LOS ANGELES — At SIGGRAPH 2015, The Foundry (www.thefoundry.co.uk) is demonstrating Mari 3, the latest version of its 3D paint package. Mari is well suited for texturing and look development, particularly in the VFX, animation and games industries. Version 3 combines productivity enhancing features with broader and tighter pipeline integration. This includes an exposed node graph for advanced users and integration with the rendering and baking capabilities of Modo, the company’s 3D content creation solution.
“Fitting into the pipeline or creative lifecycle in which an artist works is just as important as enabling artists to create beautiful 3D painted and textured content,” explains Jack Greasley, head of new technologies at The Foundry. “Therefore, Mari 3 continues The Foundry’s commitment to addressing not only what artists need to do but how and where they do it. This includes seamless integration with third parties, open APIs, and support for industry standards.”
Mari 3 brings support for widely used shaders, such as Unreal, as well as for OpenSubdiv geometry. Within the games market, more AAA and indie game developers have adopted Mari to create the cinematic quality characters and experiences required in today’s successful games.
Prior to the release of Mari, 3D paint solutions could only handle a small handful of textures at one time. Now, with Mari, artists can create and edit thousands of high-resolution textures, freeing them to concentrate on their art rather than technical details.
New features in Mari 3 include: Modo rendering and baking (pictured); exposed node graph and Gizmos; OpenSubdiv support; color space management; Arnold, V-Ray, Unreal and Redshift shaders; FBX geometry support; session scripts; developer APIs; enhanced texture transfer; entity locators; safe mode; and extended access to selection groups.
MARI 3 will be commercially available in Q3 2015.