Uploaded September 2023 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago

---

Jason discusses some of the special considerations for rendering volumes, and the trade-off between Bifrost's tile tree and OpenVDB's sparse volume format. Expand this description for download links and more.

00:00 - Intro
00:07 - Rendering volumes
00:27 - Load the example
00:58 - Final tab and output
01:30 - Diagnostics
02:00 - Adaptive and sparse volumes
03:20 - VDB tile tree example
03:50 - The VDB tradeoff and "baking"
05:10 - Bob and Bifrost vs VDB
05:45 - The tile tree
07:15 - The rendering begins
07:50 - Rendering in Arnold
08:15 - Render settings
10:20 - Volumes are big and heavy and difficult
10:30 - Render settings comparison
13:50 - VDB rendering

Download the scenes, compounds, slides, lesson plans and other files to follow along or adapt for your own curriculum: areadownloads.autodesk.com/wdm/maya/bifrost_bootcamp_lesson_4_files.zip

OpenVDB plug-in for Unreal: eidosmontreal.com/news/adding-openvdb-support-to-unreal