What do you mean when you say "Regular Hair Cache" ?
If you speak about C4D hair system, Deadline read the cache perfectly.
But cache in C4D isn't really externals. When you load them, they are implemented in the project.
That result heavy project file, so not a good system :-)
My entire scene is baked in alembic, and Deadline read these .abc animations perfectly.
Concerning Ornatrix, animate hairs in C4D is just the hell !!!
1-I tried "Moov Phy", but it's very slow. I ever signal it here long time ago and maybe it has been solved, but I run on R23 and can't access to last updates.
Whatever, I need absolutly Invert gravity for my shot, and ORNATRIX can't do this.
2-I used C4D to animate C4D native hairs and export them in .abc splines
3-I tried to read this animation with ORNATRIX, and this is the moment it become very complicate …
Technic A :
Using C4D hairs splines baked in .abc directly in "Guide From Curve"
= Impossible to ground them
= No access to Uvs
= Impossible to use maps to drive thickness or anything else
But it work with Deadline render
Technic B : "Adopt External Guides"
1-I have 1 groom with animated splines in "Guide From Curve"
2- I have 1 groom with fix splines in "Guide From Curve" + "Ground Strands" as reference
3- I have 1 groom with fix splines in "Guide From Curve" + "Ground Strands" + "Adopt External Guides" with 1+2 in the fields
=Work with Deadline but …
-Even if fix and animated splines are exactly the sames, it give me an aproximation of the original animation
-Animation bug every 100 frames as you can see on the video in attachment
Technic C : "Animation Cache"
1-I have 1 groom with animated splines in "Guide From Curve" and use "Animation Cache" to Re-Export the animation in ORNATRIX .abc using "reccord animation"
2-I use this animation cache on my final groom.
=Work Perfecty inside C4D
BUT don't work with DeadLine.
The matter is my final shot will take an eternity to compute, leading to sevral crashes.
Only deadline can handle this kind of render seamlessly.
But DeadLine don't load the ORNATRIX cache, and the hairs stays static during the animation.
I mean, they follw the scalp without moving.
After that I tried to export using ORNATRIX .abc exporter, to have the ability to choose between OGAWA and HDF5 alembics, because I read on Maya there was some issues with one of them in Deadline.
I loaded these 2 differents alembic in the "Animation Cache" node.
Again, It work perfectly inside C4D even for rendering, but not in deadline.
Whatever, i'm tired of bugs.
Every time I find a solution, another wall wait for me.
I will use Technic A that still allow me tu use almost all ORNATRIX nodes, untill I don't use maps.
