How to freeze/stop nHair simulation?

3DShaq

Hi, I'm working on a project which plays a short sequence in frozen time like the Deadpool movie intro or the ZombiU God Save The Queen trailer. 

I'm still learning Maya and had a question about an nHair problem I'm currently having. I'm want to know how to freeze the nHair simulation; as in stop it from simulating the hair from Frame 1. I can't seem to figure how to stop it.

If anyone know how to, it would great to know! Thanks!

throttlekitty

There should be a option to toggle "Static" on the nHair Shape node that does what you want.

3DShaq

When I switch it to Static, it still laggs when I play the sequence. As if it's still calculating.. any idea?

throttlekitty

How badly does it lag compared to when the scene is idle? When static, nHair will still update follicles if the character is moving. So unless your character is totally frozen in the shot, you might just be getting video lag from the hair itself.

I don't think you can cache static hair, but you may be able to get away with using the hair as an asset in its own scene. From there you would import the asset scene into your work scene but as a gpu cache. Or just hide the hair system and unhide it for renders.

3DShaq

The character is totally frozen. so, currently I've put the hair in a separate layer and hiding it seems to work smoothly and I can preview the sequence with no lagg. I guess that's the only solution for now..