Install Bifrost Extension for Maya

Bifrost Extension for Maya is a plug-in that is released separately from Maya, in addition to being included with Maya.

• The Maya installer includes the version of Bifrost that was current at the time of the Maya release.
• Additional updates of Bifrost are available for download at the AREA. These include updated versions of Bifrost for earlier releases of Maya.

The Bifrost Extension for Maya installer includes the following:

• A node-based environment where you can build procedural graphs to create effects such as sand, fire, smoke, and explosions.
• Bifrost Fluids, a procedural framework that can create simulated liquid and aerodynamic effects using a FLIP (fluid implicit particle) solver.
• BOSS, the Bifrost Ocean Simulation System.
• bifcmd, a command line tool that executes Bifrost graphs exported from the node-based environment.

Bifrost Extension for Maya is compatible with Maya 2018, Maya 2019, Maya 2020 and their respective update releases.

If you already use Bifrost Fluids and BOSS, you can continue to use these features with Bifrost Extension for Maya.

When installing Maya 2020 and above, Maya 2019.2 Update and above, and Maya 2018.7, Bifrost Extension for Maya is automatically included with the Maya installer. For all previous versions of Maya, visit the AREA to obtain your installer.

Legacy scenes that include Bifrost Fluids

When loading legacy scenes that include Bifrost Fluids, you may see an error as follows:

// Warning: Bifrost: to use the updated Bifrost graphs in Maya, graph |bifrostLiquid1|bifrostLiquidContainer1 needs to be updated to the latest version, call mel script: replaceBifrostFXGraphsWithFactoryGraphs |bifrostLiquid1|bifrostLiquidContainer1 ; //

// Error: bifrostLiquidContainer1: Emitters: Could set input port value. Failed to set input parameter Emitters //

// Error: Bifrost evaluation error //

To resolve the issue, execute the MEL command as indicated by the message. For example, if the liquid node is called bifrostLiquid1, run the command as follows:

replaceBifrostFXGraphsWithFactoryGraphs |bifrostLiquid1|bifrostLiquidContainer1 ; 

Installing Bifrost to a custom location on the network

1. Copy your installation directory, ../Bifrost/<MayaVersion>/<BifrostVersion>, to your custom location.
2. Set the MAYA_MODULE_PATH environment variable to CustomPath/Bifrost/<MayaVersion>/<BifrostVersion>.

When selecting a custom location, you should avoid installing Bifrost Extension within the plug-ins directory of your Maya installation. Otherwise, you may encounter errors such as getFullyQualifiedNameEv, Amino11NamedEntity7getNameEv, and AminoNamedEntity. In addition, the following is an example of errors you may see on Linux:

../lib/libBifrostBoardExec_1_0.so: undefined symbol: _ZNK5Amino11NamedEntity7getNameEv (bifrostGraph) // 

../scripts/others/pluginWin.mel line 290: Unable to dynamically load : .../bifrost/plug-ins/bifrostshellnode.so

../lib/libbifrostmayaconversion_1_0.so: undefined symbol: _ZNK5Amino11NamedEntity21getFullyQualifiedNameEv (bifrostshellnode) // 

In general, you may want to install Bifrost Extension to a location outside of your Maya installation directory.