How can I paint a bust in Mari?

Francis-xavier used Mari in order to texture and colour this cute witch

Sarah Cole, Australia Francis-xavier replies I decided to sculpt and render a cute witch based on a lovely concept I saw by Max Grecke. I was certain I wanted to render it in Maya so I textured it in Mari using UVS done in Maya.

I’ve been fortunate enough to use Mari for a few television projects so I’m familiar with its navigation controls, which you can change under the Navigation tab in Preferences. I use Maya often, so I changed it accordingly.

Getting started, you open a new project and then point to the path where the Obj is. Once that’s in, go to the Channels tab, right- click on Diffuse, resize and then choose the size of the texture you need. I went with 4096.

Think of painting in Mari like spray painting on a thin film of cellophane; as soon as you drop something on it, the object gets covered. This is ‘baking’ in Mari. It’s easier if you have a shortcut, for which mine is ‘B.’ Bake behaviours in Mari vary, but I like mine set to Clear Only as this means I have control over when the area I’ve painted is cleared. You can change this in the Projection tab.

I grabbed a soft brush from the Shelf tab and painted my base colours on the model. If any of the tabs aren’t visible, just right- click anywhere on the UI and click the tab you need.

Since you have layers, you have complete control of what you paint, the opacity, and you even have the ability to add masks and adjustment layers like you would in Photoshop.

If you have already baked your colours down and don’t want to use a mask, just change your painting mode to Clear and your brush will then act like an eraser. Then on a new layer, I chose a new colour and painted in her freckles. The controls for each tool is on a HUD for easy use, so by holding down [ R] I could quickly change the radius.

If you have already baked your colours down and don’t want to use a mask, just change your painting mode to Clear

Once you have finished painting your bust, right- click a layer in the Layer Diffuse tab, then export all layers flattened and name it. This should include the extension you need, so then you can use it in the rendering program of your choice.