Foam not Rendering in Arnold

[Anonymous]

I was following a tutorial on Youtube that used Maya 2017 and ran into a roadblock when I realized the Bifrost foam was not rendering. I made a clean scene and imported one of the Bifrost examples, added foam, and applied an aiStandardVolume but no matter what I seem to do I can't get any foam to show up at all. The foam is visible in the viewport, I changed the material settings to use the density variable, pumped up the foam particle emission, increased the particle size by a lot but the renders stay totally blank while the meshed liquid looks as expected.

To summarize all I was doing was adding foam to the stock ocean shoreline example and then applying aiStandardVolume via "assign material to viewport selection" with the foam1 selected. Which according to every post I've read should work, but I'm getting nothing... If someone could show me a scene setup where the foam is rendering? I follow exactly every step on the Autodesk videos, but they get foam appearing in render like it should!

I'm currently using Maya 2018.6 and just updated to the most recent release of Bifrost. Any help would be greatly appreciated, I'm by no means an FX artist and just wanted to create very simple crashing ocean waves for a project I'm working on. Thanks in advance!

[syracoj]

Attached is a basic demo video. Hope it helps.

[Anonymous]

Wow, thanks for the great and clear video! I understand better now how Arnold is working with the Bifrost particles. The only problem now is, I followed every step but when I hit render, I am getting this error:

// Error: Bifrost to Arnold package not installed in C:/Program Files/Autodesk/bifrost/1.5.0/Arnold-5.2.0.0/bin // 
// Error: [mtoa.translator]   bifrostTranslator: Arnold node type bifrost_points does not exist. // 

 I navigated to that path and found that it is  C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Bifrost\1.5.0\Arnold-5.0.0.0
There seems to be nothing wrong with the contents inside

I see this problem has cropped up for other people when searching, but I couldn't really understand if or how it was resolved. It seems that Maya is looking for a previous version of Arnold or Bifrost to Arnold? I'm not quite sure how to resolve this, if you could help that would be awesome.

[syracoj]

The error details that it can't find:

// Error: Bifrost to Arnold package not installed in C:/Program Files/Autodesk/bifrost/1.5.0/Arnold-5.2.0.0/bin //

yet you navigated to:
 C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Bifrost\1.5.0\Arnold-5.0.0.0
which is not Arnold-5.2.0.0 like the error suggests.

Please provide me with the versions of Maya, Bifrost, and Arnold that you are using.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for getting back to me, I'm currently using Maya 2018.6 , Bifrost 2.1.0.0, and Arnold MtoA 3.1.2.1 (Arnold Core 5.2.2.1). 

[syracoj · Accepted solution]

Yes, Looks like you may need to update your MtoA

The Bifrost 2.1.0.0 release page lists Arnold requirements as:

Arnold Compatibility Information

• Arnold for Maya (MtoA) version 3.2.2 is the minimum supported version for the rendering of Bifrost content created from the procedural graph.
• The most recent version of MtoA is recommended for the latest bug fixes and performance improvements. In particular, note that some features of Bifrost 2.0.4.0 and higher are not supported by versions of MtoA prior to 4.0.0.
• MtoA version 4.0.0 or higher may only be used with Bifrost 2.0.3.0 or higher on Maya 2020, and Bifrost 2.0.4.0 or higher on Maya 2018 and Maya 2019.

taken from:

http://help.autodesk.com/view/BIFROST/ENU/?guid=Bifrost_ReleaseNotes_release_notes_release_notes_2_1...

[Anonymous]

Oh my god! It WORKS!! I'm so relieved, and a bit annoyed at myself for it being such a simple solution haha. I went and downloaded MtoA 4.0.0.0 for Maya 2018 and Bifrost Extension 2.1.0.0 for Maya (also made sure to remove older versions through Windows uninstall to be sure).

I loaded one of the Bifrost examples, added a foam to the liquid, then applied the aiStandardVolume per the video you linked, which did the trick. 

Thanks so much for your help, I hope this thread can help out anyone else that runs into the same problem!

[bimmubhai]

Maya version is 2018.7

Arnold version is 4.2.1.1

Bifrost plugin version is 2.0.5.1

Both Liquid and areo are not rendering , while it's visible in viewport..

[yeungy]

Hello bimmubhai,

Would it be possible for you to upgrade your Bifrost? MtoA 4.2.x (and above) is only supported with Bifrost 2.2.0.2 and above. Please see this chart for more details - https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/learn-explore/caas/simplecontent/content/bifrost-extensi...

Is this an option for you?

Thanks!

[bimmubhai]

Thanks, updating the Bifrost plugin worked.