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Software > Maya

Bifrost for Maya updated

Aug 10, 2021 by CGPress Staff
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Image by Lee Griggs

Autodesk has announced a new update to Bifrost for Maya with new features designed to simplify the creation and delivery of complex simulations and custom effects using real-time tool feedback and several other enhancements, including:

  • Virtual Sliders that allow fluid ports to be adjusted in real-time with dynamic constants and F-curves to be edited live. With feedback port preservation, artist simulations stay intact during graph edits, pausing, and unpausing, while the ability to edit live simulations shortens time between iterations.
  • Broken Bifrost graphs can now be fixed with unknown nodes. Users can now also merge JSON files into single large files, which facilitates faster loading in as little as two seconds. Faster loading further improves time to the first pixel in the first Arnold render in a session.
  • Artists can now use fields and arrays to directly drive simulation parameters, making simulation graphics more expressive, readable, and artistically directable.
  • Aero’s post-simulation now only requires a single connection, simplifying refinement workflows. The required data can be cached with the volume to perform a post-simulation refinement from disk, without the original simulation scene. This update has also improved MPM Cloth performance and simulation stability, as well as animation cloth and shell properties.
  • Maya’s viewport display of adaptive volumes features significant enhancements, and volume adaptivity can now be accessed on simulation compounds to improve performance for input meshes that require conversion. Non-adaptive volumes also now use the adaptive algorithm for accelerated conversions.
  • The Alembic integration now supports writing and reading for more Bifrost user data and corrects the handling of quaternions and matrices. Bugs with writing OpenVDB have also been corrected for more robust interaction with the ecosystem of OpenVDB readers and writers, and sparse OpenVDB files can be converted to adaptive Bifrost volumes.
  • Terminals are now out of beta and ready for production. Terminals now also work in loops, enabling each iteration to add geometry to a scene.

Find out more on the Maya blog. 

Related News

  • Maya 2020.4 released with new scattering and instancing tools
  • Bifcmd, Bifrost Engine and Bifrost Compute Jobs explained
  • BiFrost Presentations
33 Comments
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Damm
3 years ago

Sad to see the great Naiad now as a lonely plugin for a dead software.

.Disto
Reply to  Damm
3 years ago

How is it dead ?

munamix
Reply to  .Disto
3 years ago

The development of maya is pretty dead.
Also bifrost development isn’t same what it was when it was naiad – naiad make great progress and real innovations. Maya really need weta digitals tools.

Damm
Reply to  .Disto
3 years ago

https://cgpress.org/archives/bifrost-for-maya-updated.html#comment-95870

Animatect
Reply to  Damm
3 years ago

Looks alive

Infograph
3 years ago

Let’s be realistic, Blender already beat Maya in VFX and it’s becoming industry standard in character animation nowadays, so no AD, you are don’t know what you doing, just die

Animatect
Reply to  Infograph
3 years ago

How?, they both work ,they both have pitfalls, they both have strengths, I don’t like AD one bit but (using your own words) Let’s be realistic, AD is not going anywhere for a long time, and even thou I love it, Blender still has a long way to go mostly in the interoperability department

troll
Reply to  Infograph
3 years ago

sure it is. Only studio using blender (mainly) for animation, just go bancrupt couple of days ago.

Ludvík Koutný
Reply to  troll
3 years ago

Funnily enough:comment image

Apparently everything went smooth as long as they were on Blender but when they tried to switch to Houdini/Maya based pipeline too fast for a new project, that’s when it fell apart.

Last edited 3 years ago by Ludvík Koutný
troll
Reply to  Ludvík Koutný
3 years ago

apparently they could’nt no longer work with blender, and it was to late to save company. Now again. Tell me. how is Maya dead. What are companies working on? They animate in Houdini? Hmmm?

Ludvík Koutný
Reply to  troll
3 years ago
  1. You have mistaken me for someone else. I never said Maya is dead. That was some guy above.
  2. I don’t understand how can you extrapolate from the screenshot I posted they could no longer work with Blender. It’s not stated anywhere in the post. Actually on the contrary, they state that their last project, which ran on Blender pipeline, got finished on time with “epic scale, quality and polish”.

They state that they ditched their Blender based toolset in a “blind hunger to grow”. It certainly would not be first time a large VFX studio was flown into the ground by upper management making poor decisions.

Last edited 3 years ago by Ludvík Koutný
no1nja
Reply to  Ludvík Koutný
3 years ago

So they were forced(?) to ditch their exclusively Blender pipeline and use Maya/Houdini, which they had little experience with, within a short time frame. If they only made this decision in an attempt to grow the studio, that suggests Maya still dominates the animation industry.

Ludvík Koutný
Reply to  no1nja
3 years ago

I have no clue… All I see is the same post as you do. I don’t have any more information as to why.

mdko
Reply to  Ludvík Koutný
3 years ago

Reading what you want to read here? From the screenshot (if it’s true) it just means they wanted to switch to a professional pipeline in a too short amount of time. This has nothing to do with functionality (well, maybe it has, but not for my argument anyway) but with making bad decisions regarding planning.

Ludvík Koutný
Reply to  mdko
3 years ago

Isn’t that *exactly* what I wrote couple of posts above?

“They state that they ditched their Blender based toolset in a “blind hunger to grow”. It certainly would not be first time a large VFX studio was flown into the ground by upper management making poor decisions.”

I replied to a post that implies Blender was the reason Tangent shut down.

troll
Reply to  Ludvík Koutný
3 years ago

Im just tired of You, blender trolls, trashing every thread. Max update, blender fanboys teens. Maya updata blender teen trolls. You have noe experience, no wisdom, just fanatism. GO TO BLENDER THREADS. Simple as that. Take care of Yourseves, Your time will come. But stop selling LIES.

Ludvík Koutný
Reply to  troll
3 years ago

What’s wrong with you? Where do you see me being a fanboy of Blender? Saying that using Blender was the reason Tangent has shut down is about as dumb as saying Blender already beat Maya in VFX and it’s becoming industry standard.

Both are dumb, false statement, but you can’t really counter a dumb, false statement with another one, which you did. It doesn’t work that way.

mdko
Reply to  Ludvík Koutný
3 years ago

Apologies Ludvik, indeed i didn’t read the text below the image. Seems the onslaught of blender fanboys has put me on a hair trigger.

manakol85
Reply to  mdko
3 years ago

troll and mdko: Blender fanboys you say and see everywhere? 😀 sounds like you have problems to avoid these blender “fanboys” – just skip their messages and thats it because we all know that maya is the only good software for every needed tasks and it still rules the world with absolutely best tools with best and most affordable price to get real professional tools.

Mokiki
Reply to  Infograph
3 years ago

Please tell me you’re being sarcastic here. I am not fan of Autodesk but geez statements like this are completely disconnected from reality.

Last edited 3 years ago by Mokiki
Damm
Reply to  Mokiki
3 years ago

Agree.
Maya is dead (the software is made of a completely out of date codebase, which is what happens with 20 years of patches and no rework).
Unreal Engine 1 was released in 1998, same year for Maya.
However Unreal went through multiple complete code rewrites, when maya never did so.

Still, no studio except a tiny minority like Tangent animation, and some low-end Ubisoft TV series uses Blender.
Maya is still by far the goto software for almost any studio.

Roger
Reply to  Damm
3 years ago

Blender users are nuts. They talk like they are using software no one else can afford.

mike
Reply to  Roger
3 years ago

 just that most blender users are kids.

manakol85
Reply to  mike
3 years ago

you are right.. blender users are kids when they try to play with their poor software.. they are just jealous because they have no afford for maya which is the standard for professional works. they are kids… and kids are always jealous to us.. to real pros bro.

Mokiki
Reply to  Roger
3 years ago

As someone who switched from 3ds max to Blender for 90% of my work.I still go back to 3ds max to use vray for rendering and in some cases forest pack. And I really enjoy the software. It fits my needs for my freelance work.

But reading comments like that about Blender makes me bang my head against my desk every time.
Yes Blender is gaining traction fast. And it is only going to get better from here on but it’s not in any position where it did “beat” anyone. It’s a more than solid product for a very affordable price and a lot of people can do their work with just blender and don’t have to pay into any subscription or buy anything to make a living with it and produce good quality work.

BUT there are tasks in this industry where Blender as of right now can’t compete and isn’t competing. And it isn’t changed by how much people want to see the big Goliaths fall. It is not happening anytime soon.

Eloi Andaluz
Reply to  Infograph
3 years ago

Seriously? Blender is good in a lot of areas, but if you compare it with Maya in VFX, I dont see in what its superior. Particles, Cloth, liquids, smoke, I will never say are the strength of Blender right now.

Animatect
Reply to  Eloi Andaluz
3 years ago

As a Blender based studio Owner and Blender user and enthusiast I completely agree

Juang3d
Reply to  Eloi Andaluz
3 years ago

Agree, Blender has to improve in the VFX area a lot.

it has a good simulation engine under the hood, Mantaflow, but it lacks features that gives you art direction capabilities, it also lacks a powerful adaptive particle system, a modern cloth solver and proper hair toolset, in all those areas what Blender currently has is good, but old, outdated, and lacks features.

update is coming though 🙂

troll
Reply to  Juang3d
3 years ago

You seem to be smart, keep it up:)

patfish
Reply to  Eloi Andaluz
3 years ago

Really? For me Maya is the king of Animation but VFX has shifted towards Houdini since years. Even in Max, I see more and better Particle Tools with Thinking Particles’ ans Tyflow. We still teach Maya on our university, but I can tell you that more and more student shift to Blender and Houdini, so I’m pretty sure that Blender could be very the new Industry Standard.

FARZIN
3 years ago

baby Blender Trolls :

today maya is dead
tomorow maya is dead
next week maya is dead
next month maya is dead
next year maya is dead
and years and years and years ……… maya is dead

finaly baby blender trolls are dead
maya is live :))))))))

OMG you Trolls are Funny :))))))))

troll
Reply to  FARZIN
3 years ago

max is dead too, You have to remember. Like for 15 years now.

patfish
Reply to  troll
3 years ago

I agree, I use Max now for 20 years and I felt it already in 2010 where a lot of VFX work shifted towards other software…after a long time of getting nothing new 2018-2020 was (for Max^^) good years, but now it stagnates again 🙁 … with “Excalibur” Autodesk promised us a new start (total code rewriting) in 2010 … that would have been the only right choice – but sadly it never happened or was stopped from Autodesk.

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