You can save your simulation data to a server or local hard drive by caching your Nucleus objects or fluid effects. nCaches are special Maya files that store the simulated point data of your simulations. nCaches also connect to the nucleus nodes in your Nucleus systems, which allows both cached and uncached Nucleus objects to interact.
nCaches are useful when you want to reduce the number of calculations Maya performs when playing back or rendering scenes that contain simulated Nucleus objects or fluid effects, and they allow you to easily direct, mix, and edit your simulations in an intuitive, nonlinear manner.
You can use nCaches to do the following:
nCloth caches only store information about the XYZ positions of an nCloth object’s vertices, not the translation, rotation, or scale of the nCloth’s Transform node.
You can create nCaches for your Nucleus and Fluid objects using the nCache menu. nCaches can be edited from the Attribute Editor or the Trax Editor.
When caching a simulation, select from the following Maya cache formats:
Use the mcx file format to cache large simulations such as high resolution Fluid Effects.
The nCache file format is an open format that can be read with standalone applications. For more information, see the example Python script cacheFileExample.py located in the devkit\pythonScripts folder of the Developer Kit installation. This example script demonstrates how to parse the cache description file and its associated data. See also geometryCacheConverter in the Maya Developer Help.
The Developer Kit is available from the Autodesk Developer Network.
For nCloth, nParticle, and nHair caches, you can specify the properties saved in the nCache file by selecting them in the Caching section of the object's Attribute Editor. For fluid caches, you can specify which fluid properties are saved in the cache file by selecting them in the Create Fluid Cache Options window. See Create fluids cache files.