Mari 4.2v2 Release Notes

Release Date

08 January 2019

System Requirements

Officially Supported Operating Systems

• Windows 7 64-bit or higher
• Linux 64-bit operating system (CentOS/RHEL 6)

Minimum Hardware Requirements

• Quad-core processor
• 10+GB disk space available for caching and temporary files
• At least 4GB RAM
• Display with 1680 x 1050 pixel resolution
• An NVIDIA or AMD* graphics card with the latest drivers
• 1GB of graphics memory
• OpenGL 3.2* or higher

*Displacement preview is currently only available on the cards and drivers that support OpenGL 4.0 or newer.

Recommended System Requirements

• 2.5+Ghz Quad-core processor
• 250+GB disk space available for caching and temporary files. SSD is preferable.
• 16GB RAM with additional virtual memory*
• Display with 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution
• An NVIDIA or AMD* graphics card with the latest drivers
• 2+GB of graphics memory
• OpenGL 4.4 or higher support

*The use of virtual memory improves stability and helps prevent data loss on large projects.

'Recommended' does not guarantee that it meets your particular needs.

Tested Hardware

The configurations listed below are those that The Foundry have tested with Mari. Due to the constantly changing nature and wide variety of computer hardware available in the market, The Foundry is unable to officially certify hardware. The list below can be used as a recommendation and does not guarantee that it meets your particular needs.

Please download and install the latest graphics driver from the NVIDIA or AMD websites, and ensure that you are using 8.982.1 drivers or higher for AMD cards.

If you encounter any issues, please contact Customer Support directly through the Support Portal at the following address: https://support.foundry.com.

Tested Workstation Hardware

HP	HP XW6600 HP Z600 HP Z620 HP Z640

Tested GPU Hardware

AMD Prosumer Graphics Cards	AMD Radeon HD - D500
NVIDIA Prosumer Graphics Cards	NVIDIA Geforce GTX 660TI NVIDIA Titan X NVIDIA Geforce GT 650M NVIDIA Geforce GT 675M
NVIDIA Enterprise Graphics Cards	NVIDIA Quadro 4000 NVIDIA Quadro K4200 NVIDIA Quadro K5000 NVIDIA Quadro M6000 NVIDIA Quadro M6000 24GB

New Features

There are no New Features in this release.

Feature Enhancements

• TP 374961 - Mari now uses a more optimal technique for listening to changes in the project colorspace settings to improve project load times.

• TP 374974 - Color swatches now cache their corresponding colorspace values to improve rendering performance.

• TP 348174 - Support has been added for importing EXR images containing arbitrary channel data.

• TP 371712 - The Texture Sets palette now supports and will load the latest megascans file format.

• TP 371700 - The Texture Sets palette will now name the entries using the name defined in the megascans file.

Bug Fixes

• TP 349956 - Cache Performance Warning no longer keeps coming up on Linux once "Don't warn me again" button is clicked.

• TP 363255 - Mari was resized when the Tool Help text was longer than the application window.

• TP 359576 - Resetting the environment light would result in a render error in the canvas.

• TP 286410 - When selecting a new color in the color picker dialog, for a swatch that wasn't the foreground swatch, the picked color would also change the foreground swatch.

• TP 371562 - Reset buttons for locator list controls in the node properties view were appearing in the wrong location.

• TP 366698 - The OCIO Colorspace filter wouldn't be applied to a selected image.

• TP 366851 - Mari wouldn't respect the Wacom pen mapping from the Wacom Tablet Preferences when navigation the viewport.

• TP 376759 - The MARI__DONT_TREAT_EXR_PREMULTIPLIED environment variable has been added to the documentation. When set to 1, this disables the pre-multiplication of OpenEXR images when exporting channels. See Environment Variables That Mari Recognizes for more information.

• TP 377328 - The pins of the Pinup tool were not drawing on top of geometry in the Orthographic views.

• TP 368815 / 366514 - When applying an 8-bit projector the projected image would end up darker than expected.

• TP 372410 - When using custom OCIO Config files painting and baking multiple times on the same position on the geometry, Mari would create artefacts around the edges of the paint.

• TP 372539 - When using the OCIO environment variable, to set the OCIO config to use, any GPU accelerated colorspace transforms would fail to register.

• TP 358954 - Any colors picked using the Eye Dropper tool would be incorrect when Color Management was disabled and the View Transform is enabled.

• TP 371392 - Any colors picked using the Color Palette tool would be incorrect when Color Management was disabled and the View Transform is enabled.

• TP 373129 - The Input Colorspace option, on the View Transform toolbar, was not being shown after creating a new project with Color Management disabled.

• TP 373174 - When changing the Working colorspace, in the new project dialog, the Blending colorspace would change back to the first item in it's list.

• TP 360196 - When applying a filter to selected images, the preview didn't match the final output.

• TP 372648 - In the gradient tool, the picked start and end colors didn't match in the preview and when painted.

• TP 363511 - Applying a filter to selected images produced artifacts if the image was being used in a tri-planar projection.

• TP 359194 - Toggling scalar data on and off, whilst painting flow vectors with color management disabled, would have an affect on what was displayed in the canvas when it shouldn't.

• TP 373964 - Projects using custom OCIO configs would get an invalid colorspace warning when an image was loaded into the paint through tool.

• TP 371937 - When applying a filter to the Current Paint Target the final results wouldn't match what was displayed in the preview.

• TP 224395 - Applying a filter to the Paint Buffer, using a mask image, would end up unpremultiplying the result incorrectly.

• TP 375581 - Changing the Blending colorspace, whilst there was paint in the Paint Buffer, would result in a perceptual change in color.

Known Issues

Graphics Cards

• TP 207913 - Mari may crash, or operate with lower than expected performance, when using recent graphics drivers with some AMD cards.

  There have been reports that Plays.tv and Raptr, which come bundled with the AMD FirePro drivers, can cause instability in Mari. If you are experiencing instability, please try uninstalling these applications.

• TP 16225 / BZ 18457 - Using NVIDIA graphics cards from the Fermi series with drivers older than version 270 results in various rendering issues when the Virtual Texture Type is set to Half or Float.

  To resolve this, please download and install the latest graphics driver for your card from the NVIDIA website

• TP 9404 / BZ 12567 - Enabling Sync to VBlank in NVIDIA settings can drastically reduce Mari’s performance. If you experience very slow interaction, even with low-polygon models, on one of the Tested Workstation Hardware, navigate to:

  • Linux: NVIDIA X Server Settings > X Screen 0 > OpenGL Settings and turn off Sync to VBlank.

  • Windows: NVIDIA Control Panel > 3D Settings > Manage 3DSettings > Vertical Sync > Force off

  Then, restart Mari.

Importing And Exporting

• TP 123514 / BZ 50886 - Imported shaders don't have channels assigned.

• TP 113036 / BZ 49131 - High polygon .obj files, exported using the OBJ Exporter plug-in, cannot be read back in to Mari.

• TP 57756 / BZ 29386 - When using the Export for Maya script, Maya’s viewport may incorrectly show some patches as transparent. This can be resolved by selecting High Quality Rendering or Viewport 2.0 from the Renderer menu within Maya.

• TP 10157 / BZ 16324 - Windows only: You cannot currently import an image into a channel using a relative file path. To work around this, use an absolute path when importing images.

• TP 9854 / BZ 14985 - There may be a slight pause after importing textures when creating new projects, while Mari saves the project.

Layers

• TP 64924 / BZ 34690 - Flattening or caching layers or channels on complex projects may cause Windows to reset the graphics driver due to the long processing time. To work around this issue, you can try to flatten or cache fewer layers at a time, or reduce the value of the Max Render Size For Baking setting. This setting can be found under Preferences > GPU > Baking and Projection.

  Reducing this size breaks the flattening or caching operation up into smaller pieces, which individually take less time to calculate, and thereby avoids a Windows graphics driver reset.

• TP 53959 / BZ 26460 - Layers - Painting a mask in a Mask Layer Group sometimes results in unexpected paint results. To prevent this from happening, either:

  • Use a white “color” layer at the bottom of your mask stack. Any layer used over this initial “color” layer should then be fine, or

  • If you want to create a mask in a Mask Layer Group, simply add another layer on your Mask Layer Group instead, and paint white into it to create a mask.

Mari Tools

• TP 10046 / BZ 13640 - The Blur tool can be slow to use on the initial stroke. Wait for Mari to process the blur before applying a second stroke.

• TP 9567 / BZ 13394 - Using the Select Items tool with the Facing set to Front to select and hide a portion of faces causes some of the faces within the selection to remain visible when zoomed in. To catch all selected faces, either:

  • select Facing > Through instead of Front, or

  • zoom in closer to the object.

Node Graph

• TP 168753 - AIStandard nodes created in Mari3.0v1 are not compatible with Mari 3.0v2, or later. As a workaround, remove the old AIStandard nodes and recreate them in Mari 3.0v2, or later.

• TP 126902 / BZ 51462 - Creating a shader and attempting to view it in the Node Graph palette gives the impression that the DiffuseColor input edge is missing from the shader node. The input is present, but is incorrectly hidden. This is related to bug 51263 below

• TP 126816 / BZ 51452 - When importing a gizmo, the nodes in the gizmo did not retain their organization if they were created using the item name in the menu.

• TP 125961 / BZ 51263 - It is not currently possible to attach the Viewer node to standard Mari shaders, because they are hidden. As a workaround, you can click the View the current channel button above the Node Graph.

• TP 125813 / BZ 51247 - Channel transfer doesn't transfer Graph Layers as expected.

• TP 124611 / BZ 51082 - The Ambient Occlusion node's properties don't include a generate AO option.

• TP 111329 / BZ 48790 - Autoplace does not respect Backdrop nodes.

Nuke<>Mari Bridge

• TP 48970 / BZ 23010 - If Mari crashes when receiving incoming components from Nuke when the Virtual Texture Type is set to Float, lower the Virtual Texture Size to a value below 8192x8192.

• TP 17678 / BZ 19780 - A projector created in Ortho view in Mari does not re-project correctly in Nuke.

Ptex

• TP 13600 / BZ 17626 - It can take a long time to import very large or very high polygon count ptex models. The work-around is to assign a small uniform face size (1x1 or 2x2) on import, and then upres the relevant bits of the model as necessary after loading.

• TP 13531 / BZ 17618 - Ptex does not bake properly if the resolution of the face is too small. The workaround is to increase the resolution of the selected faces you are having problems with.

Shaders

• TP 64961 / BZ 34729 - Mari displays a rendering error on the canvas when it is unable to create a shader. More information has been included to help you determine the cause of the error. Some solutions might be to hide groups and layers, or to cache parts of your layer stack until a shader can be created

• TP 64911 / BZ 34679 - On extremely large projects, issues can arise with shader limits, and reaching the maximum allowed texture slots available. To avoid reaching these shader limits on large projects, try the following workarounds:

  • hide groups and layers, or

  • cache groups and layers.

Miscellaneous

• TP 360737 - Linux only: When using the Select Color dialog, the colors picked with the eye dropper Pick Screen Pixels option may be incorrect due to an OS driven behaviour of darkening the rest of the Mari application.

• TP 308268 - Windows only: When working on multiple monitors, palettes sometimes cannot be docked.

• TP 200836 - Scrolling in the Brush Editor or Tool Properties palette makes the scratch pad go blank.

• TP 194832 - Bake times were significantly increased when baking into channels containing non-linear data.

• TP 167883 / BZ 51934 - When a project that contains a Tiled procedural is upgraded from 2.6 to 3.0, the frame rate drops drastically. To avoid this, replace the image in the Tiled procedural once the project has been upgraded.

• TP 129292 / BZ 51771 - Removing, changing, or hiding subdivided objects takes a long time.

• TP 126389 / BZ 51370 - Heavier projects are initially slower to render when colorspace is enabled.

• TP 126164 / BZ 51322 - Modo Render: The preview occasionally fails to update fully.

• TP 125437 / BZ 51199 - The AiStandard, RedshiftArchitectural, and VRayMtl shaders are not connected to the Current Channel automatically.

• TP 125319 / BZ 51185 - PythonAPI: Mari's Paint node does not appear in typeList(). To add a Paint node Pythonically, call:

  ng = mari.geo.current().nodeGraph()
  ng.createPaintNode(width, height, bitDepth)
  

• TP 124614 / BZ 51084 - Animated objects can take a long time to subdivide.

• TP 124233 / BZ 51049 - Texture transfer does not take object transformation into account

• TP 123532 / BZ 50898 - Existing subdivision calculations are lost when recalculating, even if recalculation fails.

• TP 121276 / BZ 50548 - Modo Render: Only camera moves are respected by live update.

• TP 121139 / BZ 50520 - Although faces with degenerate UVs can be loaded into Mari, they can cause issues in some cases. They do not occupy any space in UV, so it's impossible to properly paint on such faces. There is also the risk that some shaders may show undesirable lighting effects on faces with degenerate UVs.

• TP 100303 / BZ 46600 - Ambient Occlusion must be updated after any OpenSubdiv calculation.

• TP 99115 / BZ 46223 - The Sponge Desaturate mode does not work through the full dynamic range as it uses HSL for desaturation. HSL cannot be used with HDR because HSL works well only in LDR values.

• TP 86007 / BZ 41573 - Windows 8 only: The Windows key (Meta key) does not disengage when used in conjunction with a Wacom pen.

• TP 62668 / BZ 33293 - Linux: Launching Mari with the language set to one without certain character symbols resulted in Mari failing with an error that the specified transform could not be loaded. To work around this, set the locale (language) to English.

• TP 60643 / BZ 31946 - Sometimes paint is not baked because of memory management issues on the graphics card. This can be due to issues such as a high resolution paint buffer, a high bit-depth paint buffer, large virtual texture size, or even a large scale value on the paint buffer transform. These issues can usually be identified by glError: 0x505 out of memory messages in the log. Try reducing any or all of these values to prevent it happening. Graphics drivers are continually improving, so it’s also worth checking whether upgrading your drivers resolves the problem.

• TP 45590 / BZ 20510 - If you find that the startup time for Mari is longer than usual, please check that the LIC files in your RLM licensing data folder do not refer to obsolete server ports. If they do, place them in another directory and restart Mari.

• TP 37066 / BZ 20021 - Textures in the canvas intermittently switch between lower and higher resolutions. This issue is more likely to occur if your virtual texture resolution is low, and you're working on a complex model with displacement. Possible workarounds include increasing your virtual texture size, reducing the number of channels Mari has to access at once (for example, by reducing the number of channels required for the current shader), to reduce the patch resolution of patches in the channels used in the shader, or to use a smaller canvas window or monitor.

• TP 9758 / BZ 14201 - Linux only: Mari becomes unresponsive after the system is woken from sleep.

• TP 9631 / BZ 13700 - Adjusting the Camera > Perspective settings for a Projector is not reflected on the canvas until the Projector is made Current.

• TP 9363 / BZ 12102 - Current brush settings do not get saved as part of the project. Instead, Mari reverts to the default settings when you close and relaunch it.

• TP 9342 / BZ 11874 - Mari doesn’t recognize 3-digit padded .obj sequences as animation

• TP 8030 / BZ 13571 - Launching a new version of Mari for the first time, when a config file exists from a previous version, sometimes results in an object not appearing in the Ortho view.

  To solve this, close Mari, delete the following config file and relaunch Mari:

  • Linux: ~/.config/TheFoundry/Mari.conf

  • Windows: C:/Users//.mari/TheFoundry/Mari.ini

• TP 7945 / BZ 13294 - Windows: Mari sometimes crashes when trying to load data on large projects due to the program exhausting all window manager objects.

  To reconfigure the user object limit:

  • Open regedit and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_ MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\NT\CurrentVersion\Windows, and
  • Edit USERProcessHandleQuota to a larger number.

  If this number gets too large, you may also have to modify GDIProcessHandleQuota.

Developer Notes

These are the changes relevant to developers.

New Features

These are no New Features in this release.

Feature Enhancements

There are no Feature Enhancements in this release.

Bug Fixes

• TP 366264 - Setting an invalid OCIO config, via the OCIO environment variable, would result in a Python error being generated.