Maya fluids clouds flickering

[dre4mer]

I'm trying to do a ground fog effect using maya fluids. Basically just a cloud which is very low and flat to the ground. From the settings it looks like the light cache setting in the Extra Vray Attributes is what is causing the flickering i'm getting on my maya fluid clouds. If I turn it off though the render time goes from about 3 minutes a frame to almost an hour per frame! Which is nuts. Is there nothing else I can do to still use light cache and get a reasonable render that doesn't flicker?

I'm creating all my detail on a fairly low resolution container (40) with a perlin noise opacity texture.

I've tried upping the container resolution from 40 to 150 didn't seem to effect it. I've tried changing the transparent setting far up and far down, still flickers. Incandescence on and off no effect.

A still frame looks great with light cache and only takes 3 minutes but i've spent two days trying to get rid of this flicker. The light cache (off) does give me kinda cool volumetric shadows through the fog but I can't afford that much render time.

Any ideas anyone??

Thanks in advance!

-Ethan

[ivaylo.ivanov]

The light cache option was designed for Phoenix FD, which is generally used for high res sims where this problem is more rare. For low res sims, you really can't use the light cache in animation. It's better to try optimizing your brute force settings. In the next SP, there will be a probabilistic sampling option that makes it easier to achieve good performance. You can also try getting a nightly build from the sales/support (the 3.15 nightlies has this new feature working).

[flat]

Does the Probabilistic volumetrics option work with Maya Fluid?

The document has notes when working with VRayVolumeGrid only,