Imagine a scene, where you have to simulate 100 frames to wait until the fluid particles have settled or have reached a certain point in space. These 100 frames will not be used in the final render and will be deleted. What you can do is to , because the really interesting part starts at frame 101. Instead of deleting the surplus files and struggle with offsets, you can create an initial state from the last frame. When "Use Initial State" is enabled this saved state will be shown at frame 0 and be used as a starting point for the next simulation cycle. Now you have exactly the frames you really need, because the previous frames will be overwritten at cache time.
Other, typical fields of applications are, for example
- The the creation of puddles in conjunction with the "Crown" daemon
- emitters and daemons like "Spline" emitters and "DSpline" daemons
- Calm calm fluid surfaces.
- Filled filled tanks and containers.
Creating an initial state is a matter of a few clicks.
The associated initial state file will be written to the scene's catch folder specified under Scene > Cache.
- Simulate (click on the timeline's "Play" button)
- Stop the simulation at any time and press "Create Initial State under Fluid > Fluid.
- Set “Use Initial State” to “Yes” if necessary.
- Rewind the timeline to frame 0 ; – the initial state is shown.
- Simulate.