caches in your scene (although I'm not always clear on which objects they're assigned to). It uses tokens which help keeping things somewhat generic. Also the Cachelist feature is very nice and underrated but quite limited on a customization level. I ended-up replacing it completely but it's still enjoyable out of the box. You don't find that level of polishing in other softwares. When I think about all the great development made on ICE since its inception that makes it so easy and fun to work with, no wonder artists are so emotive about its future.
...that said someone really needs to fix that goddamn custom attribute bug. And the caching of locations while you're there! On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 7:04 PM, Morten Bartholdy <x...@colorshopvfx.dk>wrote: > ** > > I would definately vote for a reworked centralized cacheing tool which > left no doubt what is being done. I agree with Eric that the current > implementation is a mess. > > > > +1 for better mixer integration Vincent :) > > > > Morten > > > > > > > > > Den 10. september 2013 kl. 18:06 skrev Vincent Fortin <vfor...@gmail.com>: > > > The best way I've found to work around the custom attribute issue is to > lay down a Log Value node with "Log" actually turned off. I find the usual > "Attribute Display" trick unreliable especially in batch mode. > > I always use the CacheObjectsIntoFile method (aka Cache Manage). Frankly > for an "out of the box" tool I wouldn't say the Cache Manager sucks. Do you > have any particular issues other than the custom attribute caching bug? > > What really drives me nuts is the total unreliability of the mixer when it > comes to reading icecaches. I have noticed many scenarios where attributes > simply vanish for no reason. Only way to bring them back is to clear the > Source path and paste it back in. Using the mixer for caches is a great > feature IMHO, too bad it's so unreliable :-( > > > On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 12:01 PM, Eric Thivierge < ethivie...@hybride.com> > wrote: > > > You're welcome. :) > > http://exocortex.com/products/ crate > <http://exocortex.com/products/crate> > > > >
