Not sure if this is how the fire sim is to work, but when I Bake a simulation, it works and plays back just fine. I save the Blend file, reopen the file, and the flames now appear but just sit like a lump on a log. Does the fire need to be baked each time the Blend is open? I ask because the intent is to build flame into a Blend file, then Link to the content of that Blend in another Blend. If the sim needs to be made in the main Blend, I’d appreciate the insight, thanks.
I just did a test using a blank scene with just a sphere and a smoke domain, and it worked as expected, and the objects could be linked in another Blend and it still worked. I am wondering if it is because the simulation is from frames 4000-4500. Perhaps after it is cached, it will only play properly when the Blend is reopened if played from frame 1 and when it gets to frame 4000, the cache will work as expected. Not sure, I only tried scrubbing the loaded file from frame 4000, and the flame just appeared as a lump. so I will test tonight when I am back with the working files.
Another test, cached frames 250-500, saved file, opened it, flame works fine when timeline scrubbed from 250.
There must be a conflicting issue with the Blend file the fire is built into. Hopefully it can be rectified or worked around, there is a time limit in place to figure this out.
Perhaps adding the fire sim directly to the main Blend will be a way, if needed. It would be great to keep everything contained within its respective Blend file, however.
Last test for now has resulted in the fire not working when Linked into a new Blend unless played from frame 1. If scrubbed from 250, the fire won’t display. If played from frame 1, the fire kicks in at 250 and plays through to 500. I am hoping that will be true for the frame 4000 flame…
Bake the smoke to an external disk cache and it will be available later.
Thanks for the info. It works with the exception that the flames cannot be moved in the new scene, even though they are on a proxy. If the flames are moved elsewhere, when the sim kicks in, the flames snap to the location they were in in the original Blend.
tests on another system using a simple sphere and smoke domain allow the smoke to be cached, Linked to in another Blend and moved around via a proxy without issue. There must be an issue with the Blend file containing the scene I made. Regardless, because of the time constraints of this project (which I decided to finish up a month early in time to enter Siggraph), I have a work around of just positioning everything else around the offending Linked Blend and it works fine.