Maya 2016: Bifröst Fluids
Maya 2016: Bifröst Fluids is an Advanced level course on 3D + Animation, written by the author, Aaron F. Ross. This course is a critical foundation for a person who needs to get better at his/her 3D + Animation talent. It gives you a thorough grip on 3D + Animation, CAD, Photography, Video, Particles + Dynamics, Rendering, Visual Effects, Maya, 3D + Animation, CAD, Photography, Video, Particles + Dynamics, Rendering, Visual Effects and Maya.
Bifröst is a fluid dynamics engine for high-quality liquids in visual effects, combining the best of volumetric and particle solvers in one tool. This course offers an overview of the Bifröst implementation in Autodesk Maya. Using emitter, collider, accelerator, and liquid property nodes, Aaron F. Ross simulates a medium-scale liquid effect and stores it to disk as a cache. Rendering the surface at full quality requires generating an animated polygon mesh; for a convincing layered material, he shows how to extract Bifröst channel data such as Vorticity and apply it in a shading network. The course concludes with a look at the Aero Solver for atmospheric effects.
Topics include:
- Understanding Bifröst
- Analyzing the node structure
- Emitting from a polygon mesh
- Colliding with objects
- Pushing and damping fluid motion with accelerators
- Caching Bifröst simulations
- Meshing liquid and exporting to Alembic
- Shading with the Bifröst liquid material
- Designing mental ray materials
- Layering shaders with Bifröst channel data
- Adding mist with an Aero simulation
- Texturing an Aero material