How to stop/slow cloud simulation?

[Taylorcbray]

Hello!
I'm using Maya fluids to simulate clouds. In my scene, I want an object to fly through the clouds, causing the clouds to react. I've got the look that I want with the clouds, but I'm not sure how to stop them from rising and constantly moving. I want the clouds to be essentially static, maybe with some very slight movement, but then as the object flies through, they'll react appropriately. I've got an initial state that I like (not shown in the video below), but once I start the animation they rise like smoke. I can't cache the simulation and then hold it on a specific frame because I need them to be active so that they'll react to the object realistically. I also don't want to cache it and hold the frame until the object passes through, because then it'll look weird for the clouds to be stuck in a position, then suddenly all start to rise immediately. 

I fiddled with settings and googled around, but I can't get anything that does what I'm looking for. Any help or suggestions would be massively helpful. Here's a video of the closest I've been able to get to what I want:

[Taylorcbray · Accepted solution]

Okay, so I figured out how to achieve the effect I wanted. First, I of course let the simulation emission run for a handful of frames so that it can generate its shape, then I stop all emissions (via keying the attributes). As I stop the emission, I also increase the dynamic simulation's damping from 0 to 1. I also take the Content Details>density's buoyancy and key it from 1 to 0. This will freeze the simulation's shape. Then, BEFORE the object collides with the simulation (I recommend a few frames before to give it some buffer), key the damping from 1 back down to 0. (This will let the simulation move more as the object collides with it.)

In the video I have, the clouds don't react much due to my settings, but you can see that the simulation's frozen state is intact, which is what I was primarily looking for.