Release Notes for Mari 3.0v4

 

Release Date

19 July 2016

Note:  The Mari documentation available in PDF format will soon be deprecated in favor of the help in HTML format. This documentation is shipped with the product and can accessed without Internet connection.

System Requirements

Note:  Mari increases its level of performance with newer, more advanced hardware configurations. However, Mari is tested and capable of operating on many older, prior-generation systems. For this reason we are listing below-minimum requirements, which are recommended, and on which tests have been performed. Your particular needs may vary from that of other users.

Officially Supported Operating Systems

• Mac OS X 10.9.5 (Mavericks) or higher

• Windows 7 64-bit or higher

• Linux 64-bit operating system (CentOS/RHEL 5.4)

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 Workstation 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 support@thefoundry.co.uk.

Tested Workstation Hardware

Apple

• MacPro4,1

• MacPro5,1

• iMac13,2

• MacBookPro10,1

HP

• HP Z600

• HP Z620

• HP Z800

Tested GPU Hardware

AMD Prosumer Graphics Cards

• AMD Radeon HD - D500

• AMD Radeon R7 - 260x

AMD Enterprise Graphics Cards

• AMD FirePro W7000

NVIDIA Prosumer Graphics Cards

• NVIDIA Geforce GTX 680

• NVIDIA Geforce GTX Titan

• NVIDIA Geforce GT 650M

NVIDIA Enterprise Graphics Cards

• NVIDIA Quadro 4000

• NVIDIA Quadro K5000

• NVIDIA Quadro M6000

New Features

There are no new features for this release.

Feature Enhancements

• ID 208461 - The GL version has been updated to 4.3 (hardware dependent).

• ID 218253 - A Virtual Texture Depth preference has been added to control the number of 2D texture layers used in the virtual texture Mari uses for display. Increasing this may resolve issues with flickering textures. This value is dependent on the graphics card capabilities. This preference is disabled for Mac OS X platforms.

Bug Fixes

• ID 127948 - Smart selection didn't work correctly in Edge Angles and Orientation modes.

• ID 173066 - Copying and pasting layers across objects rendered the wrong default colors as well as shallow copies of the layers.

• ID 176239 - The layer hash method did not take into consideration any non-layer nodes or the Node Graph.

• ID 196364 - The Objects palette sort option didn't work.

It now sorts the root object names alphabetically, leaving the children objects names in the same order they were imported in Mari.

• ID 201092 - Layers lost their cache when upgrading archives across versions.

• ID 201143 - Mari was significantly slower when using OCIO roles rather than using the corresponding colorspaces.

• ID 201151 - Mari wasn't clamping the results to the zero to one range from the colorspace conversion on the images used in the Paint through tool. This meant the texture image in the paint buffer didn't match the paint that was being sent through it.

• ID 201428 - Disabling a mask caused a rendering artifact and detached the channel from the current Viewer.

• ID 207548 - Mari introduced very noticeable stepping artifacts when painting byte (8-bit) textures.

• ID 207662 - Adding multiple output nodes in a Group node did not show an error dialog and stop the action.

• ID 208567 - Zoom to selected faces (A key by default) didn't work.

• ID 215278 - Copying Paint nodes across objects resulted in empty Paint nodes.

• ID 216423 - The Third Party Library Versions appendix did not include the GCC, OpenSubDiv, and Ptex libraries.

• ID 216761 - Mari 3.0 was significantly slower than earlier versions, such as 2.6. This was particularly the case when working with large and complicated projects.

• ID 217000 - Reverting snapshots caused Mari to crash.

• ID 218222 - Mac OS X only: Mari sometimes failed to export channels with flattened layers

• ID 219347 - The Layout.mws could become corrupted, causing a crash on startup when migrating from Mari 2.6.

• ID 219482 - Mac OS X only: Very noticeable lighting artifacts appeared in the canvas render when using environment lights with an AMD GPU.

Known Issues and Workarounds

Mari Tools

• ID 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.

• ID 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.

• ID 118852 - The Erase mode in the Slerp tool does not work.

Shaders

• ID 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.

• ID 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.

Layers

• ID 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.

• ID 26460 - 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.

Importing and Exporting

• ID 51655 - Mari becomes unresponsive when attempting to export Ptex textures.

• ID 50886 - Session Scripts: Imported shaders don't have channels assigned.

• ID 49634 - Session Scripts: Not all features new to Mari 3.0 are supported by session scripts.

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

• ID 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.

• ID 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.

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

Nuke<>Mari Bridge

• ID 23010 - Nuke<>Mari Bridge: 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.

• ID 19780 - Nuke<>Mari Bridge: A projector created in Ortho view in Mari does not re-project correctly in Nuke.

Ptex

• ID 17626 - It can take a long time to import very large or very high polygon count Ptex models.

The workaround is to assign a small uniform face size (1x1 or 2x2) on import, and then increase the resolution of the relevant bits of the model as necessary after loading.

• ID 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.

Graphics Cards

• ID 217864 - Mac OS X only: AMD D500 and D700 graphics cards, found on modern Mac Pro's, are physically limited to 16 Texture Mapping Units, which can block operations such as multiple procedural layers.

• ID 207913 - Mari may crash, or operate with lower than expected performance, when using the latest graphics drivers with some AMD FirePro 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.

• ID 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.

• ID 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.

Node Graph

• ID 168753 - AIStandard nodes created in Mari 3.0v1 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.

• ID 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.

• ID 51452 - When importing a gizmo, the nodes in the gizmo do not retain their organization if they were created using the item name in the menu.

• ID 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.

• ID 51247 - Channel transfer doesn't transfer Graph Layers as expected.

• ID 51082 - The Ambient Occlusion node's properties don't include a generate AO option.

• ID 48790 - Autoplace does not respect Backdrop nodes.

Miscellaneous

• ID 221920 - When copying channels between objects, a warning message can pop up stating the requested channel cannot be created. However, clicking OK to this message usually results in the channel copying successfully, regardless.

• ID 208632 - Mac OS X only: Mari now allocates an additional Texture Mapping Unit to improve performance.

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

• ID 177430 - Mari occasionally crashes on startup during the initialization of Python.

• ID 167883/51934 - When a project that contains a Tiled procedural is upgraded from 2.6 to 3.0, the frame rate drops drastically.

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

To avoid this, replace the image in the Tiled procedural once the project has been upgraded.

• ID 99115/46223 - 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.

• ID 51370 - Heavier projects are initially slower to render when colorspace is enabled.

• ID 51322 - Modo Render: The preview occasionally fails to update fully.

• ID 51273 - Mac OS X 10.10 and above: Rendering is occasionally incorrect when using multiple lights.

• ID 51199 - The AiStandard, RedshiftArchitectural, and VRayMtl shaders are not connected to the Current Channel automatically.

• ID 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)

• ID 51084 - Animated objects can take a long time to subdivide.

• ID 50830 - The Objects palette lock doesn't prevent objects from being transformed.

• ID 50548 - Modo Render: Only camera moves are respected by live update.

• ID 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.

• ID 50149 - Texture transfer does not take object transformation into account.

• ID 50898 - Existing subdivision calculations are lost when recalculating, even if recalculation fails.

• ID 49557 - Shadows and colors can appear incorrect after subdividing geometry.

• ID 47180 - Mac OS X 10.10 and above: Resizing palettes is restricted to a certain width or height per drag action.

• ID 46600 - Ambient Occlusion must be updated after any OpenSubdiv calculation.

• ID 43020 - Mac OS X with retina screens only: When a hidden menu is unfurled over the canvas, the canvas zooms in dramatically.

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

To successfully disengage, you need to press the Windows key again over the desktop, which rectifies the problem.

• ID 37140 - Mac OS X only: By default, when you first install Mac OS 10.8 or higher, the security preferences are set so that any applications not downloaded from the Apple App Store can’t be installed.
To ensure that Mari installs correctly, navigate to System Preferences > Security & Privacy on your Mac and select Anywhere for the Allow applications download from field.

• ID 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.

• ID 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.

• ID 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.

• ID 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.

• ID 14201 - Linux only: Mari becomes unresponsive after the system is woken from sleep.

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

• ID 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/<login>/.mari/TheFoundry/Mari.ini

• ID 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.

• ID 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.

• ID 11874 - Mari doesn’t recognize 3-digit padded .obj sequences as animation.

Developer Notes

These are the changes relevant to developers.

New Features

There are no new features for this release.

Feature Enhancements

There are no feature enhancements for this release.

Bug Fixes

There are no bug fixes for this release.