The Foundry ships Mari 1.4
The Foundry has updated Mari, its increasingly industry-standard 3D painting tool.
For most artists, the main addition to version 1.4 will probably be support for import and export of layered Photoshop PSD files, although The Foundry has also added support for the Sony Pictures Imageworks-developed colour management standard OpenColorIO and triplanar texture projection.
Originally developed at Weta during work on Avatar, Mari is now in use at studios including Industrial Light & Magic, Pixar, Digital Domain and DreamWorks Animation.
PRESS RELEASE (Excerpts)
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.
Originally developed to cope with the most ambitious VFX films of our time and enhanced by The Foundry, MARI easily fits into your current pipeline and will adapt to deliver on often unforeseen production requirements.
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.
Download a 15-day trial of Mari 1.4 (registration required)