MARI 3 new features
MODO rendering and baking
Access MODO's advanced photorealistic renderer directly within MARI to check the final-render quality of your work as you paint, helping you iterate faster to achieve the look you want. In addition, you can now use MODO's powerful baking engine to bake textures from within MARI; new baking presets can be created in MODO, offering an extensive range of looks.
OpenSubdiv support
New support for OpenSubdiv geometry in MARI lets you work with subdivision surface (SDS) meshes, without the need to translate or pre-subdivide them. With subdivision surfaces, you can view and work with a more faithful representation of the final rendered smooth surface, and with accurate UV layouts for each level of subdivision.
Color space management
Building on the previous introduction of OpenColorIO, MARI 3 delivers new flexible, artist-friendly color management workflows. With color space properties available on both images and on individual channels of multi-channel images, the requirement to preprocess or post-process images into the correct color space is eliminated, saving time and reducing errors.
Exposed node graph
Advanced users can now create and edit channels and layers in a more powerful, efficient and visual manner with phase one of the exposure of MARI's node graph. As an option to using the traditional layer system to add channels and layers, you can now work directly in the node graph, selecting and connecting nodes to build your final textured surface.
Custom group nodes
With new access to the node graph, advanced users can combine frequently used functions into custom group nodes that appear as a single entity, similar to NUKE's Gizmo feature; you can select which parameters to expose, reducing unnecessary complexity. Gizmos can be exported for use in other projects, or shared with others.
Arnold, V-Ray, Unreal and Redshift shaders
New shaders designed to simulate those used in industry-standard rendering and games engines-Arnold, V-Ray, Unreal and Redshift-let you paint
your textures in their intended final context, providing more realistic previews and giving you the confidence that your textures will work as expected.
FBX geometry support
Work in conjunction with a vast range of third-party and proprietary 3D solutions and source material providers, with new support for reading geometry from the widely adopted FBX format files. With MARI 3, you can view a tree widget of the contents of your FBX file and choose to import either the entire hierarchy or selected child nodes.
Session scripts
New Session Scripts in MARI 3 let you create a lightweight archive of a project that can be combined with other archives, keeping all data intact. The ability to merge projects lets you see assets in context with other assets, share useful data for reuse, or set up project templates.
Rendering integration APIs
MARI 3 delivers four new APIs that help studios integrate MARI with their rendering pipeline, reducing the need to transfer files between applications and resulting in faster iterations and a more accurate understanding of the final context. Potential applications include real-time viewport display, network rendering and texture baking.
Enhanced texture transfer
MARI's Texture Transfer system uses generated point cloud data to transfer textures between two different models, without the need for matching topology or UVs. In MARI 3, you can use this data to generate height and normal maps between high and low polygon models, seamlessly blur across patch boundaries, and correctly transfer overlapping UVs.
Entity locators
Translate, rotate and scale geometry more easily with new Entity Locators. Entity Locators offer a 3D manipulator that improves visual accuracy when transforming geometry inside MARI's viewport using the Move tool.
Safe mode
A new Safe mode in MARI 3 offers easier troubleshooting by isolating the user's involvement and environment issues during debugging. Being able to identify and isolate critical points faster will help resolve issues and improve the customer support process.
Extended access to selection groups
Developers and TDs can now access selection groups through the Python API, allowing them to manipulate various parts of a geometry entity through scripting and to automate related functionality. In addition, artists can now access selection groups directly by clicking on them on the model in the viewer.
MARI 3 System Requirements
Operating System
- Mac OS X 10.8.5 (Mountain Lion) and 10.9.5 (Mavericks)
- Windows 7 64-bit and Windows 8.1 64-bit
- Linux 64-bit (Fedora 12 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4)
Minimum hardware
- Quad-core processor
- 250GB disk space available for caching and temporary files (or a minimum of 50GB if you're working on a small project)
- At least 4GB RAM
- Display with 1680 x 1050 pixel resolution
- An NVIDIA or AMD graphics card with at least 1GB of RAM and OpenGL 3.2 Support
MARI 3 delivers new avenues for pipeline integration and productivity-enhancing workflows that help 3D paint artists iterate faster, manage complexity better and produce higher quality results.
With fully integrated MODO rendering, baking and APIs for developers to integrate their renderer of choice, plus an exposed node graph, and support for industry-standard geometry formats and shaders, MARI 3 is the perfect fit for the most challenging VFX, animation or games production.