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Our first ever course in Mari is designed to get everybody up to speed with this new and excitingly powerful 3D painting package from The Foundry. Mari is a great leap forward in professional texture painting by being both users friendly and capable of dealing with a staggering large amount of resolution. Professor Gareth Jensen 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 will have access to Mari on Linux via the fxphd VPN.

Jensen comes from a background of physical film effects including make-up/prosthetics and painting ranging from props through to miniatures. Mari allows him to take a similar approach to texturing a digital asset by automatically seaming multi-patch UV’s giving a much more complete hands-on feel, similar to that of painting a physical model.

In this course we will be covering the basics to get you up and running, including a breakdown of the tools and palettes that you will find yourself most often using. We will be covering such great tools as paint through, heal/tow and the remarkable warping tools. We will going through the concept of Mari’s shaders and channels system as well as its comprehensive masking options.

Over the course of the term we will be taking an asset from start to finish. f you work like Jensen you probably like using all the tools at your disposal so we will also show how Mari works easily with other packages. I will be going over basic process of working in conjunction with Nuke and also the wonderfully simple to use camera projection set up for all your Photoshop projections.

In Jensen’s 10 years of experience within the film industry, he has had the opportunity to work for both physical effects as well as digital and even began his career as a creature actor for Lord of the Rings. Having previously studied make-up and prosthetics for film in New Zealand his role in the industry further progressed with the renowned Weta Workshop where he was involved in major productions such as King Kong, 30 Days of Night, District 9, Prince Caspian and more recently Avatar. Developing his skills amongst some of the best artists in the industry, Jensen has also trained as a creature and props painter and it was during the production of Avatar that he made the decision to expand his role into the digital world. Switching over to Weta Digital as a texture and look dev artist on Avatar, Jensen has been able to work with Mari during its development and has now used it for over 2 years and is continuing to use it within Double Negatives production pipeline. His background in physical effects has left him with a strong base understanding of how to paint realistic textures and being able to use Mari as his digital medium has made this transition a lot smoother.

Class 1:
A guided tour of the Mari GUI introducing the contents of the toolbox and a brief overview of the pallets. We will also be looking at setting up your project and talk about the subject of resolution.

Class 2:
Approaching an asset by gathering ideas and putting a solid aim together. We will be covering setting up projectors in Mari and using them with Photoshop to design a paint scheme. I will also show you how to create and store custom palettes inside Mari.

Class 3:
In this class we look at cleaning up our projections and become familiar with object handling and fast paint application using both 3D and UV views.

Class 4:
An introduction to the Mari shader system and a demonstration in how to use Mari with Maya texturing tools.

Class 5:
In this class we will be learning how to version up geometry in the object tab, as well as how to paint a metal mask.

Class 6:
In this class we will start to combine the powerful tools and methods we have learnt so far to create interesting and believable rust masks.

Class 7:
In this class we will be looking at ways to use textures in Mari that have been produced in other applications. We will also be going over techniques for weathering your asset.

Class 8:
In this class I will be showing you how to bake shaders out of Mari and also how to apply the power of Nuke to your texturing workflow.

Class 9:
Painting a human hand, in this class I am going to show you one approach to painting skin in Mari. Part 1 of 2.

Class 10:
Painting a human hand, in this class I am going to show you one approach to painting skin in Mari. Part 2 of 2

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