Friday, May 26th, 2017 Posted by Jim Thacker

Foundry releases Mari 3.3


Foundry has released Mari 3.3, the latest version of its 3D painting software. The update adds new options for editing paint that has already been committed to a model, and speeds up color space transformations.

In addition, Foundry has introduced a new rental-only individual subscription plan for the software, although perpetual licences also remain available.

New Lift Action for the marquee selection tool; speed boosts for common tasks
New features in Mari 3.3 include a new Lift Action for the marquee selection tool, which makes the paint area live again, making it possible to transform, warp or smudge paint already committed to the model.

There are also a number of performance improvements: color space transformations can now be run on the GPU; shader recompilation has been sped up; and texture management has been improved.

We wrote about the new features in more detail in our original preview of Mari 3.3, along with a sneak peek at Foundry’s upcoming new – and radically decluttered – interface design for the software.

New individual subscription licensing system
The other change in Mari 3.3 is to the licensing system. As with Modo 11, released earlier this year, Foundry has introduced rental-only individual subscriptions alongside the existing perpetual licences.

Pricing is identical to that for Modo 11 – $59/month or $599/year – which, in this case, works out just under a third of the cost of a perpetual licence.

As with Modo, maintenance contracts, which give holders of perpetual licences access to new releases of the software, now cost $399/year, although we’re not sure whether, as with Modo, that cost jumps to $599 if you have let maintenance lapse. We’ve contacted Foundry to check, and will update when we hear back.

Updated 30 May 2017: It doesn’t. Foundry tells us that the Modo and Mari policies for maintenance are “completely separate” and that there is no extra cost for reactivating a lapsed Mari subscription.

Pricing and availability
Mari 3.3 is available for 64-bit Windows 7+, CentOS/RHEL 6 Linux and Mac OS X 10.10.5+. New perpetual licences cost $2,049; other pricing options are discussed in the story above.

Read more about the new features in Mari 3.3 on Foundry’s website

Read Foundry’s FAQs about the new Mari individual subscription plan