Baking the hair simulation to cache

Once you are happy with your hair simulation, it's time to bake it to cache. Baking your hair simulation to cache will save the animation data so that it won't calculate the simulation every time you play the animation. This will also speed up the viewport animation drastically, so you can preview your animation in close to real time.

Let's get to baking! Perform the following steps:

1. Select your character in the 3D Viewport.
2. Click on the Particle Properties tab on the right-hand side of the 3D Viewport.
3. Expand the Cache section.

Here, you will find all the Cache parameters. It's extremely easy to bake the simulation to cache. We can set the Simulation Start and End frame numbers. Note that you can set a negative number for the Simulation Start frame, which is great if you want your hair to start simulating before the first frame of your animation.

Figure 11.30 – The Cache...