I am wanting to convert my files till they fix the volume grid for vray. How do i use converter?
Path C:\Program Files\Chaos Group\Phoenix FD\3ds Max 2016 for x64\tools\cache_convert.exe but when I try to open it the command prompt disappears. What am I doing wrong.
Yes I have looked at previous post nothing on how to use.
The help file explains how to use it… https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/…oenix+FD+Tools
Just tried it (first time I’ve used it) .. Im sure you could set an environment variable up but I just copied the exe to the folder of the cache and used the commands the help file says.. works fine 
… you navigate to that folder via command prompt and run the command from the help file.
Thank you I will try that.
No luck. Still cant get it to open
You need to first open a cmd prompt and navigate to where the exe is and run it.
Yes i tried that no luck, I am an idiot. I will wait for the new nightly to be updated and we should be fine thank you for all your help.
Lets say the cache is in C:\Phoenix\Cache.####.aur. Copy the exe into that folder. Open a CMD and type ‘cd c:\Phoenix’ (without the quotes) This will put you into that folder.
All you need to do then is use the command from the help so it be like this:
cache_converter.exe -srcfile Cache.####.aur -dstfile cache.####.vdb -start 0 -end 100 -verbose
Now of course you need to change the names for the cache etc but also change the start and end frame range which in my example is 0-100. It will write the vdb sequence into the same folder.
any tips on how to use this - i desperately need to export some AUR to VDB but im not a programmer
and a total beginner with CMD
can this be made to be a normal EXE with a GUI? or a step by step guide?
the steps adam outlined dont seem to work for me
will i have to re-sim?
+1 for making this tool opart of the right click menu in phx or something artist friendly please!
Hey, please check our replies in the other thread you posted the same question
hey sorry for late response I see the the team at chaos Group already got back to you i hope you can figure it out, you can always resim and change save file to vdb. if you cant get it to work hopefully sim doesnt take a long time
Thanks for the replies
Im trying to find a dev to get this working for me and make a basic tool to do this.
I have re-simmed one but not really feasible to re-do 2TB of frames and reluctant to always do VDB cos its slower to render and bigger files, but going to Houdini and C4D its the only way is VDB
Wonder if tyflow can do this ?
This tool is good to have but it should be improved. For example converting large sequences like 500-1000 frame cache to vdb can take days. I wish there was a way to multithread it.
Oh, it should be multithreaded already, but it’s possible that the reading and writing from the disk are slowing it down. How does it look in Task Manager?
If you store your files on a server you may be able to install the Linux version of Phoenix (the Maya version, even without Maya) and then use it locally on the server to avoiding transferring the files twice.
Of course running code in the file server is scary. So you could instead have a Vm local to the file server and run it there to skip the network ( just Loopback).
When I said multithreaded I meant it should load multiple vdb’s at once. The network is not an issue we are on 10G network. The io during conversion is small. I think the most time is spent on actual conversion. I can write 5 batch scripts each doing a chunk and its way faster, I think this can be implemented into the tool.
A 10gig network is about 7 times slower than modern local NVME drives.
Interesting that the multi batch runs faster. I suppose you could parallelize it with something like Deadline, and also get dependencies, etc.
Why would you compare network to nvme? if course its faster. But we just output 14Tb of caches over 24 hours, you can’t expect nvme to handle that volume right? There has to be a better solution.
My point was that others (possibly Chaos) may be testing locally rather than on a network. We do everything over the network as well, except for the initial setup and tweaking which is local nvme.
It was also in reference to my earlier post about doing the processing locally on the file server (or a Vm thereof). Your drives are likely faster than the network. So that was another option to achieve (some of) the speed up you desire.
I believe there are options to handle that kind of data with nvme if you really wanted (PCI cards). But, yes, impractical at this point.
Any performance increase is always welcomed!
Ah yes, writing and reading caches over the network is the worst case scenario performance wise. If anything can happen locally and then be copied over to the network, do it this way. One thing that is in the middle is something some colleagues do - using google drive for caches, and the simulator reads and writes caches in a directory inside the G: drive created by google drive file stream under Windows - this way the writing happens instantly and the files are synced to google drive at some later point, but it’s automatic and you don’t have to manually start the process. However, when reading caches in a new machine, sometimes weird things happen since it’s trying to download the files on demand and make it look like it’s just like working with local files, but it’s not 100% reliable yet. I’ve also heard some colleagues complaining about google drive file stream being buggy, and also not really sure if it even works under other OSes.