How can I bake a dynamic curve simulation?

#1

Hi everyone,

I’m a beginner to dynamics but for my latest project I have a character with a dynamic curve/rope attached to him. All worked out quite well and I got the results I was hoping for. But now I want to render the scene and therefore need to bake the simulation. The only problem is I don’t really now how or what to bake.

The rope itself is an extruded surface, connected to a curve which I made dynamic through nHair.
So now I have an Extruded Surface, a hair system, follicile, nucleus and the original curve that was made dynamic. I tried baking each of these with Edit>Keys>Bake Simulation and although the keys were created I still always had to calculate the simulation.

So my questions are: What exactly do I have to bake in order for the simulation of the rope do be keyed? Or are there any Settings I have to change?

Thanks in Advance
theScreane

#2

I would select your output rope mesh then export selection to alembic.
You can then delete or hide your existing rope and hair system and import the alembic file.
Select the imported mesh… in the attribute editor find its alembic node. Break the connection on “time” and just key it to whatever values you want.

Another approach could be to cache the hair then replace the cache time input with your own time node then key that, but the alembic method will be more efficient.