I’m having a lot of trouble trying to cache a simulation. I follow the manual (using the cahce in simulation time control) and it just won’t work. I’ve even tried re doing a part of the whole sim to simplifly, same trouble. I’m beginning to think it may have something to do with the hierarchy of my objects, although that doesn’t seem to be explained anywhere. The simulation itself works great, no problems.

I have a number of objects under a null, and that under a model. The objects are all affected by forces, the null is needed to keep them fit together and move them as a unit.
I’ve uploaded a pic of the explorer tree to visualize.

I’ve tried selecting all the objects before caching, i’ve tried branc-selecting the null or the model, i’ve tried everything and nothing works. I get no action source or cache.

I got the following error:
SetValue("Environments.Environment.simtimectrl.playmode", 0, null);
SetValue("Environments.Environment.simtimectrl.caching", true, null);
PlayForwards();
// ERROR : 2006-SIMU-SIStoreEnvironmentCacheToMixer - Unexpected failure. - [line 903 in D:\Softimage\XSI_7.01\Application\DSScripts\simulation.vbs]
StoreEnvironmentCachesToMixer(null, null, null);
// ERROR :  - [line 59]
// ERROR : Property Page Script Logic Error
// ERROR :  [57] set oNamePSet = GetValue( inspectedObjectNameArray(0) )
// ERROR :  [58] set oEnvironment = oNamePSet.Parent
// ERROR :  >[59] StoreEnvironmentCachesToMixer oEnvironment, “(UIOnly)”
// ERROR :  [60] (null)
// ERROR :  [61] end sub

Can anyone help, please?
thank you,
NJ

Edit: I’ve only found one way to get any cacheing, and it involves selecting all the objects and doing a plot>write geometry cache. The problem is, that to load these into the animation mixer, i must load geom cache on EVERY INDIVIDUAL OBJECT. Yikes! What you see listed in the pic is on one of 8 such models in the scene. Thats would be about 360 clips in the animation mixer!!! Plus I do not need to mix every object’s clip individually, only each model’s animation. There must be a way to do this in XSI!

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Edit: I’ve only found one way to get any cacheing, and it involves selecting all the objects and doing a plot>write geometry cache. The problem is, that to load these into the animation mixer, i must load geom cache on EVERY INDIVIDUAL OBJECT. Yikes! What you see listed in the pic is on one of 8 such models in the scene. Thats would be about 360 clips in the animation mixer!!! Plus I do not need to mix every object’s clip individually, only each model’s animation. There must be a way to do this in XSI!

While a chache manager [I]would[/I] be nice, but it should be easy enough to script the loading of geometry caches onto each of those meshes. How’s your scripting?
As for the mixer, you can collapse all clips under a model into a compound clip, so that you only have to handle a single track - that should make management per model a bit easier.

Thanks for your reply, Ciaran. My scripting sucks, it’s on the level of cut and paste to make buttons. I was very happy to see Ice come out ;) I wish I could do this project in Ice. Maybe i should learn scripting—i used to know some programming, but, so little time...and i’m busy learning ice and working....

I have noticed something about the cache in my scene, though. I’m finding now, having isolated one model in the scene, that it does cache, but the cache still will not make it to the mixer (i get that error). If i drag the cache from Environments>caches (or Mixer>sources>Anim>cache) into the Animation editor, the clip only contains the first 99 frames. However, the scrubbable cache does the whole 500 frames. Plus, if i go into the cache PPG, and ‘edit source data’ on any of the Fcurves, i find the fcurves also contain all 500 frames.

So, any idea why I’m only getting 99 frames in my cache clip? Sounds suspiciously like something is set somewhere to 100, but everything in Sim Time Control is set to 500 frames, and everything else is doing 500 frames.

Bizarre and frustrating.

Much thanks,
NJ

Yeah, dealing with what sounds like a pretty complex project, you’ll probably have to script a little just so you can manage things sanely.
As for the mixer clip, try right clicking on the clip in the timeline, press clip properties and check the in and out frames. It might just have defaulted to 100.

Thank you! Never thought it would arbitrarily cut off my clip like that. Sanity is now within reach…

many thanks,
NJ