Wednesday, February 10th, 2016 Posted by Jim Thacker

The Foundry releases Mari Indie 3.0

The Foundry’s video overview of Mari 3.0, released last December. Mari Indie 3.0 gets most of the same new features as the full version, and lifts some of the Indie edition’s limitations on object count and bit depth.


The Foundry has released Mari Indie 3.0, the latest update to the $150 Steam-only edition of its 3D painting package aimed at indie game artists.

The update adds the new functionality from Mari 3.0 itself – including support for OpenSubdiv and expanded rendering and look dev workflows – and relaxes some of the restrictions of the Indie edition.

The update was rolled out last week with relatively little fanfare: we only realised it was out when we spotted a thread about it on Polycount.

Less restricted that the original release, but some limitations remain
As well as the new functionality in Mari 3.0 – for more details of which, check out our original news story – Mari Indie 3.0 lifts some of the original restrictions of the Indie edition.

The number of patches permitted per object increases from 2 to 6, object count itself increases from 3 to 5, and bit-depth from 8-bit to 16-bit.

However, compared to the full version of Mari, it’s still quite heavily limited, with files saved in an encrypted format linked to a user’s Steam account so they can’t be shared with other artists.

In addition, Python scripting is disabled, along with the advanced Node Graph – one of the main focuses in Mari 3.0 itself – and you can’t use either custom plugins or The Foundry’s own Nuke-Mari bridge.

You can read a full list of restrictions in The Foundry’s update notes.

Pricing and availability
Mari Indie 3.0 is available for 64-bit Windows 7+, Linux and Mac OS X 10.8.5+, via Steam only. A new licence costs $149.99 – less than a tenth the price of Mari 3.0 itself – while rental starts at $14.99/month.

At time of writing, launch discounts were available on both subscriptions and bundle deals with sister product Modo Indie 901.

Read a full list of changes in Mari Indie 3.0 on the software’s Steam product page


Updated: As of 2019, Mari Indie remains on Steam, but the 3.0 release will be the last: the Steam edition will not be updated to match the recent Mari 4.x releases. Read the announcement on Foundry’s forum.