Antonio Neto posts a sneak look at the new developments into the shader project that is aimed to bring more realistic shaders to artists using the Foundry’s Mari.
We are very close to release the Arnold aiStandard shader for MARI
Being developed by Miguel Santiago, Alex Tessier, Stuart Tozer, and Antonio Neto, the group hopes to bring the Mari viewport in line with standard shaders used in the industry today, mimicking the shaders from Arnold, V-Ray, and Mental Ray. The group hopes with these additions, Mari could be a better look development tool. The have plans to bring more renderer specific shader to Mari. The Arnold Shader for Mari represents the first in the list of shaders to tackle.
Arnold Shader for Mari
The custom standalone shader mimics Arnold’s aiStandard shader using GLSL and Python. The team are trying to closely match not only the look at the Arnold Standard Shader, but also some of its functionality and familiar settings.
The Arnold Shader for Mari offers an exporter that works in conjunction with the shader. This will allow you to send all the texture inputs, including shader attributes from Mari, over to Maya and Softimage. The export routine will build a new shading network in each of the applications from the exported data.
Antonio Neto notes that the Arnold Shader for Mari is very close to release. The team have been developing the Shader during the Alpha and Beta stages of Mari 2.6, with developmental support from Solidangle.
More Standard Shaders Inside Mari
The group hopes to bring more shaders over to work inside of Mari’s viewport in the future, including shaders from V-Ray, and Mental Ray. In fact, Nicholas Breslow has already matched the functionality and look of Mental Ray’s mia_Material_x right in Mari. His Mari Tools gives you an architectural shader that has its roots in 3Dlight’s mia_Material RSL code, modified to work within Mari. In the end, Mari tools is very similar to the look of the shaders in 3ds Max. The next shader up for Mari is the V-Ray Material Shader.
