I have been messing around with cloth simulations and linking cloth simulations into new scenes to render over a network of computers to help the rendering process go faster.
I ran into a few problems along the way though... Firstly my computer renders the cloth simulation animation just fine, but when I send it to render across the network it comes back looking like a cache of old renders took place.
For example: I place my character in a pose and bake the cloth simulation to the pose and render a still on my main machine and it comes out looking great. Then I render the same image on the network and it renders the cloth simulation but not according to what it was supposed to render as regarding the pose.
This is a test I did as a simple animation where the character is moved to the side. The picture samples below are of frames rendered on both my local computer and the network computers.
I think its rendering the cloth simulation in the initial "T" pose a character is normally posed in before animation or reposing. Which means the simulation is still occurring just not in the desired pose.
I did a second test with a different character but with the same settings and this is what happened.
The cloth simulation is not following the rig during animation or stills when rendered over the network, but I does follow the rig when it is just rendered on my main computer.
When I send a blend file across the network I make sure that all the linked libraries and other objects are packed and all my paths are relative, also I make it my habit to bake all physics before rendering. The blend file is always saved before its sent across the network as well.
There must be something I am not aware of in regards to rendering cloth simulations on a network that would be the key to solving this problem.
If anyone has any ideas on how to fix this, I would love to know.