I'm trying to cache out a moving feather system, and right now It's connected to a component output node https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/nodes/lop/componentoutput.html [www.sidefx.com] which only has a static/single frame save to disk button.

How do I approach dealing with data that moves?

First, ensure that your Component Geometry is set to author time samples. In the Attributes section, set Author Time Samples to "If SOP is Time Dependent". That ensures that the animation is converted from a Houdini node time dependency (indicated by the green clock icon in the network view) to USD time samples. You can verify that you have USD time samples by examining your prims in the Scene Graph Details pane. Light green text indicates time samples.



However, just authoring time samples doesn't break the time dependency -- you should still see green clocks on the nodes downstream of Component Geometry. If you examine the USD layer produced by Component Geometry, you'll see only one sample has been authored on each frame.




Append a Cache LOP after the Component Geometry and set it to Always Cache All Frames. That will author every time sample of your timeline, regardless of which frame you're looking at. Obviously this may take some time to calculate the SOPs geometry for the entire timeline. When you examine the layer created by Cache, you'll see multiple time samples present instead of just the current frame's, and the green clock icon will no longer be present on nodes below the Cache (unless you've animated something downstream of it, of course.)

Saving from the Component Output should now result in an asset containing your animation.