LOS ANGELES — Autodesk (www.autodesk.com) has announced Bifrost for Maya, which will be available on July 31st with Maya 2019.2. Bifrost makes it possible for 3D artists and technical directors to create serious effects in Maya quickly and easily using a new visual programming environment.
“Bifrost for Maya represents a major development milestone for Autodesk, giving artists powerful tools for building feature-quality VFX quickly,” explains Chris Vienneau, senior director, Maya and Media & Entertainment Collection. “With visual programming at its core, Bifrost makes it possible for TDs to build custom effects that are reusable across shows. We’re also rolling out an array of ready-to-use graphs to make it easy for artists to get 90 percent of the way to a finished effect fast. We can’t wait to see what graphs our amazing community will build and share. Ultimately, we hope Bifrost empowers Maya artists to streamline the creation of anything from smoke, fire, and fuzz to high-performance particle systems.”
In a single visual programming graph, users can combine nodes ranging from math operations to simulations. Realistic previews allow artists to see exactly how effects will look after lighting and rendering, right in the Arnold Viewport in Maya. New physically-based solvers for aerodynamics and combustion make it easy to create natural-looking fire effects. And the Material Point Method solver helps artists tackle realistic granular, cloth and fiber simulations.
Other features of Bitfrost include a new particle system crafted entirely using visual programming, which adds power and scalability to particle workflows in Maya. Bifrost comes loaded with nodes that help artists convert between meshes, points and volumes to create artistic effects. High-performance, rendering-friendly instancing empowers users to create enormous complexity in their scenes. And artists can now model things consisting of multiple fibers (or strands) procedurally.
Bifrost for Maya will work with any version of Maya 2018 or later. It will also be included in the installer for Maya 2019.2 and later versions. Updates to Bifrost between Maya releases will be available for download from Autodesk AREA.