From the course: Maya 2018: Bifröst Fluids

Setting scene preferences - Maya Tutorial

From the course: Maya 2018: Bifröst Fluids

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Setting scene preferences

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- [Instructor] If you're using the Exercise Files that I provided with the course, then those scenes are already set up to be compatible with Bifrost at its default settings. But if you're starting fresh from a new scene using your own assets, you need to pay special attention to the scene settings, particularly scale and frame rate. Let's go into the preferences. Windows, Settings Preferences, Preferences. In the categories, go to Settings. And be aware that, by default, these settings affect the current scene only. If you want to affect all future scenes, you set that up from another menu, which is over here in File, New Scene, Options. Back to the current scene preferences for the general application preferences here, we want to leave the working units at centimeters. And the reason for this is because we want to create a 1/100 scale model. That is what Bifrost, and in fact all dynamics in Maya, assume and expect. All dynamics in Maya assume that a system unit is a meter. But by leaving this linear working units at centimeters, you can build your scene as if a system unit is a meter, and you'll get a 1/100 scale model. To use Bifrost with other scales, you can do that by adjusting the fluid density and the gravity magnitude in the liquid properties node. You also want to change the time base here to match the movie that we're creating. Going to set this to 30 frames per second. Let's go to the time slider. Change the playback start to one and then the playback end to 360. Also set the animation end to 360. Scroll down a little bit in the playback section. We want the playback speed to play every frame. We do not want to use any other setting here, because we want to make sure that we don't skip any frames. If we did, that would invalidate our Bifrost simulation. Playback speed should be play every frame. And then the max playback speed, let's constrain it to the current time base of 30 frames per second times one. In the update view section, let's set that to all so that the Bifrost simulation will run and be visible in all the views. Click Save to save the preferences. And let's also enable the frame rate in the viewport. Go to the Display menu, choose Heads Up Display, enable Frame Rate. And it will be accurate in a full screen display. If you're looking at more than one panel at a time, then this may not necessarily be entirely accurate. Those are the essential scene settings, and in particular the scale settings for Bifrost simulation with default properties. Again, Bifrost and dynamics in Maya assume that a scene unit is a meter, and that means we need to build our scene at a 1/100 scale model. Simply leave the working units at centimeters, but assume that a scene unit or a grid unit is a meter. And that's how to build a scene compatible with Bifrost at default settings.

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