The Foundry Release Mari on Windows

The Foundry’s texture painting tool Mari is now shipping on Windows. The software is supported on Windows 7 64-bit or on Linux 64-bit (Fedora 12 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4).

Our sister site fxphd.com is currently running an Introduction to Mari course this term. It’s taught by artist Gareth Jensen, who has been working with Mari for the past few years as it was developed at Weta Digital and has continued to use it at Double Negative where he currently works. fxphd members have access to Mari on Linux or Windows via the fxphd VPN.

Mari Press Release:

MARI was originally developed at Weta Digital to handle the exceedingly detailed look development and texture work demanded by Avatar. MARI copes easily with an obsessive level of detail – literally tens of thousands of textures – quickly and elegantly.

MARI has already been enthusiastically received across the world’s texture painting communities. Initially released on Linux in July, MARI has been adopted globally with a client list including Framestore, Double Negative, Method Studios, Animal Logic, and Digital Domain.

Now shipping, MARI 1.1 for Windows and MARI 1.1 for Linux add FBX Camera import, TGA support, a smart selection tool, canvas toolbar, perspective view, a normal shader and dramatically improved performance.

Matt Holben, CEO, Double Negative, said, “Development in the world of texture painting has been somewhat stilted in recent years, hence Weta’s development of MARI. We are all facing increasing demands in terms of scale and detail as new formats become the norm. MARI is what our artists have been waiting for. We have been employing it on production since alpha and are confident we are making the right move purchasing this software – even pre-release.”

Method Studios’ CG Supervisor, Scott Metzger, comments “There is almost no learning curve when using MARI. I was able to place artists with no experience in the software and get fantastic results very quickly. This is something that would never have been possible with Zbrush. MARI is the only plaint texture tool I want to texture in now.”
The Foundry has seen huge interest in MARI from artists working on Windows – across a broad range of industries including Games and product design – and so the company has invested in a significant engineering effort to ensure a timely release on this platform.

The aggressive development roadmap for the product continues into 2011. Amongst other things, The Foundry will be taking advantage of the exclusive deal with Walt Disney Animation Studios, announced in July, to incorporate elements of the studio’s internally-developed Paint3D technology into MARI.

For more information on MARI or to download a fully functioning 15 day demo license visit www.thefoundry.co.uk/mari

4 thoughts on “The Foundry Release Mari on Windows”

    1. I’m sure The Foundry have thought of that.

      I believe Nuke came out on Linux and Windows first and Mac followed later.

  1. It is in Apple’s court. Mari needs opengl 3.0 which came out 2+ years ago and Apple is stuck at version 2.2.

  2. I hate to say it, but if you’re serious about 3d, then you should probably buy a pc for that. I used to use a Mac for 3d and it was a constant struggle to find plugins and the software versions were sometimes months behind the pc versions. Some 3d apps are also pc only. I used to be a total Mac zealot and refused to go pc. I kept hoping that companies would change their ways and spend the same effort on the mac versions that they did on the pc versions. It took years of frustration for me to finally give up and go pc, but I’m glad I did.

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