To turn off support for Dynamics Caching, disable the Cache dynamics option in the Cached Playback Preferences.
Cached Playback lets you see changes made to animation immediately, rather than needing to create a Playblast. You also activate caching by clicking the
Cached Playback icon
in the
Playback Options, next to the
Time Slider.
For more about
Cached Playback and how to use it, see
Use Cached Playback to increase playback speed.
-
Cached Playback
- Activates Cached Playback. The
Cached Playback options are active only when this option is on.
-
% of RAM
- Move the slider to specify a cut-off point when the cache process will stop. Use this setting to specify how much memory (in percent) to dedicate for Cached Playback purposes (and not all of Maya).
Note: This setting affects
Cached Playback only. However, increasing this setting may affect other processes running on the computer running at the same time. Also, running multiple Maya sessions using
Cached Playback may also impact performance if too much memory is allotted.
-
Stop caching at memory limit
- Activate this option to abandon the cache process when the designated memory limit is reached (this is the default setting).
- If
Cached Playback is producing warnings about memory limits, you can disable this option to override the specified memory limit so that caching can continue. (Be aware that disabling this option may cause caching to use all your system’s available memory.)
- See the
Memory Management area in the Evaluation Toolkit Caching section to view your system's memory status.
-
Preferred Mode
- Choose how to use
Cached Playback makes use of your system resources. There are three modes:
-
-
Evaluation cache
- A viewport/renderer independent, universal cache mode, a good choice if you are unsure of which mode to use. This mode is slower than other modes but available for Viewport 1.0
-
Viewport Hardware cache
- Uses your graphics card memory to increase performance.
-
Viewport Software cache
- Uses your system's memory to increase performance.
-
Hybrid Cache
-
This setting lets you extend Caching Playback to mixed with GPU deformation to improve caching with scenes that rely on heavy GPU computation and large rigs.
Note: This mode also turns on the GPU Override setting. However, if you disable it, it does not turn off GPU Override.
Instead of caching full geometry after deformation,
Hybrid Cache retains and restores the input to the GPU deformation chain. Typically this results in less data being stored, given that the input to the deformer chain (a few matrices, a few animated parameters, and so on,) is usually much smaller than the geometry being deformed. This also caches the original undeformed static geometry only once for the whole animation and leaves it on the GPU, resulting in smaller transfers between CPU and GPU memory.
The fact that geometry stays on the GPU can result in great performance gains, especially for large geometries, as well as significant memory usage reduction.
-
Setting
|
Behavior
|
Disabled
|
Hybrid Cache is not used, geometries are cached normally. This setting is the default.
|
Smooth Mesh Preview
|
Hybrid Cache only applies to GPU-deformed evaluation clusters with at least one mesh using Smooth Mesh Preview.
|
All
|
Hybrid Cache applies to all GPU-deformed evaluation clusters.
|
- Prevent Frame Skipping
-
Activate this option when you are playing back in Real-time (see the
Playback section in the
Time Slider preferences) to make sure that Maya does not skip frames while it builds the playback Cache.
-
Normally, when you play back animation in Real-time playback speed, Maya skips frames to maintain the rate. But if you intend to use
Cached Playback, you do not want any frames to be left out; using this option prioritizes filling the cache, and lets the cache build smoothly without skipping frames.
Note: Once the caching is complete and the Time Slider is filled, frame skipping is active again if cached playback still cannot achieve the requested frame rate.
-
Show warning messages
- Activate this option to display support messages in the script editor whenever an event occurs that disables or causes problems with caching. See
Cached Playback Limitations and
Cached Playback unsupported nodes for more information on conditions that can disable
Cached Playback.
- Discard frames outside playback range
-
Activate this option to flush any cached data from frames that fall outside of the current playback range. This means that if you resize your playback range so that some cached frames no longer fall within the active caching area, their caching data is lost.
- Cache Smooth Meshes
-
Choose how
Cached Playback handles
Smooth Mesh Preview. When active, Smooth Meshes are cached. Disable this setting if Smooth mesh preview creates performance issues when Cached Playback is enabled. This setting is off by default.
-
By default, meshes automatically display with
Smooth Mesh Preview turned off. When
Smooth Mesh Preview is turned on, you can display the original mesh and a smoothed preview simultaneously (Cage + Smooth Mesh display mode) or the smoothed preview by itself (Smooth Mesh display mode).
- Cache dynamics
-
Lets you disable caching of dynamics (nCloth and nParticles). The Dynamics cache is shown as a separate status line from the default
Cached Playback Status Line. See
Cached Playback status line states for a description of each status line and what it represents.
The pink dynamics status line and default blue animation status line.
- This setting is active by default.
-
Note: Changes to the appearance of the Cache Playback status line affect both the Animation
and Dynamics caching stripe.
-
Cache Fill
- Choose when the cache is built.
-
-
Playback & Background
- Triggers
Cached Playback when you press
Play and when the scene is idle. This setting is the default.
-
Playback
- Triggers
Cached Playback
only when playing animation.
-
Background
-
Cached Playback triggers automatically without pressing
Play.
Note: This mode does not trigger caching on playback. The only difference between this mode and
Playback & Background mode is that when you use this mode, the cache builds in the background only. It does not build during playback.
-
Background Fill direction
- Sets where on the
Time Slider the cache begins loading.
-
-
Forward & Backward
- Builds the cache in both directions from the current frame. This setting is the default.
-
Forward
- Builds the cache from the current frame forward on the
Time Slider.
-
Backward
- Builds the cache from the current position toward the animation start (from right to left) on the
Time Slider.
-
Forward from animation start
- Builds the cache from the beginning of the animation onward on the
Time Slider.
Show Cached Playback Status
This section lets you customize the position and appearance of the
Cached Playback status line.
Note:
- If you unload the "cacheEvaluator" plugin, these controls are disabled.
- You can change the color of the cache status line in the Cached Playback section of the
Color Settings.
-
Show cache status
- Displays the Cached Playback status line on the
Time Slider.
-
Position
- Choose where you want the
Cached Playback status line to appear on the Time Slider.
-
Above Timeline
-
Below Timeline
-
Height
- Sets the thickness of the
Cached Playback status line.
Cached Playback status line size 1 and size 13
-
Vertical spacing
- Sets the gap between the Time Slider border and the
Cached Playback status line.
Cached Playback status line spacing at 10
-
Show invalidated frames
- Activate if you want to see the frames that are in need of updating on the status line.
Cached Playback status line with invalidated frames
- Every time you change the animation, the
Cached Playback status line turns the affected frames a darker shade of blue. When this option is active, you can see where your changes have occurred and what areas the cache is redrawing.
-
The frames can be in these 3 states:
These kinds of partially invalidated frames are faster to compute than uncached frames.
See
Cached Playback status line states for more on
Cached Playback Invalidation.
-
Show subframes
- Activate to draw cached subframes instead of the entire frame range. White subframes appear whenever the Time Slider displays fractional framerates, such as 0.5, or 0.25. The white subframes appear to let you know that activity on fractional frames has been cached.
-
Cached subframes shown with a playback range of 0.5
Displaying cached subframes uses more memory than default (non-subframe) caching, so it's recommended to use this setting only when troubleshooting. If you do not want subframes to be cached, adjust cache setup so that whole frames are being cached so you won't run out of caching memory.
Note: If there are many subframes cached and the
Time Slider is zoomed out, subframes may not look different from the normal Cached Playback status line. Zoom in to see detail.
- Show warning frames
- Activate this option to make the
Cached Playback status line turn yellow whenever caching is disabled because it has run out of memory or is in Safe Mode. Disable this option if you want to turn off the warning color so that only uncached frames are shown on the
Time Slider and warning status is shown on the icon and script editor messaging. See
Safe Mode in the
Cached Playback status line states topic for more information.