Bifrost renders in Viewport 2.0 but not in Arnold

[macintosh]

Maya - Bifrost not rendering in Arnold

Symptom:

Bifrost test scene (flame) loads and renders fine in the Viewport, but does not render at all in Arnold Render View or from the command line.  The Scene renders, but the Bifrost objects are just not there.

OS:   Red Hat 8.9

Maya installed as a Module:

    module load maya/2024.2

Versions are all current:

Maya 2024.2

Bifrost 2.7.1.1

Arnold 7.2.4.1

Although I tried this for 2024.1 as well with the same result.

They are installed in:

/opt/crc/m/maya/2024-2/usr/autodesk/maya2024

/opt/crc/m/maya/2024-2/usr/autodesk/bifrost/maya2024/2.7.1.1/bifrost/ 

/opt/crc/m/maya/2024-2/usr/autodesk/arnold/maya2024

My PATH variables are:

/opt/crc/m/maya/2024-2/usr/autodesk/arnold/maya2024/bin:

/opt/crc/m/maya/2024-2/usr/autodesk/bifrost/maya2024/2.7.1.1/bifrost/bin:

/opt/crc/m/maya/2024-2/usr/autodesk/maya2024/bin:

/opt/crc/usr/local/bin:/opt/sge/bin/lx-amd64:

/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr

And my MAYA _PLUG_IN_PATH is

/opt/crc/m/maya/2024-2/usr/autodesk/bifrost/maya2024/2.7.1.1/bifrost/plug-ins:

/opt/crc/m/maya/2024-2/usr/autodesk/bifrost/maya2024/2.7.1.1/vnn/plug-ins:

/opt/crc/m/maya/2024-2/usr/autodesk/arnold/maya2024/plug-ins:

/opt/crc/m/maya/2024-2/usr/autodesk/bifrost/maya2024/2.7.1.1/bifrost/lib  

The command-line render command is:

Render -r arnold -proj /afs/crc.nd.edu/user/j/jslaught/vfx/maya_test_scene/ -s 1 -e 3 -log /afs/crc.nd.edu/user/j/jslaught/vfx/maya_test_scene/renderlog.txt -ai:lve 3 fire.mb 

With the output attached below.   The major red flag for me is this:

00:00:19  1603MB         | initializing 12 nodes
00:00:19  1603MB         |  [bifrost] /flameTorch/flameTorchShape: no graph specified, translating inputs directly instead
00:00:19  1603MB         |  [proc] /flameTorch/flameTorchShape: loaded 0 nodes (0 objects, 0 shaders)

On my other machines, that actually loads some nodes.

I'm at a loss as to why it won't render Bifrost objects.  Nothing stands out as 'wrong" and I'm just trying to render the demo flame.

Help!! 

[sepu6]

Not sure if this would help. I do not use Linux, but the latest version of Bifrost is 2.8.
Also, can you save the graph as .ass and try to render that through the command line and see if that works? 

[macintosh]

Thanks.  I considered 2.8, but figured 2.7 latest would be more stable.  I can try it.

I haven’t tried the .ass files, other than giggling at the ‘kick” command.  I’ll have to dig up the syntax.

[macintosh]

It's not ideal, but yes, exporting the .ass files first and running kick (with a few hoops like a Windows-to-Linux OCIO path override to jump though)  IT WORKED!  Kick finds Bifrost just fine, but the Render command does not.

I'd like to keep troubleshooting this if anyone else has any suggestions though.  Is there an Env Var for Arnold that I need to set?