Nuke developer turns Mari, Weta Digital’s in-house painting toolset, into commercial product. Read issue 129 for full details
Aspiring texture artists will soon be able to create work using the same tools as Avatar, thanks to a new partnership between Weta Digital and The Foundry. The deal, announced today, will see the software developer release Mari, Weta’s in-house paint package, as a commercial product.
The application, named after ‘Maridadi’, the Swahili word for ‘beautiful’, is a fully featured texturing and look-development toolset. The Foundry aims to release the product commercially in June as a 64-bit Linux edition, with Windows and OS X releases to follow later in the year. The retail price is expected to be £500 ($750).
In addition to a standard 3D painting toolset, including the option to work directly on the model or in UV mode, and layer support, Mari contains a range of tools for applying pre-shot reference material to the surface of a 3D model, including a freeform warp tool, liquefy options and a healing brush.
More significantly, the software also offers animation support, enabling texture painters to create effects that would previously have been the preserve of dedicated shader artists – for example, by painting in the contacts as two objects collide – and a toolset for authoring GLSL surface shaders.
A complete look dev toolset
Weta describes the resulting product as a toolset for the wider look development process as opposed to merely texture painting.
The studio estimates that VFX artists will be able to do “60 to 70 per cent” of the look-development process in Mari without the need to move to RenderMan; and that games artists should be able to carry out the full look dev cycle within the software.
In addition to its innovative feature set, Mari is optimised to handle large production models. The developers currently categorise a “big asset” as 150GB or higher, and note that this figure will almost certainly rise to Terabtyes within a few years.
Although the software seems certain to appeal to other VFX studios, only time will tell whether The Foundry can successfully promote Mari outside its existing client base, particularly in a market sector that includes such established players as ZBrush, BodyPaint 3D and Mudbox.
A longer version of this story, including exclusive interviews with The Foundry and Jack Greasley, lead developer of Mari, appears in issue 129 of 3D World.
