Getting rid of data channels no longer needed

[HenrikBC]

Hi

Scenario:
I have done a sim with that I am satisfied with, and then a resim based on that to get a higher resolution.
When I did the initial sim I enabled Smoke, RGB, Wavelet, Speed and Velocity.
For the resim I only selected Wavelet from the No-Export Channels dropdown (so kept all the other channels for the resim).
I did this to be able to play around with texture mapping/colors and motion blur.

But, now I find that I actually only need the smoke channel from the final high-res resim.

Is there a way to export/resim my cache file and just dump the channels that I don't need (without actually recalculating anything new?
I would love to save some HD space - and possibly have the cache files load faster.

The motion of the final sim is fine, it is ONLY the surplus channels that I would like to get rid of.

I am using 3ds max 2018 + Phoenix FD 3.14.

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Nah, not really - you gotta re-simulate again with more no-export channels currently. It's something we've been thinking about already though, so adding a vote to it.

Thanks for the suggestion!

[HenrikBC]

That would be a really nice feature. Maybe add it to the aur -> vdb converter tool?

And while we're at it - how about an option to recompress the channels when converting/selecting which channels to keep?
Re-simulating for several hours just to test a different compression setting is a bit hardcore.

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Ah, good point! Adding this as well

[HenrikBC]

Sounds awesome!

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Reviving an old thread, but for anyone reading: now both the exclusion of grid channels and changing the compression quality are now in the cache converter in Phoenix 4 nightlies.

Here's some more info: https://forums.chaosgroup.com/forum/...81#post1093981
and there is the -storagequality option as well.

An example command line is:

cache_converter.exe -srcfile ND2_PhoenixFDFire001_####.aur -dstfile outFile_####.vdb -start 0 -end 10 -storagequality 14 -exportchannels Smoke_phx VelocityXYZ_phx -silent

[HenrikBC]

That sounds great!
...any chance for a tool with a GUI where you can drag and drop the first file from a sequence to load it and display what channels are loaded - and click which channels to preserve, etc.?

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Ah, right now you can load the file using the phoenix_previewer (in the same folder as the cache_converter), and see what's inside it.

We are also currently adding an option to the converter to print the cache info without converting, so you can choose what channel you need and don't need.

Oh, also we just added new -removegridch and -removeprt options, for removing specific grid or particle channels. If no names are passed, all grid or all particle channels will be removed.

Maybe a GUI version will be useful, but it might be coming muuuuch later. Gotta first figure out all the things the tool should be able to do, and there are a many more in the to-do list...

[HenrikBC]

Thanks!