Most FX artists and technical directors use these resource estimates to plan their storage and hardware requirements before clicking "solve." In high-end VFX, motion graphics, and game development, you can prevent system crashes and storage overflows by forecasting your data footprint.
Our free online Simulation Cache & Memory Estimator works for Houdini, Blender, Maya, Cinema 4D, and Unreal Engine workflows. Plan your resource usage for Pyro, FLIP fluids, Vellum, or RBD simulations by setting the correct resolution and substep values. You can achieve more stable production pipelines and efficient render farm management by utilizing these conservative data estimates.
A Simulation Cache & Memory Estimator is a technical utility designed to predict the disk space and RAM required to process and store visual effects simulations.
By calculating the relationship between voxel size, point counts, and attribute storage (like velocity and IDs), this tool provides a forecast of "Per Frame" and "Total Cache" sizes. Whether you are caching an OpenVDB volume for a pyro explosion or an Alembic sequence for deforming cloth, this estimator helps artists ensure their hardware can handle the computational load before beginning a lengthy simulation.
By entering your voxel size and domain dimensions, our tool calculates the potential size of BGEO.SC or VDB files, accounting for the sparsity of the pyro container.
Yes, you can select 'Blender' as your software and use the OpenVDB export settings to estimate your liquid or smoke simulation storage needs.
Halving the voxel size can increase the total voxel count (and memory usage) by up to eight times, as it increases resolution across all three axes (X, Y, and Z).
