Blender 3.3
I have a baked on disk fire simulation. Now I want to move the whole fireplace including the simulation to another location. Everything moves when I move the parent empty or select and move with the collection except the sim domain. If I select it and move (G, widget, N panel all the same result) its outline appears and moves but the fire remains at the original location.
somehow I believe that’s happening because it’s already baked and the simulation is using a cache file (data) of the object not changing position, I would recommend to try clearing the baked data, animating parent object’s position, and THEN baking the fire simulation.
Could be right. It is not a good thing if the fire can’t be moved but that is possible.
The parent object is not to be animated. Meaning it won’t move during the video. I want to reposition the the fireplace and fire sim because I’m redesigning the building and need to move it to different places to see how it looks.
It took 8 hours to bake this. Bad software design if we have to rebake just to move it.
As far as i know after baking smoke you can move the domain… and so the given smoke…
so no reason to blame it on the software 
Bake your cache in openvdb.
Then add… volume… import openvdb.
You will be able to move the volume object.
Okidoki’s solution should work. Basically the simulation data is contained in the domain, not the emitter.
Some of the oldest parts of Blender are very inflexible, like this one. Thankfully you can import sims from other DCCs and place them how you want.
Hopefully. Of course moving the domain is first thing I tried since I expected something reasonable like that to work. Maybe I’ve made some mistake that is thwarting that and fixing the mistake will re-enable such a way of moving it. I’ll experiment with a minimum, simple, test .blend and look for clues.
Don’t be a Blender cultist. I don’t think you are but it is a good thing to avoid.
“Bad software design if we have to rebake just to move it.” Surely you don’t think that it is good software design to waste 8 hours just to move something. Probably you didn’t read the “if”.
Don’t be an Anti-Blender cultist. I don’t think I am but it is a good thing to avoid.
I was too quick to consider the “if” of bad design. While it WOULD BE bad design IF there is no ability to move the simulation in some reasonable way, that has not been determined yet. Bad design is not uncommon in Blender but most problems are user error and I hope this is too.
It is the same moving with G, N panel, and the widget.
I hope I can move it i the expected way, what Okidoki did, but at least this would take less time than rebaking it. (For future sims. May have to rebake this one to fix this.)
I’ll learn about this method if moving the domain can’t be fixed. I think I did bake with openvdb … open Blender … yes it is openvdb … will post image.
Hmm, 20,000 end. There are about 1900 frames in the fire sim. Was a year or two ago when the sim was done, don’t remember why I set 20K there. Using Blender 3.3 but the sim is in 2.x. Compatibility problem?
Doing a default everything .blend with a simple test to find clues about moving
Summary
It can be done. Baking with cache type Replay works. Others do not.
Test Environment
Default .blend, light, camera, cube. Added a new cube. Set default light to Sun.
Procedure
I used the default cube as the sim domain and the new cube as the flow item or emitter.
Attempted to move baked sims using various combinations of cache type, format volumes, and is resumable.
Tested if bakes with Replay cache type is saved on disk for future use.
Results
Bakes with Replay cache type can be moved. The cache is saved on disk. Other cache types did not allow movement.
Cautions and Notes
Scaling and rotating work too! Good for rocket/jet fire?
When the Replay cached flow object and domain are moved the fire continues to appear at the original location until the move is finished. Then it snaps to the new location.
Hopefully, the import vdb as volume method will allow me to use the current cache for this project.
(A button like the Bold and Italic ones for underline would be nice. [ u ] [ / u ] works.)
Changed solution credit to gritche since importing a sim as VDB is a superior solution for me. Credit to Hadriscus too for suggesting importing too.
I learn things from many suggestions, methods, ideas when BA folks give tech support. That is valuable even when the idea isn’t the solution I need.
