Transferring Channels

You can transfer existing channels from one object or version to another. This is useful for re-creating work on an object with minimal changes and similar topology or an object with the same topology but a different UV layout. By using the old textures transferred across onto the new object, you can save time instead of starting again from scratch.

Mari uses the Bakery to transfer the nodes and paint data to the target object, avoiding the need to manually redo existing work on a new version of the geometry.

Using the Channel Transfer dialog, you can specify which object, version, and patches to use as a source for the texture, and which of these to use as a destination.

You can define the Transfer Method option to specify how the textures are remapped onto the destination object.

In some cases, where the topology of the object might have changed between versions, there may be inconsistencies from the texture transfer. You can specify a patch Fill Color to highlight where the textures didn't transfer to a patch, and then fix only these patches separately after the transfer.

The Texture Transfer enables you to bake textures quickly and move them between assets.

To Transfer textures in Mari:

Select the channels you want to transfer.

Select Channels > Transfer. Alternatively right-click to open the context menu and navigate to Selection > Transfer. The Channel Transfer dialog opens.

Adjust the Channel Transfer settings:

• Source - Select the Object, Version, and Patches that the channels can currently be found on.

• Destination - Select the Object, Version, and Patches that the channels are being transferred to.

• Use the arrow buttons to move the selected channel(s) back and forth between the source and destination channel lists.

• Transfer Method. Specify the method for transferring the texture onto the destination UV map. Choose between:

• UV Remap From Bakery - Uses the Bakery to generate the UV coordinate mappings from the source object to the destination object.

• UV Remap From File -Uses an import-like template to remap pre-generated textures based on UV coordinates. For example, if you have generated the UV map beforehand, you can load it here.

• Bleed Edges - Enable to generate edge bleed on the resulting image set.

• Fill Color - Define the initial color to fill the resulting image set with. If an object has extra patches that aren't covered by the transfer, then the fill color specifies whether these extra patches are filled with Transparent, Black, White, Mid-gray, Magenta, Foreground, or Background.

Click Ok.

The transfers will then be added to the node graph of the object you are transferring to.