The Foundry announced that MARI 1.3 v2 – the latest version of its creative paint and texture tool – is now shipping. The new version provides NUKE artists with dedicated 3D paint tools that make digital environment and projection work more efficient and final composited scenes more believable. The new NUKE<>MARI bridge creates an intuitive workflow between two of The Foundry’s leading visual effects software products.
“NUKE compositors who need to be able to paint or modify projections for their 3D models and environments will benefit the most from this workflow,” explained NUKE product manager, Jon Wadelton. “Right now to repaint in NUKE you’re limited to 2D paint. Our new workflow gives you access to MARI’s tailored tool set and allows you to paint directly in a 3D environment.”
NUKE artists can access MARI when they need dedicated paint tools, keeping context of the models, cameras and projections in their compositing scene. By bridging the two toolsets artists can apply the most appropriate tools to the task. This frees them to concentrate on creative and accurate work and removes the pain of manual round-trip and data management, which is now automatically handled for them in the background.
“A NUKE, MARI combination workflow is saving me 20-30% of my time creating clean plates,” said Brandon Fayette, CG Supervisor and production lead, Bad Robot. “I’ve already completed 14 shots this way and I am really happy with the results.”
Fayette has been using a similar workflow for matte paintings; “Combining compositing, 3D modeling and texture painting in the same workflow is just amazing.”
“The NUKE<>MARI bridge makes the process of fixing troublesome, but common, challenges a breeze,” said MARI product manager, Jack Greasley. “The ability to combine NUKE’s powerful procedural work flow and MARI’s fluid paint based tools gives the artist the best of both worlds when dealing with previously time consuming digital environment and matte painting issues.”
