OK, how about this...

[NigelH]

Sorry if I keep asking the tough questions, but...

Is there a reasonably simple way to incrementally calculate simulations? Say you have a 300 frame cloth simulation that has already calculated the first 200 frames. Then, perhaps you need to change something that is totally unrelated to the cloth. Is it possible to halt the calculation, make your change, then resume the simulation using the data from the previously calculated frames as a starting point? No? Don't you think it should be?

What if you simply wanted to save frames after a particularly long amount of time spent calculating so that in the event of a crash/power outage/alien invasion, you wouldn't have to start all over from the beginning? Doesn't this make the most basic kind of sense?

Or have I simply missed the 'resume simulation' button?

[Dodgy]

You can't at the moment, though it would be darn useful.

For it to work however you'd need to store all the variables for all the points (such as how far they've stretched etc) at the last frame period... probably in a file, in that case of a computer crash. Might make dynamics slow to calculate with having to save a file every frame.. I dunno, I'm not big on this stuff :)

[UnCommonGrafx]

Motion Designer has a dump function for exactly this purpose.

[NigelH]

Was the dump function in Motion Designer carried over to the cloth dynamics in Lightwave[8]? I should have specified that's what I'm using. If so, what's it called now?

[UnCommonGrafx]

Nope, it doesn't that I've found. But, don't be disheartened: md can still be used in 8, though I haven't tried it. And the new system can read and write the mdd format so you should still be able to do it.

Only other suggestion would be to start the calcs at the last desired frame and go from there. With this method you could use mdscan and the playback abilities therein to control how many frames are played, etc. to {easily} piece together the sequence.

Worth a try if you haven't attempted, yet.

[NigelH]

I'll have to do some tests to see what works. I'm REALLY reluctant to go back to Motion Designer as I'm pretty happy overall with the integration and the results of the dynamics in [8]. I just haven't been able to effectively and reliably track the progress of the longer-running simulations.