Check out Muhammad Etman’s Maya/Clarisse Bridge Tool 2.0
Originally posted on 29 January 2019. Scroll down for news of the commercial release.
Muhammad Etman, FX TD at Egyptian VFX house Aroma Studios, has posted an interesting demo video of Maya/Clarisse Bridge Tool, his upcoming app for exporting Maya scenes to Clarisse iFX.
Export Maya geometry, shaders, lights and cameras direct to Clarisse iFX
The tool enables users to export Maya scenes directly to Clarisse iFX, rather than having to use an intermediate file format like Alembic.
It doesn’t create a live link between the two applications, but after the export is set up, updating the Clarisse scene is a one-click process.
The process supports geometry, shaders, textures, lights and animated cameras, with support for per-component shaders and the UDIM UV layout format.
Scenes are automatically converted between the standard scale units, co-ordinate settings and color spaces used in the two host applications during export.
Assets using Arnold’s Standard Surface shader are converted to Clarisse iFX’s Disney principled shader: a process described by Etman as “pretty much one-to-one conversion”.
Updated 24 December 2019: Muhammad Etman has released version 2.0 of the Maya/Clarisse Bridge Tool.
The update improves performance, with real-time updates to lights and shaders: Etman says that the process of querying shaders is now “4-5x faster” than the original release.
In addition, the bridge now supports Alembic data, which also makes it possible to transfer animation, “including multiple shape objects [like] Skin Clusters”.
Export should also now preserve the hierarchies of all object types.
System requirements and availability
Maya/Clarisse Bridge Tool 2.0 is compatible with Clarisse iFX 3.6 SP7+. It costs $70.
Read more about the Maya/Clarisse Bridge Tool in Muhammad Etman’s Gumroad store
Watch a workflow overview video showing how the Maya/Clarisse Bridge Tool works