Saving Cloth baking ?

Support Animation and Rigging
1

I’m using 2.49a and uses cloth baking, in a short movie. This works fine.
My problems is that if I do a tiny change on an object etc. the
baking is lost, and I have to bake it all over again.
The question is: Is it possible to save the baking, so that I don’t have to do it all over again each time I do some changes?

Thanks

Ocamax

2

you can export the motion to a .mdd file & re-import that, that would work.

3

Thanks alot for your quick response. I will try this solution later today. :slight_smile:

Ocamax

4

For a solution that doesn’t require changing the format of the cloth data, you can simply make a backup copy of the cache folder where the sim data is stored. The folder is labeled “blendcache_X”, where X = the .blend filename minus the extender. Put this copy of the cache folder in a separate directory. If your working copy has its data deleted (it does happen quite easily), you can simply replace the cache folder with the backup.

I regularly make backups of both cloth and softbody-hair cache folders, and use the replacement process a lot while tweaking animations. If you’re working on an area where it directly affects the cloth motion, you’ll probably have to re-bake, it’s easier than trying to edit the baked data itself.

The export to .mdd is a good step when you know your cloth bake is 100% final and you want to make shape keys out of the baked cloth data, which makes tweaking the cloth motion (smoothing, removing self-intersections, etc.) much simpler – the .mdd data can be imported as shape keys for the cloth mesh.

5

Thanks alot chipmasque !

This solution is even better, I didn’t think it was that easy!! :smiley:

ocamax

6

Yep, as long as nothing in your animation edits changes things enough to require a new bake, it’s really handy.