Mari releases.
Image courtesy of Michael Wilde
Mari 3.3 Download release notes
Optimized performance and texture management
Enjoy a faster, more satisfying 3D painting experience in Mari 3.3, thanks to several optimizations: faster shader recompilation reduces the lag between painting or layer editing and viewing the final shader; colorspace transformations can now be run on the GPU for significantly faster exporting; and optimized texture management allows you to work with higher levels of complexity without hitting graphics capacity limits.
Marquee Lift Action
Have you ever wanted to make further edits to paint already committed to your model? Now you can, with a new way to lift baked paint back to the paint buffer. Simply define a marquee selection and use the new Lift Action to make the area live again, so that you can manipulate the paint in any way you choose—such as translating, rotating, scaling, warping or ‘slerping’ it.
Mari 2.6 Release notes
Layered shaders
Create effects such as dirt over rust, over paint, over metal with the new ability to layer real-time GLSL shaders in Mari®. With this powerful new workflow, Mari is the ideal tool for look development authoring for modern game engines and production rendering environments.
Environment lighting
Use HDR images to light your Mari scenes and create reflections that accurately replicate the main production rendering or game environment. With the ability to paint in the context of the final lighting, you’ll reduce time-consuming and costly iteration cycles, and produce higher quality results.
Physically based shading
Achieve physically plausible look development results, with an energy-preserving BRDF shading technique. When partnered with the new environment lighting, Mari’s physically based shading lets you closely match modern games engines and renderers—in some cases, pixel for pixel.
Texture transfer
Painting and UV map creation can now happen at the same time with the ability to paint detail with PTEX mapping while another artist finalizes the UV layout. Results can be easily transferred between multiple different layouts and resolutions.
It really is our main workhorse in the texturing department... It's the only package out there that lets you paint on such enormous heaps of geometry without lag. If you're in the Montreal Framestore texture team, 99% of the time, you're on Mari on most shows.
Adam Goldstein, lead texture artist on Blade Runner 2049 at Framestore