Large Scale Explosion Question
 

Hi All,

I'm following along with the Large Scale Explosion tutorial and am up to the part where I've got all my render layers set up and ready to go.

My question is: Do I need to have created caches for my two fluid containers before I render out each of my layer passes? I'm guessing yes, as otherwise it will calculate differently each pass and look odd? Is this correct?

Yup, to render and uncached simulation properly it will basically have to simulate and dump the simulation state into each render instruction file (which is the same as caching it but you can't get the data back), but in reality it probably won't do that and you will get nothing or a crazy mess.

Okay, fair enough. So I've created a fluid cache by selecting my two fluid containers and going to Fluid nCache > Create New Cache. So then I sat back and waited whilst it cached for the next 1 1/2 hours. I could see both explosions happening frame by frame as it did its calculations, but after it finished when I moved around on the timeline it only shows me one of the two explosions. And when I play the animation from the start it doesn't do anything either. In short my main explosion has disappeared!!!
Does anyone have the slightest idea what's going on?