The Cached Playback status line in its normal state
The Cached Playback Status line in the Time Slider turns different colors to reflect the condition of the cache. When Cached Playback is active and animation is stored in memory, the status line is blue by default. (You can change this color in the Color Settings window).
This blue stripe is the Cached Playback Status line for animation, and is the default Cached Playback Status line. You can also activate a Dynamics Cached Playback Status line, which loads on top of the animation status line. See Dynamics, below.
- Dynamics
-
-
The dynamics
Cached Playback Status line is a separate pink status line from the default blue
Animation
Cached Playback Status line that lets you load and refresh nCloth and nParticle dynamics in your scene along with animation.
- You can turn on the separate Dynamics status line to load and refresh dynamics in your scene alongside the animation Status line in the Evaluation Toolkit Caching section.
- Invalidation
-
Every time the animation is changed in your scene, the cache is invalidated, which means it is out of date and needs to be redrawn. This invalidation happens any time Maya detects a difference between what's stored in the cache and the current scene. For example, if you added a key on a curve, the value of the curve is changed for a few frames, which invalidates the cache. The changed frames are then re-cached.
By default, the invalidated segments of the Cached Playback status line are not shown. If you are interested in seeing what and when parts of the cache are rebuilding, activated the Show Invalidated Frames option in the Cached Playback Preferences.
The Cached Playback status line turns dark blue to show areas that need rebuilding
-
If you want to manually invalidate, or rebuild the cache, flush the cache from the right-click menu of the Cached Playback icon
in the
Playback Options. (There are more
advanced options for flushing the cache, including Invalidate, which lets you disconnect the current caching data from items selected in the scene, or Flush cache synchronously in the
Evaluation Toolkit
Caching section.)
- Invalidating the cache manually disconnects the cache from the selected animation. Invalidate the cache when you want to reproduce what happens when manipulating only "some" controllers.
- Flushing the cache empties the whole cache, and discards the contents so that everything must be rebuilt. Also, because the data is immediately deleted, it may be slower than cache invalidation. Use
Flush Cache when you want to wipe the cache clean. You can also flush the cache from the right-click menu of the
Cached Playback icon
in the
Playback Options.
- Warning state
-
Cached Playback: warning state
- If the
Cached Playback encounters unsupported nodes or runs out of memory,
Cached Playback is disabled, and the status line and icon turn
yellow
to indicate that caching has stopped. You can continue working, but you won't have any performance gains from using
Cached Playback.
-
- Safe Mode
- This warning state triggers when Cached Playback encounters unsupported nodes so it is unable to send the animation to memory. Messages about what caused caching to stop are printed in the Script Editor.
- For information about the times when Cached Playback might be disabled, see Cached Playback limitations.
- Caching and Memory
- Caching will stop if your system does not have enough memory (RAM) to support the process. If a memory shortage occurs, a warning message appears in the
Help line. Change the amount of memory Maya assigns for
Cached Playback or if you want caching to continue despite memory limits in the
Cached Playback Preferences.
Cached Playback out of memory state
Note: You can continue to work even if Cached Playback stops. You just won't have any playback performance gains. - Customizing Cached Playback status
- You can also change the default look, behavior, and positioning of the status line in the Cached Playback Preferences. To changes the color of the status line, see the Cached Playback section int the Color Settings window.