The Foundry Mari 1.3 Released

MARI 1.3 is loaded with great new features to help keep your painting creative whilst helping with workflow and pipeline pain.

WHAT'S NEW IN MARI 1.3?

PTEX Ptex allows you to paint and render models without having to spend time creating complicated UV maps - hooray! It gives the artist complete freedom providing access to texture resolution where and when they need it. In MARI each model face can have textures of up to 8k pixels square - a canvas that will never run out. Our Ptex support is built on MARI's world-class data and rendering engine and draws directly from Walt Disney Animation Studios' paint technology following a ground-breaking agreement with The Foundry.

DISPLACEMENT PREVIEW

Accurately previewing displacement on a model surface is essential to paint accurately and efficiently. Without an immediate view of how a sculpted surface detail will change final appearance, artists are working blind and relying on time consuming static render-outs for review and approval. By combining the power of modern GPU technology and MARI's world leading texture handling system, almost infinite amounts of displacement detail can be displayed in real-time. Simple set-up of displacement textures drive creation of geometry on the fly showing detail that would require many billions of polygons to display in traditional systems.

Snail without displacement

© Model courtesy of Jake Raymor.

Snail with displacement.

© Model courtesy of Jake Raymor.

SNAPSHOTS

Snapshots provide a focused and efficient texture versioning system providing unprecedented flexibility for artists to play with new ideas and to deal with change and variation. Change requests become instant and fluid; no more waiting for files to copy or risk of overwriting the wrong ones and loosing the best work.

Snapshots

© Model courtesy of Universal Pictures and Weta Digital.

TILED TEXTURES

MARI's live tiled texture system brings quick and easy coverage of large surfaces without compromising control. Multiple tiling textures can be combined with masks and remain editable and tweakable right up to the last minute making change quick and simple.

Tiled Textures

© Model courtesy of Universal Pictures and Weta Digital.

ENVIRONMENT MAPPING

Environment maps allow artists to preview shiny, reflective surfaces and to review the final appearance of their textures whilst painting. Environment maps also help to visualise subtle surface changes and highlight subtle details guiding the artist in creative decisions and final work approval.

Environment Mapping

© Model courtesy of Universal Pictures and Weta Digital.

NUKE <> MARI

MARI and NUKE have become great friends. MARI 1.3v2 (due for release at the end of June) brings a new combined workflow to fix common problems found when doing projections such as seaming, stretching and occlusions. Sound interesting? Watch Frank Rueter's video to see how it's going to work and look out for the v2 release.