MARI Extension Pack - News

Campi

MARI Extension Pack 4 released

The fourth installment of the industry standard plugin for Mari has been released.

4.0 Release Highlights

Click here for full release notes

• 50 new features, hundreds of small Improvements

• Packed Channel creation

• Texture Exporter with Presets, Quick Export Feature and more

• Radio Nodes, say goodbye to Nodegaph Spaghetti !

• Duplicate with Connection, Upstream Node Selection and other Nodegraph enhancements.

• Image Arrays, one Material in one Node

• alLayerFloat/Color inspired MultiMixers

• Seamless 3D Texture Scattering

• Decals with interactive Texture Placement directly in the viewport.

• Height Based Material Blending

• Selection Group Management

• Copy and Pasting of Layers with all Sharing intact

• Color Jittering, Gradient Mapping, Specular Tools and other Adjustments.

• UI and UX improvements

Upgrading from Version 3:

Previous customers of MARI Extension Pack should have received their Upgrade Instructions via the email address used on purchase.
If not or you don't have access to that email anymore please contact me with your email used on purchase.

About MARI Extension Pack

Now in its 5th year MARI Extension Pack has established itself as a must-have plugin for anyone working with MARI by the Foundry.

Developed by Artists for Artists it greatly expands MARI’s procedural capabilities, improves user experience and provides automatism that help you do your job faster.

It is widely used in every major production studio around the world.

Customers include

Weta Digital, Industrial Light & Magic, Framestore, Double Negative, MPC, Cinesite, Tippet, Rising Sun, Image Engine, Sony, Trixter, Animal Logic, Pixar, Dreamworks, EA, Activison, Ubisoft, Blizzard, Microsoft, Digic Pictures, National Geographic and many more

Enjoy,
Jens Kafitz

Campi

- removed -

Campi

I know you guys aren't the biggest fans of MARI but anyway - it's a free extension for those who are

MARI Extension Pack is a collection of nearly 70 feature additions and improvements for Mari 2.6v3 or higher, including shader & node additions and integration of new menu functions.

Some of the more prominent features include tileable texture creation up to 32k, texture bombing, lots and lots of procedurals and a large variety of utilities and tool additions to make your workflows a bit more efficient.

RELEASE NOTES

Previous versions of the Extension Pack ('Nodepack') have been in use at big studios (Weta,ILM, Pixar, Framestore, Crytek etc.) for a while now.

MARI Extension Pack is a collaboration of artists from the MARI Community and is released free & open source.

RELEASE VIDEO

artquest

I'm a huge fan of mari, that being said. It's not currently viable for game development out of the box. It requires a huge investment by the studio to get it up and running efficiently. Once this happens though it becomes a monster beast of amazing power and speed.

Anywho I'm glad to see some steps to filling the gaps.

seb3d

just found the time playing with the new pack a bit. really great. thanks a lot!

pior

I know you guys aren't the biggest fans of MARI

The only thing that Mari needs to win us over is a solid realtime preview with BPR support, along the lines of the one seen in 3DCoat and Substance Painter. Without it, it is pretty much impossible to know how things are going to look in-engine ...

Last time I tried the Mari demo, came bundled with a less than stellar example project, showing a human face with a very outdated shader. The Foundry has to impress us !

artquest

pior wrote: »

The only thing that Mari needs to win us over is a solid realtime preview with BPR support, along the lines of the one seen in 3DCoat and Substance Painter. Without it, it is pretty much impossible to know how things are going to look in-engine ...

Last time I tried the Mari demo, came bundled with a less than stellar example project, showing a human face with a very outdated shader. The Foundry has to impress us !

They have a new PBR shader but it takes like 5 minutes to set it up every time you create a new scene. Just too much setup time. Which is okay when you're about to settle in to painting a hero asset for the next 4 weeks as you might do in film. But for a lot of assets in games it's just too time consuming.

jgreasley

Thanks for the comments. As Artquest posted we do now have a PBR shader, and it is possible to register your own so it matches your in-game shader exactly.

Mari Indie ships with two, more relevant examples, both using PBR shaders.

Artquest, I'm interested to know what is taking 5 mins to setup? I just checked and it takes 5 clicks to setup a model with our PBR shader and environment. We can obviously make this easier, and are looking to do so in future versions.

jgreasley

artquest wrote: »

I'm a huge fan of mari, that being said. It's not currently viable for game development out of the box. It requires a huge investment by the studio to get it up and running efficiently. Once this happens though it becomes a monster beast of amazing power and speed.

Anywho I'm glad to see some steps to filling the gaps.

Hi,

I'm really interested to know which bits you found difficult and time consuming to setup?

We have people in games using Mari straight out of the box, without any customisation or pipelining.

We're looking at making Mari easier and quicker to use in games and would love to know which bits need attention.

gnoop

I have a few questions about Mari

1. Is it possible to do non-square textures? I have not a single square one , all are 2x1 mostly?

2. Does it allow to paint and blend objects/layers being depth aware like 3d coat or zbrush 2,5d mode? So two layers could blend to each other based on their z depth?

3 Does it follow the same old paradigm of painting everything by hand again in every new texture using the same castrated photoshop influenced brush system ?

Instead of doing something like Painter, 3d coat or rather skeletal strokes from old creative house expression/microsoft design where you could paint by random non-repeating multiple pre-created/photographed/library based actual details like rust stains for example and not fake it by a doubled photoshop style b/w brush dab.


I bought Steam version. For the moment Mari seems to me like another Photoshop replicating everything I don't like there. Would be nice to get some inspiring info to start learn it deeper.

Campi

A new version of the free & open source MARI Extension Pack has been released.
Bringing many new features it also focuses on making existing and previously released
tools more flexible and powerful.

RELEASE NOTES

RELEASE VIDEO


About mari extension pack:

Mari Extension Pack is an open source project by members of the MARI community and released via mari.ideascale.com,
a MARI resource where users can post and vote on new features for MARI.

Previous versions of Extension Pack are in use in VFX studios around the world including
Weta Digital, Framestore, Double Negative, MPC, Cinesite, Tippet, Rising Sun, Image Engine, Iloura, Pixar, EA, Crytek,
Blizzard, Microsoft Games, Riot Games, Gnomon and many more.


Regards,
Jens Kafitz

Campi

I am happy to announce that I finished MARI Extension Pack 3 - its biggest release to date.
http://www.MariExtensionPack.org

Key Features of MARI Extension Pack include:

- 110+ Major Feature Additions and Improvements

- Fully compatible with Mari 3.x

- Dozens of Procedural and Adjustment Layers

- Workflow enhancements for managing layers, channels and projects

- Full Online Help & 2.5 hours of Tutorials

- Commercial use on single or unlimited seats

3.0 Release Highlights

For a full list please refer to the full releasenotes
http://www.campi3d.com/External/MariExtensionPack/userGuide30/WhatsnewinExtensionPack30.html

- 200+ smaller and larger Fixes, Improvements and Additions

- Full nodegraph support for all Extension Pack Nodes

- Powerful new ways to create your own edge wear

- New adjustment, procedural and math nodes

- Manifolds for control of multiple Nodes

- Material based Workflow

- Material ID Map Support

- Isolate Selection

- Layer Bookmarking

- Channel Duplication with Sharing intact

- Exporting of Geometry

- Advanced Texture Exporter Functionality (Export at different resolution, Mipmapping etc.)

- Project Management Tools


Enjoy,
Jens Kafitz
http://www.MariExtensionPack.org

kolayamit

none of the links work...

Tzur_H

http://www.jenskafitz.com/development/mari-extension-pack/mari-extension-pack-3-0/

Just one question, are future updates free after purchasing this?

Campi

Tzur_H said:

Just one question, are future updates free after purchasing this?

Minor updates & patches  will be free for existing customers, yes.  If you purchased it you will get an email notification if a free update is available.
I am already working on one for early January that will include things like presets for automated edge wear and a few new nodes (see little preview below)
Bigger updates that are several month worth of development or require major refactoring whenever Mari changes internally (as has happened from Mari 2.6 to 3.0) won't be but there will be plenty of small free additions in the meantime.
Release Note Link is fixed btw.

 

jens

Campi

I have released MARI Extension Pack 3 R2 over on Gumroad (http://www.MariExtensionPack.org).
Previous Users of Extension Pack 3 should have received an update email already.

MARI Extension Pack 3 R2 builds on the foundation of Version 3, focusing on trying to add procedural Edge Wear Effects to Mari.

Some Key Features include

- 'DynaMask' Mask Generator (Quixel Style)

- 6 sample Edge Wear Presets

- new Bake Presets for Curvature Baking, directional Occlusion etc.

- improved Normal Map Handling across Extension Pack Nodes

- new 'Linear Light' Blendmode

For the full release notes of R2 please see here

Thanks,
Jens Kafitz

Burpee

- 'DynaMask' Mask Generator (Quixel Style)

- 6 sample Edge Wear Presets

- new Bake Presets for Curvature Baking, directional Occlusion etc.

Amazing work ! can't wait to test it :]]

onionhead_o

Not sure where else to submit a request.
I would like to make a request for the implementation of Reaction Diffuse Noise pattern as node in future extension pack.




Possible Application
Zebra Pattern
Tiger Pattern
Coral Brain

links
http://www.karlsims.com/rd.html
https://www.chromeexperiments.com/experiment/gray-scott-simulation
http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_education/reaction_diffusion_in_pshop/reaction_diffusion_in_pshop.htm

Campi

Extension pack 5 released

OK, I am aware I am deep in the heartland of Substance Users.But for those few MARI Users here:
I finally finished and released the newest version of Extension Pack for MARI.
You can see what's new here or get it from gumroad here

I've aimed for this release to bring a bit more of proceduralism into MARI so lots of Substance inspired features in this release such as 

• Smart Masks (65 Presets included and cross-udim)
• A procedural pattern engine (with 500+ Samples included)
• Marking Menus (fully customizable)
• Function Graphs
• etc.

oglu

That does look really cool. 
Some day i will come back to Mari. 

onionhead_o

Jens did awesome work on Extension pack 5. worth every penny! this version also makes it easier for Substance artist to transition into mari

Campi

Extension Pack 5 R4 released

The latest point release for Extension Pack is out, this time with a big focus on Materials and Nodegraph Enhancements.
Check out what's new here.

https://youtu.be/EOKBwaftv3U

gnoop

I am interested by this decal placement template.    It's something that while possible in all Substance  tools still is monstrously inconvenient there.  

I wonder  could I make such white dashes interact with a depth of asphalt cracks ?    Can I easily set an extra height mask from underlying surface heights  through a node system?  And then quickly add another hand paint  mask to make corrections?

Campi

Hello gnoop.
Absolutely, this is done easily via the Nodegraph or by using the HeightBlend Preset from the Mask Shelf (which is then fully layerstack based). Though time and effort wise it is way easier by quickly diving into the graph.
You can actually see that here in this early preview (at around 26 seconds in) of the Decal system I published earlier this year. I am importing the Middle Stripes from Megascans (via the dedicated Mari texure set palette), ingesting it into the decal preset, then quickly diving into the nodegraph to slot a height blend between the decal and the underlying layers.

https://youtu.be/rgSq0jq5DzY?t=26

gnoop

Wow.  Thanks a lot Camp   Looks like it's a time to give Mari another big try.    Last time i did it was without nodes and pretty convoluted.

   This video demonstrate  a simple approach I have struggled to develop in  Substance Painter , Designer, Alchemist , Quixel mixer and Photoshop  for years.    It's kind of possible in evry of those but my gosh with so much pain in your ass, so much  redundant hacks  and workarounds.

Could I still  export parts of this asphalt roads as  separate textures:   like  curb part  as a separate stripe  like 128X2048 texture  through UDIM export ?

Another question  does Mari allow to paint tilable  textures?  .Paint across tiling seams even if you are not in 0-1 uv space currently.    Substance Painter doesn't for example

Campi

Hi,
you can attach channels or bake points (they allow exporting as well) at any point of your nodegraph. So yes. You can export all things separately if you need to. 

As for your tiling question. I am not sure what you mean. Both Mari and Painter allow to paint WITH tileable textures.
And both Mari and Painter offer 'Tileable Planes' that when painted on automatically create tileable textures. Painter's is under the Examples, in Mari it comes with the Default Objects (http://www.campi3d.com/External/MariExtensionPack/userGuide5R4v1/AddDefaultObject.html)

gnoop

Campi said:

And both Mari and Painter offer 'Tileable Planes' that when painted on automatically create tileable textures.

In Substance Painter you can paint on  a special geometry of  8 quads for example considering each quad have it's UV in 0-1 space  . Overlapping each other UV in a word.    But once you try to paint in actual game asset, a piece of a road for example  which  tiles outside 0-1 UV space  without UV splits   you could paint only on polygons  within 0-1 and nowhere else  or, since recently,  turn it into UDIM .

It's quite an annoying  thing  when  you load a piece of actual geometry  trying to make a few touches and estimate it with  how actual tiling look .    So  to fix something  you have to first find that 0-1 part of the geo.

Campi

Yes, the same kind of plane approach exists in Mari.

Mari doesn't care about faces spanning across udims. As long as the geo is udim-friendly (meaning only 10 tiles horizontally, not going into -1 space). If you have overlaying uvs projecting onto one area will accurately repeat it.

As for painter, it doesn't support faces spanning across UDIMs. Not before UDIM release and not after. But if your UVs are overlapping it should still correctly display the changes. Not sure why it wouldn't

gnoop

Thanks Campi  for making it clear.     I actually meant not something going across UDIMS .    Roadside armco for example,  where each repeating part along a road curve  has its UV perfectly shifted  from 0-1 to 1-2, 2-3 and so on.     The way it wouldn't create gazillion unnecessary uv splits across  armco body with side vertexes merged.

Painter allows to paint only in the first part of an armco array or set it as UDIM

3dcoat, Blender  doesn't care  , you can paint  anywhere . it just repeat it in every part smoothly  with a brush go uninterrupted whenever it may touch down.

Not a big deal maybe  just a convenience

Campi

MARI has a feature called 'Linked Patches.
Basically you can say that one patch is the source patch/udim and define target patches/udims. Whatever you do in the source/target patch will automatically show up in the other patches/udims.

Campi

https://youtu.be/FHVj4AKVa3o
www.mariExtensionPack.org

Version 6 of the industry standard plugin for Foundry's Texturing Tool MARI is now available.

Full Release Overview: https://bit.ly/43xoDIc

This new version restores support for Mari 6, and future-proofs it by adding support for the currently not yet available Mari 7

On top of that, this version comes with many new features such as

• New Nodes such as Circular Pattern Generators, a new Noise type, a full suite of Blend Mode Nodes and much more

• Nodegraph Quality of Life improvements such as a better Node Auto Insert onto Connections, Select closest node to cursor, quick connect and disconnect, new Node Align & Distribute

• Quickmark Bookmarking System for Nodegraph Locations, Node Thumbnails, Image Annotations, Stickers

• Powerful 3D Scan Projection Wizard

• ..and much more ..

Free Upgrades within 6-Series

Version 6 is the start of the new long-term support series for Extension Pack. As was the case for the Extension Pack 5 series which received a total of 10 free upgrades (R2,R3 etc.) the Extension Pack 6 Series will receive continued updates over the next years, which will be free to registered users.

About Mari Extension Pack

Mari Extension Pack is a plugin for the texturing application “MARI by the Foundry”, which is considered an indispensable part of working with MARI by many users. The plugin greatly extends Mari's capabilities with hundreds of new tools, new nodes, Smart Masks, Material Templates, improved User Experience and much more.

Now in its 12th year of development the Plugin is widely used by both individual Mari Users as well as dozens of studios around the world.

Campi

https://www.MariExtensionPack.org

Mari Extension Pack 6 R2 is now available
https://youtu.be/qLbzRqEGQPc?si=kjHzuGYVIzXinokT

Mari Extension Pack 6 R2 is now available as a free upgrade to Extension Pack 6 Users.

Just as 6R1, this version supports Mari 6 and Mari 7.

Full Release Overview: https://docs.mariextensionpack.org/6R2v1/ExtensionPack6R2.html
6R2 YouTube Tutorials: https://training.mariextensionpack.org/6R2-youtube
Vimeo Tutorials: https://training.mariextensionpack.org/6R2-vimeo


Key new features include:

- Node Editor - edit Material and Group Node Properties UI and Defaults
- Custom Dropdown Menus - expose Material Presets to Users etc.
- Selection Group Filtering - powerful expression based visbility Controls

- Visibility Sets – store combinations of Selection Groups as Sets/Groups
- Combine Seletion Groups – easily combine Selection Groups for easier management
- Ramp Editor – one of the most powerful Gradient Editors you will find in any application
- New Nodes such as Pattern Shaper, Complex IOR and more
- A large number of Quality of Life Improvements
... and much more ...

Existing Mari Extension Pack 6 Users will receive upgrade information via their registered email.