hardware rendering w/ particles
 

Hey all,

I've never really used the hardware renderer, so pardon this if it's a silly question but... It seems that when I render particles with it, it always has to do a run up from frame 1. If this is the case, what's the point of caching particles? Is there a way to tell the hardware renderer it doesn't need to run-up, and just use the cache?

Thanks.
-dann

the latest version of mental ray can render hardware mode particles i think?
My maya is using the particle cash properly without a run up when i render sequences in hardware render buffer.

I'm pretty sure that when you cache out your particles and then render they should be fine, it runs through a few frames (depending on settings) when doing preview renders and such so it can initalise motion blur and that kinda thing that it needs to process from frames around it, if that makes any sense lol.

Chris

Hmm, for me with maya 2008, if I use the hardware renderer with motion blur turned on, it will always do a complete run up, regardless of whether or not I cache my particles.

Bummer.

I don't think I can use mental ray because it doesn't seem to be able to use the per particle rgb attribute. It uses an actual shader and I need to to use the PP attribute.

I guess I was hoping someone would know of a switch somewhere that would turn off the runup.

Thanks anyway.