Maya geometry/vertex cache

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nkarnik
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Feb 15, 2012 11:58 pm

Maya geometry/vertex cache

Post by nkarnik »

I recently started experimenting with the Dynamica Maya plug-in. I am doing some R & D in preparation for an upcoming project. I have built a custom geometry caching system based on Maya's .mc file format and it has worked really well for other plug-ins and solvers that were not native to Maya (such as syflex)

My caching system works on 2 levels.
1) For all the transforms, it captures the transformation matrix for each frame (start to end)
2) For shapes under the transform nodes that are being deformed, it exports geometry cache in .mc file format.

However I could not find a way to generate a vertex cache for scenes that were using the Dynamica plug-in. Maya's own geometry caching does not recognize Dynamica's custom nodes as something that should be cached.
Am I missing something? Because vertex caching seems like a very basic necessity for any solver.
Without caching, I won't be able to distribute the frames to render on a farm.
Do I need to write my own code for generating geometry cache?
mBakr
Posts: 53
Joined: Thu Aug 05, 2010 5:57 pm

Re: Maya geometry/vertex cache

Post by mBakr »

when Maya meshes are converted to Dynamica rigid bodies, the out mesh shapes are connected to the rigid shape nodes. you should be able to access the mesh shapes in order to cache the geometry. have a look at the DAG...
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