Bifrost 2.5.1.0 Release Notes
Bifrost 2.5.1.0 is a feature release with new capabilities, performance improvements, and bug fixes. It is available for Maya 2020, 2022, and 2023 from the Autodesk Accounts Portal. See Bifrost for Maya Compatibility for more information.
Backward Compatibility Warnings
Bifrost 2.5.1.0 contains no changes that break backward-compatibility compared to the previous version.
Arnold and USD Compatibility Information
Bifrost 2.5.1.0 works with the following:
Bifrost content created from the procedural graph can also be rendered with Arnold for Maya (MtoA) version 4.0.0 or later. The most recent version of MtoA is recommended for the latest features, bug fixes and performance improvements. See Bifrost for Maya Compatibility for information about compatible versions of Maya and Arnold.
To obtain the latest Arnold for Maya installer, visit the Autodesk Accounts portal.
The first version of Bifrost that introduced Bifrost USD is 2.4.0.0. All versions of MayaUSD (available on github https://github.com/Autodesk/maya-usd/releases) that use USD 21.11 are compatible with Bifrost USD. Older versions of MayaUSD can be installed alongside Bifrost, but Bifrost USD functionality will not be available.
Release Highlights
Bifrost-USD improvements
Bifrost 2.5.1.0 includes new Bifrost-USD nodes for binding materials and working with collections. The new shading and collection nodes are:
- get_material_path
- bind_material
- unbind_material
- get_or_create_collection
- get_all_collections_names
- get_includes_paths
- get_excludes_paths
Note that the assign_usd_material node has been replaced by bind_material, which has additional ports for specifying the material's purpose and binding it to collections. Old scenes with graphs containing assign_usd_material still work; however, you can no longer create this node using the Tab menu.
See the What's Fixed list below for improvements to other USD nodes.
Improved browser graphs
The gradient_avection, grass_wind, and point_invection browser graphs have been improved.
Low-overhead evaluation for fast graphs
Graphs such as those used for animation rigs, whose only inputs and outputs are numeric values or very light geometry like a curve, are faster to evaluate.
Changes in Detail
| Known Issues and Limitations |
|---|
| BIFROST-3144 Aero: Blue flame tile artifact when exporting and viewing combustion rate Tile or voxel artifacts may sometimes appear in blue flame (combustion rate). |
| BIFROST-822 Aero: Sourcing from a volume sometimes creates ghost voxels around emitter Occasionally, some ghost emissions may occur outside of the aero source geometry. |
| BIFROST-3150 Aero: combustion soot sometimes pulsates Occasionally a combustion simulation will produce soot which pulsates too much. |
| BIFROST-7568 Arnold-Bifrost: Strands don't render property when some strands have only 1 point |
| BIFROST-7091 Arnold-Bifrost: remaining delay to start first Arnold session due to Bifrost loading in Arnold |
| BIFROST-3762 Backdrops: Annotations should support unicode |
| BIFROST-2279 Encapsulation: Creating a compound out of a node that is auto-looped may change graph behavior |
| BIFROST-3024 Errors: When using write nodes such as the write_OpenVDB node, the node's success port always returns "true" even when writing fails Workaround: Ensure that your folder and file names are valid when writing. |
| BIFROST-6951 File IO: File browser does not automatically add file extensions (.abc, .vdb, .usd, etc.) on Linux |
| BIFROST-3626 File IO: Write/dump nodes do not work with non-ASCII characters in file path |
| BIFROST-5339 Graph Shape: Converting from graph shape to DG loses its material assignment if connected to Terminals |
| BIFROST-5509 Graph Shape: In-graph material assignments don't display in viewport when no material is assigned in Maya |
| BIFROST-7304 Interaction: Cannot enter very large long or unsigned long values in parameter editor such as numeric max If you wish to use a numeric max sentinel value, use a value node connected to "numeric_max" to compute the desired value in the graph. |
| BIFROST-3028 Materials: Input meshes will not have a material assigned if it has per-face shading, first material found is not used Per-face shading in input meshes is not supported at this time. |
| BIFROST-5927 Maya Plug-in: 2D array input values from skin cluster are not correct Per-influence weights and weight list nested arrays do not work when connected as a whole to 2D float array ports. However the per-influence weights sub-arrays can be connected to 1D array ports and work correctly. |
| BIFROST-2334 Maya Plug-in: Bifrost plug-in should unload and reload cleanly Unloading and re-loading Bifrost plug-ins within the same session of Maya causes instability and other issues. |
| BIFROST-3070 Maya Plug-in: BifrostGraph plug-in should load automatically when clicking the Shelf icons If this error appears when you click the Bifrost Graph Editor or Bifrost Browser buttons on the Shelf: // Error: line 1: Cannot find procedure "openBifrostGraphEditorFromSelection". You need to load the bifrostGraph plug-in. Do this by selecting Windows > Settings/Preferences > Plug-in Manager. |
| BIFROST-7377 Maya Plug-in: Material assignments are translated as selection sets when meshes are brought into the graph, slowing down translation To workaround the issue, assign the default material to the meshes, which will prevent translation of shading groups as selection sets, speeding up translation. 1. Select all polySurface meshes in Maya 2. RMB in viewport > Assign Existing Material > lambert1 |
| BIFROST-2997 Maya Plug-in: On graph inputs, changing port types loses inputs and exposing ports do not maintain values |
| BIFROST-2330 Maya Plug-in: Scene loading doesn't trigger the vnn plug-in to load in mayapy Bifrost will still work in mayapy, but the VNN plug-in will not load automatically and therefore the VNN Python commands will not work. Workaround: To use VNN commands in mayapy, load the plug-in using the loadPlugin command first. |
| BIFROST-4447 Maya Plug-in: UV changes do not always update the graph |
| BIFROST-3551 Module paths starting with "///" are parsed incorrectly as "//" by Maya and Bifrost |
| BIFROST-1655 Node library: Conversion nodes do not behave correctly if the input is the same type as the output |
| BIFROST-3272 Publishing: "not a valid Amino JSON file" error appears if library config json file is in the search path |
| BIFROST-2532 Publishing: Cannot type in namespace field if there is an error, loses focus with each keystroke Workaround: Temporarily change the name of the compound in the publishing editor to remove the error, edit the namespace, then change the name back. |
| BIFROST-4911 Publishing: Re-publishing with renamed output port results in unfixable graph When re-publishing, if output ports are renamed and those ports are connected inside the graph in question, it can cause a corrupted connection to that graph. Reloading the scene will allow you to fix it. |
| BIFROST-2767 Publishing: Republishing is blocked in cases of signature change and no auto ports Workaround: Add a new port, re-publish the compound, then delete the new port, and re-publish again. This works because it only blocks in very specific cases of signature changes. |
| BIFROST-2729 Simulation: Slow simulation bounds performance Simulation bounds still lacks certain performance improvements. |
| BIFROST-5200 Terminals: Errors whenever the graph shape is selected When selecting a graph shape in Maya 2020.0, you may see an error message such as "Error: <function selCom at 0x7f29c5c04aa0>". This is fixed in Maya 2020.1 or higher. |
| BIFROST-2604 VP2 Meshes: Face-vertex, face, strand, component and constant user data don't work in the viewport |
| BIFROST-5052 VP2 Volume: Aero fails to render with "Alpha Cut" Viewport 2.0 Transparency Algorithm |
| BIFROST-4668 VP2 Volume: DX11 mode Aero renders pink |
| BIFROST-2353 VP2 Volume: Fail to render in Viewport 2.0's OpenGL Legacy mode (only a white cube appears) |
| BIFROST-5515 VP2 Volume: Levelset/density volumes don't display with multisample anti-aliasing (MSAA) and DirectX |
| BIFROST-2573 VP2 Volume: Volumes should draw correctly with default material enabled In addition, volumes and other bifShapes don't draw correctly if Use Default Material is enabled for Viewport 2.0. |
| BIFROST-3278 VP2: Bifrost geometry displays with texture even in non-textured shaded mode |
| BIFROST-3383 VP2: Maya Bounding box override on bif shapes only works on volumes and not other geometries |
| BIFROST-6036 Volume VP: Blackbody does not match between Arnold and Viewport due to color management rendering space Viewport previews that involve black-body radiation are inaccurate if the primaries of the rendering space are different from the display space. |
| BIFROST-1982 Volume VP: Multiple volumes in the viewport don't always render with correct transparency order |
| BIFROST-1593 Watchpoints: Not removable after port type change |
| BIFROST-5033 Watchpoints: data inside for-each is not deterministic |