Mari 4.5 offers the best of both worlds: we are empowering artists to create high-volume assets far more rapidly and cost-effectively, while also giving them access to the beloved package they are used to, to create complex hero assets.
Mari 4.5 brings a transformative update to the toolset - a new Materials System. Previously, Mari has excelled in creating high quality hero assets. Now, in addition to this formidable painting power, artists have the ability to quickly and easily create less complex, higher-volume assets. The new workflow enables artists to rapidly block out the look of an asset using material presets, without having to start from scratch. They can then use all of the detail-painting power of Mari to weather and finish the final art direction, giving them the best of both worlds in one application.
It’s now much easier to share isolated material set ups across your team for use on new projects. Everything needed to replicate the material gets bundled up, along with source images, into a single file. This can then be passed across to whoever needs it, and they can start working with the material in a few clicks, saving time and eliminating the need to go hunting for files on the network.
Found the perfect PBR texture set for your asset? Mari now allows artists to quickly import and convert any set of texture maps into a Mari material preset. The Material Ingest Tool creates the presets, sets up the controls, and loads everything into the Mari shelf ready to use, allowing you to continually grow your material library. That means you can use thousands of PBR texture sets through Mari with very little effort.
For artists who like to work using a layer stack approach, the new Materials workflow has been integrated into Mari’s existing Layer system, allowing for smoother adoption of the Materials System. Material files are applied to a project through simple layering, allowing artists to control the material properties, visibility of each component, and global material visibility, from a single area of the interface. Achieving the specific look you need - such as dust over paint over metal - is now easy and straightforward.
Want to make channel-specific adjustments, like tweaking color hue, without affecting all previous layers in the stack? We’ve extended the multi-channel behaviors to a new group layer feature, allowing artists to modify material streams independently of the rest of the layers in the channel. This offers more creative freedom while maintaining full control on the look you’re trying to achieve.
A new shader allows artists that use the Arnold render engine to paint textures in Mari with a higher degree of confidence that their art will look correct in the final render, reducing feedback loops between Mari and Katana. This shader has been authored and contributed by the Autodesk team behind Arnold.
The node graph is Mari’s powerhouse, and we’ve updated it to enable more controlled complexity than was previously possible. These improvements will make it easier to wield the Node Graph and harness its potential.
Groups nodes now support multiple output ports for additional arbitrary data streams, unlocking more complex workflows. It's now easier to create knobs for gizmos or materials with in-line property promotion; artists can intuitively auto-connect multiple ports when connecting one pair of a set, for a faster and more efficient workflow, and there are simpler methods to access a group node sub-graph.
Mirror projection brings highly-requested simultaneous, symmetrical painting workflows to Mari, without the need for specialized UV layouts. Artists can paint on one side of a mirror plane while Mari projects the same paint to the other side of the mirror plane, dramatically increasing artist efficiency. Mirror masking prevents secondary projected paint overlapping across the mirror plane. By masking the opposite side of the mirror plane for each projection, the paint meets at the mirror plane with a perfectly reflected edge. The mirror plane can also be locked onto an object or locator, allowing the reflected edge of the mirror projection to be manipulated to the best symmetrical position and orientation.
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