Cache Folder
- For scenes with a lot of simulations it would be great to be able to pick a folder for each softbody, dynamic paint, etc. simulation to be cached to, instead of putting all of them in a single folder. You should also be able to name the folder. Very similar to how mantaflow currently handles caches.
8 Comments
I am a strong believer that blender should save the Cache files inside of the .blend file itself. No other software can use blender Cache files, but blender itself, so there is no use in holding them externally, as some weird format.
I don't like to keep simulation caches around, and I find it easiest to just delete the contents of the cache folder, rather than go to every simulation and free the cache. That might just be a preference though.
Why not just have a button to globally Free all bakes?
Worse idea ever. Have you ever tried to actually simulate anything? Cache folders can very quickly grow into ~50-100GB range with high quality simulation. Good luck versioning and managing single files that big.
I definitely did, and I don't want blender to create folders and files on my computer that I didn't ask for.
If you do not want to keep a huge bake in the .blend file you are working on, you can put it into an external .blend file and link it in. Seems pretty straightforward. You could have a unique .blend file for every bake you make, or one for multiple bakes. Freedom is there.
What disadvantage does having them in .blend files have, rather than some weird format, unique for different kind of bakes, and a new file for each baked frame? It's a mess, I'd say.
blend files should be as small as possible, folders are better, sure they can add an option to save those files internally, I rather select a folder.
I don't have access to Blender right now, but aren't there options for that already?
I do remember being able to manually set paths for where to store cache files, in the Cache panels, if I'm right.
Only for fluids, as far as I know. Blender caches everything else in a blendcache_(blend file name) folder inside the directory of the blend file. This also means that if you rename the blend file, it looses those caches.