General Workflow Tips
# Temporary Attributes
When creating HDAs or working on bigger setups it might make sense to prefix any temporary attributes with a special character such as __ to make removing it later on easier e.g. by using __* in an attribute delete SOP.
By doing so you also ensure that you don’t run into issues with incoming attributes that have the same name.
# Cache Node
The Cache Node can be used to optimize playback and store data until anything upstream changes. Pretty simple and obvious, but somehow I learned pretty late about this small but awesome node and I still see it rarely in tutorials or other peoples shared setups.
Quote from SideFX Docs
lets you scrub otherwise sluggish animations in real time, play pop networks backwards, etc. because the animation is precomputed and stored in memory
# Attribute Adjust Nodes
- Introduced in 18.5
- Very handy for all sorts of attribute manipulation, remapping or distorting
- Can do unit conversion from e.g. seconds to frames
- Check out Attribute Adjust Syntax Tricks for more
# Simulation Scale
What scale should you sim in? Vex is only 32bit by default so you should scale your simulation to a size where you avoid huge and tiny values. Otherwise you will run into stability issues (e.g. particles escaping colliders etc.). In FLIP for example, a good rule of thumb is to have your particle separation between 0.5 - 10 cm.
Values should stay between 16.000 and 1e-4 (0,0001) to avoid running into precission errors