Create Serious Effects in Maya with Bifrost

Bifrost makes it possible for 3D artists and TDs to create serious effects in Maya quickly and
easily using a new visual programming environment. TDs can create custom graphs in the
Bifrost Graph Editor and package them up for artists at their studio to use (and re-use) across
different shows, scenes, and shots. Artists can also take advantage of a wide array of ready-
to-use graphs to create Blockbuster-worthy effects right out-of-the-box.

• Ready-to-use graphs. Artists can quickly create state-of-the-art effects that meet
today’s quality demands.
• One graph. In a single visual programming graph, users can combine a wide range of
nodes.
• Realistic previews. Artists can see how effects will look after lighting and rendering
right in Maya, resulting in a more creatively engaging and efficient experience.
• Detailed smoke, fire, and explosions. New physically-based solvers for aerodynamics
and combustion make it easy to create natural-looking fire effects.
• The Material Point Method. The MPM solver helps artists tackle realistic granular,
cloth, and fiber simulations.
• High-performance particle system. A new particle system crafted entirely using visual
programming adds power and customizability to particle workflows in Maya.
• Artistic effects with volumes. Bifrost comes loaded with nodes that help artists
convert between meshes, points, and volumes to create artistic effects.
• Flexible instancing. High-performance, rendering-friendly instancing empowers
users to create enormous complexity in their scenes.
• Detailed hair, fur, and fuzz. Artists can now model things consisting of multiple fibers
(or strands) procedurally.
Key New Features
Ready-to-Use Graphs
From dust motes and volumetric clouds to fire and explosions, artists can explore a library of
pre-built Bifrost graphs in the new Bifrost Browser to create great looking effects fast. Graphs
can also be used as a starting point for creating custom effects from scratch. Users can then
publish their own graphs to the Browser for other artists to easily find and re-use.

One Graph
In a single visual programming graph called the Bifrost Graph Editor, technical artists and TDs
can mix nodes ranging from math operations, to file IO, particles, volumes, mesh or surface
operations, and even simulations.

Realistic Previews
With Arnold integrated in Maya, artists can see exactly what their effects will look like after
lighting and rendering, right in the Arnold Viewport. They can also see near-final previews of
their effects in Viewport 2.0. Not only do accurate previews reduce the potential for last
minute iterations later on in production, they also provide artists with a more creatively
engaging experience by making it easier to see the results of changes they make.

Detailed Smoke, Fire, and Explosions

New solvers for aerodynamics (Aero) and combustion make it easy for artists to create
deceptively natural-looking smoke, fire, and explosions. Simple artistic controls let artists
adjust boundary conditions for effects to create more physically-accurate interactions with
the surrounding scene and set up adaptivity to automatically add or remove detail depending
on characteristics such as velocity, turbulence, and smoke density.
The combustion solver performs computational chemistry and thermodynamics to simulate
the physical reactions of fire, flames, and explosions. Artists can choose from an array of real-
world fuels like methane and butane, and the solver automatically generates realistic outputs
such as (digital) carbon monoxide and water vapor.

The Material Point Method

The Material Point Method (MPM) was made famous by its use as a snow solver in Disney’s
Frozen. Autodesk teamed up with Jixie Effects, founded by members of the original research
team, to develop a production-ready MPM solver. One of the key advantages of MPM is that
the behavior of simulations remains consistent as resolution increases. While the original
MPM work focused on granular simulation of snow, Jixie Effects has extended the Bifrost
MPM solver to now tackle other phenomena, including:
• MPM Granular – Simulates granular materials such as sand and mud, as well as snow
• MPM Cloth – Simulates dynamic thin shells and cloth such as textiles, aluminum, and
plastics
 • MPM Fibers – Simulates dynamics of each fiber (or strand) individually

High-Performance Particle System

Using particles to drive aerodynamic and combustion simulations is a common and effective
workflow. Entirely crafted using visual programming, the new particle system in Bifrost adds
even more power to what was previously possible with particles in Maya with the ability to
now break open and customize the system as needed.

Artistic Effects with Volumes

To create a desired effect, artists often need to convert between meshes, points and volumes,
and process volumes for artistic effects. Bifrost comes loaded with a number of nodes for
these purposes including converting meshes, points, and particles to volumes; converting
volumes back to meshes; smoothing volumes; sampling properties of volumes; and scattering
points inside volumes. Technical artists can also use visual programming to artistically
process volumes including advecting volumes with noise and adding noise to a volume.

Flexible Instancing
Bifrost introduces high-performance, rendering-friendly instancing, empowering users to
create enormous complexity in their scenes.
At the heart of instancing is point-based geometry. Artists can create instances with any
number of procedural and artist-driven techniques, and then apply them to scattered points,
particle systems such as the MPM solver, and vertices of any other geometry. Instance shapes
are flexible and can be easily adjusted using a simple selection mechanism that can select
between multiple layers of variation. For example, one layer might distinguish between grass
and flowers, and another might drill down to select variations of each.
Tightly integrated with Arnold instancing and Viewport 2.0, artists can instance any
renderable Bifrost geometry including meshes, volumes, strands or points, as well as fully
renderable assets in the form of render archives, such as Arnold .ass files.

Detailed Hair, Fur, and Fuzz

The world is full of fibers. From hair and fur to fuzz, clothing, grass, and even dust, artists
frequently need to model things consisting of multiple fibers (or strands). Bifrost makes it
simple for artists to do so procedurally.
• Using colored strands, artists can draw flowlines, vectors, and links between different
elements to better understand data.
• It’s easy to alter the way strands look with controls for adjusting thickness, color, and
orientation.
• Strands can be rendered using Arnold as either ribbons with hair shaders or cylinders
with surface shaders.

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