The Foundry releases Mari 1.4v3

Kulsoom Middleton | News | Products | 22/03/2012 14:44pm

The Foundry releases Mari 1.4v3, with new features such as linked patches, Mari paint through tool, new stencil and tint modes, and more. Catch the new features showcase video here too

Leading visual effects software developer The Foundry announces the release of Mari 1.4.

Designed from the ground up to meet the needs of the most demanding VFX texture and matte painting artists, MARI is a 3D digital paint tool that simplifies artist workflow.

Capable of handling vast numbers of pixels, MARI eclipses other 3D paint tools in speed, flexibility and processing capabilities. MARI allows artists to concentrate on painting detailed, multi-layered textures directly onto 3D models in a fluid and natural way.

Introducing Adobe Photoshop layered PSD import and export, industry standard colour management with OpenColorIO and triplanar projection, Mari 1.4 speeds up and simplifies workflow.

With Mari 1.4 artists can paint detailed, multi-layered textures directly onto 3D models, solve commonplace VFX problems, save time, and work in ways never thought possible before.

Mari has been widely adopted across the industry at leading film studios and post-production houses including Sony Picture Imageworks, DreamWorks, ILM, Pixar and Digital Domain to name a few.

Hayden Jones, VFX Supervisor at Rushes said: “Using MARI to paint was a revelation! It’s immensely quick and intuitive. Mari allowed me to concentrate on the getting the artistic look right, without having to get bogged down in technicalities.”

Rob Bredow, Chief Technology Officer at Sony Picture Imageworks adds: “MARI streamlines our artist workflows on our most complicated assets. It is the latest addition to our pipeline as we provide artists with the right, innovative tools to meet any creative challenge.”

Mari 1.4 is available immediately and runs on Windows and Linux. It supports Ptex, Python OpenEXR, and C API.

Mari 1.4 is priced at $1,980/ £1,200 with maintenance costing $330/£200.

Best bits

Linked patches – Easily replicate texture data across patches without having to cut and paste
Fully customizable navigation – Remap your Mari experience to meet your needs and choose from styles, including Nuke, Autodesk Maya, Side Effects Houdini
Rotation in the UV View – Line things up perfectly and save poor aching wrists
New Tint and Stencil mode – Easily lay down decals, using the Mari Paint Through tool
Cancel operations – Cancel long-running operations at the touch of a button
Performance – Shader baking performance has been improved (5x-10x faster)
User Defined Filter Pre-sets – Remember those common tasks
Lots of PTex updates – Workflow improvements directly from production
Plus many more great feature additions and fixes

New features video

This two-minute video showcases the new features now available in Mari 1.4v3. Covering linked patches, Mari paint through tool, new stencil and tint modes and much more.

For more information, visit The Foundry

Posted on Thursday, March 22nd, 2012 at 2:44 pm under News, Products. You can subscribe to comments. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.