Cached Playback in Maya 2019

A quick overview of Cached Playback in 2019
couple things to note:

• blue line in time line shows you progress , and which frames are cached
• constantly updates as you work 
• Users can set a target frame rate for playback, and choose whether caching targets the CPU or GPU. Rig evaluation is based on OpenCL, so GPU processing should work on both AMD and Nvidia hardware.
• you can move the camera around and review and it wont affect your cache
• Dynamics simulation, Non-linear animation (such as Time Editor, and Trax), and XGen-related features do not support Cached Playback.
• Here is  a list of unsupported nodes : http://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYAUL/2019/ENU/?guid=GUID-EF1C2D0C-622D-4FBB-B761-54E0A9765CE1
• Animated visibility is supported, but does not take full advantage of the caching system. 
• Animated geometry topology is supported, but does not take full advantage of the caching system
• Caching Smooth Mesh Preview in Maya Catmull-Clark mode does not work correctly, However, Open Subdiv smoothing modes work with caching.
• Switching display modes (wireframe versus polygons, smooth-shaded versus flat-shaded, and so on,) is unsupported. Once the display mode is changed, the cache needs to be rebuilt.
• Smooth Mesh Preview slows down Cached Playback significantly due to the amount of memory used by subdivided meshes.Workaround: Use the following Python script to disable smooth mesh preview for all meshes in your scene:

• import maya.cmds as cmds
  
  for mesh in cmds.ls(type='mesh'):
    cmds.setAttr('{}.displaySmoothMesh'.format(mesh), 0)

Also of note for animators. there are two new curve filtering options in the GraphEditor.

• ButterWorth  filtering for smoothing out curves
• Key Reducer  a sort of smarter key reduction that tries to get rid of unnecessary keys 

Full what's new docs here:
http://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYAUL/2019/ENU/?guid=GUID-C9DB1549-B9C0-4FC2-B984-91B7DCE3141B



unsupported nodes(of note) :
some of which you can turn on caching for with "unsafe" modes

• bifrost                                   MAYA_CACHE_IGNORE_UNSAFE_BIFROST
• BOSS
• Dynamics (hair dynamics & nucleus)
• hair dynamics              MAYA_CACHE_IGNORE_UNSAFE_DYNAMICS
• nucleus
• Grease Pencil
• jiggle
•  MASH  *( most of the nodes)
•  MUSCLE *( most of the nodes)
• Texture Deformer
• Time Editor *( not to be confused with Graph or Time Line)    MAYA_CACHE_IGNORE_UNSAFE_TIME_EDITOR
•  TRAX
• XGEN
• 
  

and a review for animator Brian Horgan

Maya 2019 Animation Caching from Brian Horgan on Vimeo.