The Foundry are collaborating with Weta Digital to bring to market their internally developed and highly regarded 3D texture painting technology MARI.
Mari development at Weta Digital was driven by the texture department to handle the massively complex, highly detailed look development work demanded of projects such as District 9, The Lovely Bones and Avatar. Born out of genuine production experience, Mari was a designed as a full 3D paint tool with a responsiveness and feature set that puts even the best dedicated 2D paint systems to shame. Mari is extremely scalable, coping easily with an obsessive level of detail literally tens of thousands of textures quickly and elegantly.
The Foundry's investment in the future development of Mari continues the company's philosophy of close industry collaboration to bring production-proven technologies to a wider market. In 2007, The Foundry took over development of Digital Domain’s internally developed compositor Nuke running an aggressive development schedule to create a product which has now become the de facto standard in film and television effects compositing. The Foundry followed this in 2009 by initiating an ongoing collaboration with Sony Pictures Imageworks to commercially develop the Katana 3D lighting and rendering pipeline technology.
The company is now committing similar effort into the growth of Mari with a new development team already at work in their London headquarters.
Dr Bill Collis, CEO, The Foundry commented, "We are thrilled to add Mari to our product line. The Foundry has worked hard to transform Nuke from an in-house application into the compositor of choice and will dedicate the same amount of energy and effort into ensuring that Mari becomes the ‘must have’ paint tool for artists. Mari is a great application that we will, with input from the community, make even better and more accessible to artists all over the world working in a variety of industries."
Mari comes from the Swahili Maridadi meaning both ‘beautiful’ and also carrying connotations of 'usefulness'. The Foundry aim to stay true to the elegance of the original Mari concept. To maintain the pace of development, The Foundry is building a new development team, headed by Jack Greasley, Senior R&D Programmer from Weta Digital who joins The Foundry as Mari Product Manager.
Gino Acevedo, HOD Texture Department, Creature Art Director at Weta Digital - a key influencer of Mari development at Weta - comments, "Mari is very user friendly allowing artists to spend more time painting and less time grappling with technical issues that can cause delays. As an Art Director, time is always of the essence and Mari allows artists to make quick revisions to meet tough deadlines. Mari is a powerful painting tool and a must for all 3D artists."
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The Foundry is a world-leading innovator of visual effects and image processing technologies that boost productivity in motion picture and video post-production.
The Foundry has a well-established client base that includes leading visual effects facilities worldwide, such as Warner Bros, The Moving Picture Company, Weta Digital, Framestore, Sony Pictures Imageworks and Digital Domain. It is at the cutting edge of software development, marketing and sales for visual effects compositing.
In June 2009 The Foundry announced a management buyout for an undisclosed sum led by Advent Venture Partners. Advent backed The Foundry’s management team, led by CEO Dr Bill Collis and the original founders.
The Foundry is highly profitable and has doubled in size in the past two years.
The Foundry’s products support a wide range of award-winning host platforms including After Effects, Autodesk® Media and Entertainment Systems, Avid DS, Nuke, Shake and Final Cut Pro. In 2007, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded a Sci-Tech Award® to The Foundry’s development team for the Furnace image processing suite – and the company now holds two products with AMPAS Sci-Tech Award® winning technology including high-end compositing system Nuke.
The Foundry is headquartered in London, and has offices in Los Angeles. For more information please visit: www.thefoundry.co.uk.
© The Foundry, its logo and product names are registered trademarks in the UK, USA and/or other countries. Academy Award is a registered trademark of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. All other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.
For further information please visit www.thefoundry.co.uk, or contact:
Cordelia Meacher, IF Communications, T: +44 (0)7961 311080, E: cordelia@if-communications.com
Lucy Cooper, The Foundry, T: +44 (0)20 7434 0449, E: lucy.cooper@thefoundry.co.uk