I have a problem with particles. I have a volume emitter emitting particles along an axis, and I want to set the start frame of the particles to frame -50. Everything seems to work fine in Maya; the particles move when I drag the slider around or hit play, rendering the current frame is fine. However, when I batch render the particles do something strange.

It seems as if they’re being calculated from frame -50 to frame 1 but the particles never move from their position at frame 1. My keyframed objects move, the cameras move, but the particles are stuck in the frame 1 position.

I’ve tested this by setting the start frame for the particles to -1 and sure enough, they get run up two frames and never move from that position.

I’ve tried working around this problem by moving my animation to frame 50 and starting the batch render at frame 50, but the exact thing occurs. The particles in frame 50 are positioned correctly but they never move.

Any help with this would be appreciated.