Cache Menu

Alembic Cache

Use Alembic caches in Maya to transfer assets between various stages of your production pipeline. The contents of Alembic cache files are evaluated as Maya geometry and can be modified with polygon, NURBS, and subdivision surface editing tools.

The AbcExport.mll and AbcImport.mll plug-ins must be loaded before the Cache menu appears in the Maya main menu.

For more information, see the Alembic Cache submenu.

Geometry Cache

Use Geometry Caches to save Polygon mesh, NURBS (including curves) surface, and Subdivision Surface deformations (skin and non-skin) to a server or local hard drive by caching your object’s deformations to a geometry cache. Geometry caches are special Maya files that store vertex transformation data.

They are useful when you want to reduce the number of calculations Maya performs when playing back or rendering scenes that contain many deforming objects, and they allow you to easily mix and edit your object’s deformations in an intuitive, nonlinear manner.

For more information, see the Geometry Cache submenu.

GPU Cache

GPU caches are Alembic-based files that are optimized for fast playback performance in Maya. These performance gains come from the way GPU cache files are evaluated. The GPU cache node routes cached data directly to the system graphics card for processing, bypassing Maya dependency graph evaluation. You can use GPU Caches the same way as Alembic caches.

The gpuCache.mll plug-in must be loaded before GPU Cache appears in the Cache menu.

For more information, see the GPU Cache submenu.