Categories Announcements Autodesk Visualization

Autodesk News from SIGGRAPH 2019 – Bifrost for Maya and Autodesk Maya and Max Indie

  • By Shaan
  • Estimated read time 4 min read
  • July 31, 2019

There is a lot going on at SIGGRAPH this week, but two items were big for Autodesk with the release of Bifrost for Maya and then the Indie versions of 3ds Max and Maya.

Introducing Bifrost for Maya
Bifrost – a new visual programming environment in Maya
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“SAN RAFAEL, CALIF – Today Autodesk has just announced Bifrost for Maya, available July 31 with Maya 2019.2. Bifrost makes it possible for 3D artists and technical directors to create serious effects in Maya quickly and easily using a new visual programming environment. SIGGRAPH attendees can visit Autodesk at booth #1211 or participate in Autodesk’s Vision Series, July 30-31 for Maya, Arnold, Shotgun Software, Flame and 3ds Max demos and customer presentations.

“Bifrost for Maya represents a major development milestone for Autodesk, giving artists powerful tools for building feature-quality VFX quickly,” said Chris Vienneau, Sr. Director, Maya and Media & Entertainment Collection. “With visual programming at its core, Bifrost makes it possible for TDs to build custom effects that are reusable across shows. We’re also rolling out an array of ready-to-use graphs to make it easy for artists to get 90% of the way to a finished effect fast. We can’t wait to see what graphs our amazing community will build and share. Ultimately, we hope Bifrost empowers Maya artists to streamline the creation of anything from smoke, fire, and fuzz to high-performance particle systems.”

Bifrost for Maya highlights include:

  • Ready-to-Use Graphs—Artists can quickly create state-of-the-art effects that meet today’s quality demands.
  • One Graph—In a single visual programming graph, users can combine nodes ranging from math operations to simulations.
  • Realistic Previews—Artists can see exactly how effects will look after lighting and rendering right in the Arnold Viewport in Maya.
  • Detailed Smoke, Fire and Explosions—New physically-based solvers for aerodynamics and combustion make it easy to create natural-looking fire effects.
  • The Material Point Method—The new MPM solver helps artists tackle realistic granular, cloth and fiber simulations.
  • High-Performance Particle System—A new particle system crafted entirely using visual programming adds power and scalability to particle workflows in Maya.
  • Artistic Effects with Volumes—Bifrost comes loaded with nodes that help artists convert between meshes, points and volumes to create artistic effects. 
  • Flexible Instancing—High-performance, rendering-friendly instancing empowers users to create enormous complexity in their scenes.
  • Detailed Hair, Fur and Fuzz—Artists can now model things consisting of multiple fibers (or strands) procedurally.”

    • “Bifrost for Maya will be available for download on July 31, 2019 and will work with any version of Maya 2018 or later. It will also be included in the installer for Maya 2019.2 and later versions. Updates to Bifrost between Maya releases will be available for download from Autodesk AREA. More information about Bifrost is available here.”

    Autodesk launched Maya Indie and 3ds Max Indie for $250 per year for full Max and Maya not an LT.

    “Autodesk Maya Indie is the same industry-standard product used by professional studios, at a price point accessible to those who are just starting out. If you are a recent graduate or freelancer with less than USD$100,000/year in revenue, you can get started now. Please note that this is a limited-time offer.”

    “If you are a recent graduate, freelancer, or you just love to make awesome stuff in 3D, you could be eligible to subscribe to 3ds Max Indie. Create like a pro at a price you can afford.  Autodesk 3ds Max Indie is the same industry-standard product used by professional studios, at a price point accessible to those who are just starting out. If you are a recent graduate or freelancer with less than USD$100,000/year in revenue, you can get started now. Please note that this is a limited-time offer.”

    Chip Weatherman Lead Product Owner

    “Offered so far in US, Canada, UK, New Zealand, and Australia. There’s a $100k cap on revenue generated from design work (so if you’re a hobbyist, you may be fine). It is one license of Max or Maya for a year per person or company. It is the full version software. Not an LT or stripped down version. It will auto renew to full price but you can turn off auto-renew & renew with the indie license if you still qualify & we still offer it. This is a pilot program to determine how & where we expand it.”

    About The Author

    Shaan

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