Mari releases.

Geo-Channels are slots on objects for storing named mesh specific texture maps, either imported from disk, or exported from the project via Bake Points, Channels, or the Modo Bake Presets. Artists can now dynamically inject their mesh maps directly to the Node Graph or Layerstack, as Geo-Channel Nodes and Layers display the texture map of any Geo-Channel by simply choosing its name.

The Sync on Bake options in Mari’s Bake Point node lets artists share the results of a graph network across your current project to all receiving Geo-Channel nodes. Geo-Channels can be used as a caching point, allowing for complex node sharing all without the mess of shared connections in the Node Graph.

Introducing three varying collapse states for all nodes, for a less visually cluttered Node Graph and greater flexibility. The “Fully Expanded” option shows all the ports as in existing Mari versions, while the “Connected Only” option displays ports that have a connection to another node. The “Fully Collapsed” option hides all the ports, only showing incoming and outgoing connections routing to the node’s title bar. These all allow for a cleaner, more efficient navigation in your node graph.

Mari’s new stream collapsed mode for multi-channel nodes optimizes your space in the node graph by grouping parallel stream connections into a single connection. Reducing the visual clutter of complex graphs, this allows artists to navigate their material driven projects more efficiently. Artists can make a single connection between two multi-stream ports and have all represented stream ports connection under the hood, without the visual chaos.

We’ve re-engineered the autoplace logic to align all upstream nodes into equally spaced columns, with merge node chains forming a backbone along the top of the layout. This improves complex graph layouts making them much easier to follow.

Introducing new Photogrammetry and decal placing workflows. Artists can now connect Locators to drive planar, cylindrical and spherical projections with the Projector node. Mari’s projector cameras can now drive the new Camera Projection nodes to dynamically project camera stills onto your photogrammetry models.

Explore our live generate model curvature, that can be used for model form driven procedural looks.

We’ve added procedurals that use the fBm and Voronoi fractal algorithms to generate organic patterns, as well as a new Marble fractal.

Discover Mari’s new pattern procedurals, including Bricks, Checkerboard, Scratches and Weave. Alongside the new AtlasRandom node, which randomizes an input image which can be used in conjunction with other procedurals.

Explore the improvements we’ve made to Mari’s existing operators, like Add and Multiply that now have default values, you no longer need accompanying Constant nodes. Plus, we’ve introduced a large list of addition operators for your procedural networks, including: Ceil, Distance, Floor, Fract, Length, Mix, Mod, Normalize, Pow, Sqrt and VectorDot.

We’ve introduced some new, useful utility nodes, including the node pair VectorSplit and VectorCombine. These can be used to break apart RGB paint into their components so they can be edited in isolation, and then combined again. As well as, NormalStrength which can intensify or soften normal texture maps.

The new VRayMtl shader reduces the feedback loops between Mari, Maya, and other softwares so artists can paint textures with the assurance their art look correct in the final render.

The new 3Delight Surface Shader gives artists a higher level of confidence in their work when painting textures using the 3Delight render engine in Mari.

You can now customize your generated Material Thumbnails with Mari. In Mari’s preferences you can set your own model, camera and environment to be used. Plus, you can add your own custom Geo-Channels, which can be used for material preset icon generation.

The Material Ingest Tool can now search for a thumbnail on disk, using the new thumbnail naming convention search field, when searching for PBR texture map sets. Using the user’s criteria, it will search for a thumbnail image and, if the requirements match this criteria, the image will be substituted in place of the generated thumbnail.

Generate more complex baseline generated materials with the Ingest Tool, which can now use Custom Material Templates. With customized promoted controls and user driven sub graph networks, this allows for a more bespoke automated creation of material presets. By specifying a valid template material file, the Material Ingest Tool will create a duplicate of the template and inject the found PBR texture maps into its user driven locations in the template material.

The Material Ingest Tool can now display a table of found PBR texture sets, based on the set search criteria in the tool's UI. The new build option allows you to only run the search stage of the ingest process and displays the search results in a pop-up. This allows for faster iteration on PBR naming convention search criteria configuration.