Is there plans to be able to render Bifrost outputs without using USD? If I recall, currently USD has been the only way to render in Vray so far?
There is a RenderSDK in the works for Bifrost. But i fear it has low priority. And maybe it will be based on Hydra.
Until than USD is the only way.
ok, perhaps I’ll make learning it a low priority also. It seems to have a steep learning curve and will take some time to become familiar. Im not sure what you mean by “based on Hydra”. I feel like it’d also be a better use of time to try learning Houdini again, since it does have Vray, and also is just superior to Bifrost also.
You can also use the Vray procedurals for now as well.
Hydra is a connection layer between a scene graph and a renderer. Its developed by pixar. Houdini Solaris is using it for example.
As Vray in Houdini is already a Hydra compilant it should be easy to support Bifrost Hydra.
For the moment, going through USD is the approach that works.
To support it in V-Ray directly, we would need a rendering SDK or a stable public API from Bifrost.
I started a post over at the Autodesk forum - perhaps you want to head over to like and comment:
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/bifrost-forum/bifrost-vray-request/td-p/11845765
Hi Yolov, are there any signs from Autodesk that this is coming soon? I’d love to be able render bifrost particles with Vray with some artist-friendly shading, but at the moment it seems pretty impossible.
Not at the moment, unfortunately, no.
I have the feeling that the tender SDK is not a priority for Autodesk. There is to much other stuff missing in Bifrost.