ButterFlight is a Maya plugin (.mll) that lets animators and technical directors generate realistic butterfly flight animations using the force-based model proposed by Chen et al. The approach combines simplified aerodynamic lift/drag forces with a curl-noise vortex force to produce the erratic, noisy trajectories characteristic of real butterflies, including wing-abdomen interaction and dynamic body posture adjustments. Designed for VFX artists and TDs in film, games, and virtual environments, ButterFlight replaces tedious hand-keyed animation with a physically-inspired procedural simulation controlled through MEL-scripted UI panels. Typical uses include ambient butterfly swarms, hero shots along artist-specified paths, and wind interaction effects. The tool outputs keyframed skeletal animation on rigged butterfly meshes, exportable via Alembic or FBX.
Team Members: Cecilia Chen and Yiding Tian
SigGraph Paper: "A Practical Model for Realistic Butterfly Flight Simulation," Qiang Chen, Tingsong Lu, Yang Tong, Guoliang Luo, Xiaogang Jin, and Zhigang Deng, ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), 2022.
- Autodesk Maya 2026 (installed at
C:/Program Files/Autodesk/Maya2026) - Visual Studio 2022 with the Desktop Development with C++ workload
- CMake 3.25 or later
cmake -S . -B build -G "Visual Studio 17 2022" -A x64
cmake --build build --config ReleaseThe compiled plugin lands at build/bin/Release/butterFlight.mll.
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In Maya 2026, open the Plug-in Manager and load
butterFlight.mll. -
In the Script Editor, run:
source "path/to/src/mel/butterFlight_ui.mel";The ButterFlight panel will open automatically.