Production pipeline ready
USD improvements
In Mari 7.0, further USD enhancements have been made with a focus on fully revamping our existing USD importer. Artist’s can easily select which variations of an asset they want to work with, making the process more user-friendly and ensuring that artists can carry their assets through the USD pipeline with ease.
USD export- vendor shader support
Expanding on the USD workflows introduced in Mari 5.0, we’ve added USD export support for Arnold and Renderman shaders. This enables users to export one USD look file that contains all of the relevant shader information needed for a look development-ready asset. We want to make USD more accessible to everyone and aim to work with USD more manageable and user-friendly.
USD export- material assignments
In Mari 6.0, we’ve introduced the ability to use Mari’s selection tools to assign materials to the correct USD face set-based location. We’ve removed the need to manually bring your USD look file into your look development DCC and have to use their limited selection tools to re-assign your materials to the correct faces again. Artists can use Mari’s intuitive selection group tools to quickly assign materials to specific areas of their model and ensure these remain correctly assigned within the exported USD look.
Seamless data exchange
Mari offers support for industry-standard formats like FBX, OBJ, Alembic and OpenEXR. Paint subdivision surface models natively in Mari with viewport smoothing driven by OpenSubdiv. No UVs, no problem: Mari supports the Ptex format alternative to UV based texture maps.
OCIO color management
With OpenColorIO (OCIO) support, you can handle color transforms and image display across multiple applications by setting up a single profile to provide consistent colors across the board. Mari’s implementation eliminates the requirement to preprocess or post-process images into the correct color space, saving time and reducing errors. Artists can enjoy WYSIWYG color picking allowing artists to maintain persistent perceptual colors across multiple colorspaces.
Python snippets as shelf items
Discover a simpler way to execute Python Script actions. In Mari 6.0, we’re introducing python snippets as Shelf Items so artists don’t need to install Python Scripts into the Scripts path before launching Mari. This encourages artists to share scripts amongst themselves and across studios in order to get tasks done more efficiently. Pipeline teams can create scripts to help their artists instead of manually having to run the code for them or try to explain how to run a python script. It also means that these scripts can be executed at any point instead of needing to be installed prior to launching Mari in the user's Scripts folder or path.
Pipeline and licensing improvements
Team licensing is now available which enables organization admins to remotely manage the usage of licenses for Mari, to ensure that artists are only using the licenses they need, when they need.
