In Atoms you can save your simulation on disk using Atoms caches, then it is possible to reuse these caches with the "cacheReader" behaviour module. The Atoms Cache is lightweight and fast and it can increase the performance of your scene.
With the cache reader and the agents layout tool you can edit and tweak your cache.
Exporting a cache
You can open the cache exporter GUI using the shelf button or via the Atoms Menu: Atoms > Export > Cache Exporter
You can select one or more agent groups from the list, then choose a path where your cache will be saved.
If you select multiple agent groups they will all be saved in one single cache.
There also few other options:
- Start/End frame
- Multithread: to be used for high number of agents
- Compress: compress each cache file
- Random Access Compress: compress each agent in the file. Best if you are planning to read randomly the agents keeping the benefit of compression; for instance, if you will time offset agents singularly later on.
- Use Skin bounding box: uses the skin mesh to store bounding box data inside the cache. Please note having this option on could be considerably slower if you have heavy skin meshes.
Cache Exporter
The cache exporter will export four files per frame:
- header: basic info such as number of agents at the current frame, number of created agents and number of deleted agents
- frame: agent data such as agent type, position, velocity, bbox and variation
- meta: agents metadata
- pose: agent skeleton data
To make the caches more portable, all the agent type files are saved in a subfolder next to your cache files. The cache will also have a file with no padding containing global infos, such as start frame, end frame, agent ids, etc.
Importing a cache
To import a cache from disk, create a new agent group and then attach a cacheReader module. Form the "cachePath" attribute you can set the cache path. Rewind the scene and atoms will load the cache.