In my opinion Its hard to justify the cost of Mari for this particular line of work. I can see a studio picking up the tab if they absolutely need it, but on its own (for individual users) its hard to justify. If only there was a cheaper version for our line of work....
Modo is totally worth it though. There is just way too much functionality packed into one solid application for it not to be, and its competitively priced.
I own substance painter, and I worked professionally with Mari.
Painter isnt near Mari, in my opinion. I really want it to be, and I am sure it will get there with future versions, but at the moment it's not.
When that's said, I prefer Mari for commercial\film work, but I wouldnt use it for the games I am currently working on. 3D coat is actually preferable for those.
Not only does it depend on personal taste, it also varies from project to project, in my opinion.
When all that is said, it might be just me not having enough experience with all the different painting apps.
Could you pin point why Mari is more appropriate for commercial/films? I read that a lot, but no one really explains why.
it's been a while since i used it but it struck me as a an app requiring a quite slow, diligent way of working. (at least a year ago) it could only do projection painting, did not work well with typical optimized (overlapping/mirrored) game UV layouts and had no realtime mirroring of paint going for it.
it was also rather slow on the machine i used it on (i7, 16 gigs with a geforce 57x series card if memory serves) and it all looked quite muddy when zoomed out in the viewport. it uses some kind of megatexture/texture atlas approach to manage it's tiles and that just didn't look sharp/representative on the screen.
another thing i personally didn't like was that the texture layers weren't freely accessible in the filesystem, you had to always im/export to use in other apps.
you can make it work of course and i suppose if you approach characters like you would in VFX as a specialist with a narrow focus and more generous schedule than often experienced in games, setting up projects, unwrapping assets into texture tiles and had the need to use and modify lots of photo source textures and manage lots of layers/masks it might even be the best solution out there. i suspect outside of a few 'AAA' highest end realism titles it's not too applicable in games though. would it be a good solution for actual painting? dunno.
i'd expect in most productions you'd still have to combine all your texture tiles at the end into a more realtime friendly layout. so more pipeline fun for you.
it is a bit of a complex program too and eats up system resources. i'd prefer a more lightweight approach, something you can keep in the background without hassle, simple interface and suited to quick fixing of assets and not fighting about resources with a game editor you need to be running as well.
Could you pin point why Mari is more appropriate for commercial/films? I read that a lot, but no one really explains why.
EDIT:ThomasP summed it all up.
Just adding a reason was (and I believe still is) that Mari doesnt pick up on normal maps for stuff like cavity painting
A personal thing for me, is the camera orbit. I always orbit and tumble around like a drunk person - would love if it was possible to contrain it to Y or Z like in Zbrush. the option is there, but it will completely remove all possibility to use those axis' then. (Nothing related to games, just throwing it out there )
Was using one of the early versions of Mari, so some things might have changed.
If they have, I would love to know!
I own substance painter, and I worked professionally with Mari.
Painter isnt near Mari, in my opinion. I really want it to be, and I am sure it will get there with future versions, but at the moment it's not.
When that's said, I prefer Mari for commercial\film work, but I wouldnt use it for the games I am currently working on. 3D coat is actually preferable for those.
Not only does it depend on personal taste, it also varies from project to project, in my opinion.
When all that is said, it might be just me not having enough experience with all the different painting apps.
Curious to your reasons why you feel it's not there yet? I have barely used either, so i really have no clue. All I know mari's interface and philosophy look a lot more complex and potentially cumbersome than painter.
Just adding a reason was (and I believe still is) that Mari doesnt pick up on normal maps for stuff like cavity painting
A personal thing for me, is the camera orbit. I always orbit and tumble around like a drunk person - would love if it was possible to contrain it to Y or Z like in Zbrush. the option is there, but it will completely remove all possibility to use those axis' then. (Nothing related to games, just throwing it out there )
Was using one of the early versions of Mari, so some things might have changed.
If they have, I would love to know!
Mari now has the option to make Navigation work like other applications including Maya, Houdini and Softimage (Check under preferences->Navigation)
Here is a quick example of using displacement /bump maps for cavity / dry brush painting.
Curious to your reasons why you feel it's not there yet? I have barely used either, so i really have no clue. All I know mari's interface and philosophy look a lot more complex and potentially cumbersome than painter.
They're still working on it, but I don't think Painter in its current state should even be out of Beta. It's still terribly unrefined.
Painting has wild accuracy issues, it handles painting across UV seams very poorly, you can't export layers, you can't turn on wireframe while in paint mode, it comes with a very small number of brushes and shaders built in, it has no color wheel or color pallet, etc.
Some of the problems listed above make it outright unusable for me in a real workflow.
I'd say that 3dCoat is a great painting tool used by many pros. And its price is only 379$.
Yet it has great retopo, UV and other tools.
I personally would really love to try to migrate to Modo. Might get my work place get a licence.
The full feature set of Mari, no commercial limitations, $149.99 regular price with a launch sale of 25%.
There is a limit on the amount of textures you can paint (2 patches per object) and the max resolution (4k), but the same feature from the commercial version are in there.
And did I mention there are no commercial limitations?
Replies
Modo is totally worth it though. There is just way too much functionality packed into one solid application for it not to be, and its competitively priced.
You mean something like, Substance Painter?
Painter isnt near Mari, in my opinion. I really want it to be, and I am sure it will get there with future versions, but at the moment it's not.
When that's said, I prefer Mari for commercial\film work, but I wouldnt use it for the games I am currently working on. 3D coat is actually preferable for those.
Not only does it depend on personal taste, it also varies from project to project, in my opinion.
When all that is said, it might be just me not having enough experience with all the different painting apps.
it's been a while since i used it but it struck me as a an app requiring a quite slow, diligent way of working. (at least a year ago) it could only do projection painting, did not work well with typical optimized (overlapping/mirrored) game UV layouts and had no realtime mirroring of paint going for it.
it was also rather slow on the machine i used it on (i7, 16 gigs with a geforce 57x series card if memory serves) and it all looked quite muddy when zoomed out in the viewport. it uses some kind of megatexture/texture atlas approach to manage it's tiles and that just didn't look sharp/representative on the screen.
another thing i personally didn't like was that the texture layers weren't freely accessible in the filesystem, you had to always im/export to use in other apps.
you can make it work of course and i suppose if you approach characters like you would in VFX as a specialist with a narrow focus and more generous schedule than often experienced in games, setting up projects, unwrapping assets into texture tiles and had the need to use and modify lots of photo source textures and manage lots of layers/masks it might even be the best solution out there. i suspect outside of a few 'AAA' highest end realism titles it's not too applicable in games though. would it be a good solution for actual painting? dunno.
i'd expect in most productions you'd still have to combine all your texture tiles at the end into a more realtime friendly layout. so more pipeline fun for you.
it is a bit of a complex program too and eats up system resources. i'd prefer a more lightweight approach, something you can keep in the background without hassle, simple interface and suited to quick fixing of assets and not fighting about resources with a game editor you need to be running as well.
now, back to modo discussion.
EDIT:ThomasP summed it all up.
Just adding a reason was (and I believe still is) that Mari doesnt pick up on normal maps for stuff like cavity painting
A personal thing for me, is the camera orbit. I always orbit and tumble around like a drunk person - would love if it was possible to contrain it to Y or Z like in Zbrush. the option is there, but it will completely remove all possibility to use those axis' then. (Nothing related to games, just throwing it out there )
Was using one of the early versions of Mari, so some things might have changed.
If they have, I would love to know!
Curious to your reasons why you feel it's not there yet? I have barely used either, so i really have no clue. All I know mari's interface and philosophy look a lot more complex and potentially cumbersome than painter.
Mari now has the option to make Navigation work like other applications including Maya, Houdini and Softimage (Check under preferences->Navigation)
Here is a quick example of using displacement /bump maps for cavity / dry brush painting.
[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ep7bJrE801E"]Mari Mask Painting - YouTube[/ame]
And this video from a couple of years ago shows Screen space symmetry and overlapping UV support.
[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPzn0YqJKfg"]What's new in MARI 1.5 - YouTube[/ame]
Painting has wild accuracy issues, it handles painting across UV seams very poorly, you can't export layers, you can't turn on wireframe while in paint mode, it comes with a very small number of brushes and shaders built in, it has no color wheel or color pallet, etc.
Some of the problems listed above make it outright unusable for me in a real workflow.
Im honestly very excited to see this! Mari is, in my opinion, the Zbrush of texturing
Thanks a lot, Jack! Will hopefully get time to try it over christmas
Yet it has great retopo, UV and other tools.
I personally would really love to try to migrate to Modo. Might get my work place get a licence.
That video is from 1.5, we're on 2.6v4 now.
[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n75CmpTLEuA"]MARI 2.6 features overview - YouTube[/ame]
[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt7UeiZj-6s&list=PLB0wXHrWAmCyJEDZLLQvusBxDbskFmh9K&index=3"]Substance Painter Tutorial #3 - Texturing the body: Part One - YouTube[/ame]
Yep, certainly was an interesting idea.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/289550?beta=0
Mari Indie is now available.
The full feature set of Mari, no commercial limitations, $149.99 regular price with a launch sale of 25%.
There is a limit on the amount of textures you can paint (2 patches per object) and the max resolution (4k), but the same feature from the commercial version are in there.
And did I mention there are no commercial limitations?
Edit : I just started a thread about this http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=145506
http://store.steampowered.com/app/321540/
Checkout the bundle and rental options (first time The Foundry is offering subscriptions?)
I know right? Glad the cats out of the bag now though, haha.
I look forward to seeing how the competitive nature of Mari + Modo play out in marketplace.