Mari 4.6 released with enhanced Materials System for smoother workflows

Mari 4.6 brings exciting improvements to the recently-introduced Material System. The new Geo-Channels feature allows artists to seamlessly integrate object-aware properties into material presets for edgeware and other effects. The new release offers an extensive range of procedural patterns and filters that bolster the artists arsenal for procedural workflows and introduces vendor shader collaborations with 3Delight and VRay. 

What’s new in Mari 4.6:

• Geo-Channels seamlessly integrate into the Materials system, allowing for material looks to be driven by mesh maps, like Curvature and AmbientOcclusion.
• Node graph updates - Mari 4.6 offers a cleaner, more efficient navigation in the node graph.  Working with nodes is easier with three varying states of collapse for all nodes which are now matched in design with the Katana Network Material UI. Including a mode for material nodes that represents all parallel streams as one connection. Finally, improved node auto-placement creates artist friendly layouts of complex node networks.
• As a result to customer feedback over the years, new procedural nodes  have been added to enable more complex non-destructive texturing: Projection nodes, Curvature, new Fractals, new Patterns, improved and new Math Operators and a variety of new Utility nodes.
• Vendor shaders - Collaborating with teams at 3Delight and VRay, artists to get closer approximations for their renders in Mari due to matching GLSL shaders, streamlining your look development across  Mari and Katana. Having already introduced the Arnold shader from the Autodesk team in Mari 4.5, we are continuing third-party collaborations with a Mari version of the Renderman PxrSurface shader in their latest release.
• Material System Additional Improvements: Mari 4.6 offers customizable Material file icons and extensions to the Material Ingestion Tool, allowing for more artist customization and extensive automation of the Material creation process.

Rory Woodford, Product Manager, Mari, comments:

“With our latest Mari release, we’ve been working on improving our recently-introduced Materials System, making sure it’s the best fit for artists and the pipelines they use. They can expect a quicker, slicker experience, thanks to improvements to the Node Graph, plus a whole variety of new procedural patterns and filters. We will continue to make Mari the one 3D painting package that strives to answer the needs of complexity and volume, procedural and handcrafted responding to the ever evolving needs of VFX and Animation.”

Peter Aversten, Cross Show Lead Texture Artist at MPC and Founder, Meshmen Studios, comments:

"I'm really happy to see the introduction of Geo-channels that will take my Mari procedural materials to the next level. All the new fancy nodes and improvements to the node graph are the icing on the cake!" 

The  full list of features  for Mari 4.6 can be found here. Mari 4.6 is available for purchase on Foundry’s website and via accredited resellers.