Bifrost simulation export options to Cinema 4D?

[FrankGuthrie1888]

Hi there,

I was lookng at those great videos about Bifröst on YouTube, and I began to read about it and I have a couple of questions regarding "sharing" simulations:

1) How would you transfer a simulation, say a water-splash, onto another 3D program - like Cinama 4D, via Alembic files?

2) But what if the other 3D program does not read Alembic files, what do you do then, would you "cache" the geometry and send that out as a FBX?

I have to say that Bifröst looks very powerfull!

Thanks in advance!

[Anonymous]

+1

[david]

Alembic should be your format of choice.

Not only does it do compression, but it can also store a lot of other attributes on the mesh.

It's also multithreaded, so performance wise it's superior to say FBX or OBJ.

There's also the possibility to use GPU caching within Maya. It plays back large meshes in realtime. Depending on your GPU.

If you try to export your meshes with FBX, your file sizes will explode.

Alembic is supported by almost every major 3D package now, so there's not realy a reason not to use it.

[FrankGuthrie1888]

I will defenitely have to try it when I upgrade to 2015! I've been doing all my liquids with Realfow, but I'me very interested in Bifröst.

I LOVE Alembic files, the problem is that other softwares tend to be behind this, so having the posibility to export an Alembic file and for them to do what you do in Maya tends to be a hit or miss! So I'm looking for other "duct-tape" options, like beign able to export a geometry cash via a FBX.

Thanks for your insights!

Frank

[3dMastermind]

Hi Frank,

Alembic is a new geo cache standard for dealing with heavy meshes.
You can also do it with Ncache but since Ncache is somewhat proprietary to Autodesk, I wouldn't recommend anything else honestly.

By now most programs that can handle dense meshes should be able to import .abc files including C4D.
Also, the data is handled via gpu making the playback faster.

[agraham]

We're working on a converter that will allow you to go from BIF (Bifrost Interchange Format) format to PRT, which is readable by a number of plugins and other software.

And lo and behold, it looks like Thinkbox has a PRT reader for C4D:

http://www.thinkboxsoftware.com/kc4d-prt-loader/

[FrankGuthrie1888 · Accepted solution]

Hi guys,

This looks amazing! It sure will make exporting meshes and simulations way easier that what we have to do today. One of my biggest fears in upgrading to 2015 is the CPU and specially the GPU requirement of these algorithms - I use a MacBook Pro and on a laptop you are "limited" to what you have. However, I'm sure I will upgrade soon to 2015, just can't wait to use Bifröst!... and the new Modeling tools, and the new UV tools, and XGen, and the Bullit Physics, and on and on!

Thanks again for your help!

Frank J. Guthrie

Entertainment Design & Animation

www.710Films.com

[Anonymous]

I'm unclear on this.  Does Maya 2015's Bifrost currently support export to Alembic?

[agraham]

Of course. That's actually the preferred method. You mesh the simulation, then export the resulting mesh via Alembic.

[Anonymous]

Yes just tried that - exported the resulting mesh to Octane Renderer and it works great!

Does Bifrost replace Maya's native fluid simulator or can the two work together? 

[agraham]

Cool, any pics to share? 😉

At the moment, Bifrost does not communicate with Maya fluids. At this point in time, we have no plans to deprecate Maya fluids. In the future, however, Bifrost will have an 'aero' (aka fluid) dynamics solver, which may ultimately replace fluids.