Convert Bifröst caches to PRT files using a script

You can convert Bifröst user caches (BIF) to PRT particle files by running a wrapper script from your system's terminal window. You can only convert Bifröst caches that contain particle data. These files have _p appended to their file name, for example, bif2prt.sh bifrostLiquidContainer1_p.0001.bif. Cached voxel data cannot be converted to PRT files.

When using the script, you can access flags that let you:

• Specify an output file name.
• Include data from specified channels including, density, position, velocity, and vorticity.

More information about converting Bifröst user caches (BIF) to PRT particle files can be found in the README file located in the plug-ins\bifrost\devkit\bif2prt folder of you Maya installation directory.

Convert files

To start the file conversion, you must run a wrapper script, which calls the bif2prt executable. You cannot convert files by running the bif2prt executable file directly.

1. Open a terminal window and run one of the following scripts from the devkit\bif2prt\bin folder of your systems Maya 2016 installation directory:
   • For Windows OS, type

      <installation path>\plug-ins\bifrost\devkit\bif2prt\bin\bif2prt.bat -f <filename>

   • For Mac OS, type

     /<installation path>/plug-ins/bifrost/devkit/bif2prt.sh -f <filename>

   • For Linux OS, type:

       /<installation path>/plug-ins/bifrost/devkit/bif2prt.sh -f <filename>

2. (Optional) You can specify an output PRT file name by adding the -o flag, instead of -f and then specify the file name at the end of your command. For example:

   <installation path>\plug-ins\bifrost\devkit\bif2prt\bin\bif2prt.bat -o <filename>  <output filename>

Specifying data channels

You can use the following flags with the wrapper script command to specify which data channels you want included in the converted file:

• -d for density
• -pos for position
• -vel for velocity
• -vor for vorticity

Related topics

• Compute and Cache Options