One of the “smaller” software developing company The Foundry (most famous for Nuke I guess) teams up with Disney Animation studio.
Basically most of you have seen Mari by now, the texture paint tool that can handle crazy huge a** texture dimensions. Also it’s really responsive and takes advantage of the GPU alot to be able to handle the texturing part.
Anyway Disney tosses in their 3d Paint app, that’s been inhouse developed since 2005 for some major animated movies.
With that, Disney takes a place in the steering committee of Mari.
and why does that even earn to be mentioned here … Disney released one major part behind 3d Paint as Open Source earlier this year, PTex
and now they sit in the steering committee for Mari, maybe we can hope of seeing more Open Source offsprings coming from the Foundry in the future.
Doesn’t it seem that alot of the really big production houses are opening up for Open Source, Sony Imageworks, Disney, and who’s next?
I think alot is due to they prolly use Linux machines, and develop inhouse software w/ the help of Qt SDK … im just thrilled to see something turn up Open Source.
I think that with open-sourcing applications that the developers/ studios will take a hit up front, but over time they will get some very dedicated and loyal users, who will not only support the studio/ company producing the software, but in the case of open-source software also contribute to the design and developing.
There are people out there with immense talent that either can’t, or don’t want to get into the software development field, yet like it as a hobby and these people can contribute so much, just look at Blender for example, I don’t know the specifics about each developer but they do this in their free time and the results produce something which in some cases goes above and beyond what is commercially available, to a big studio this could be vital in getting the best and most open tools available.
I think studios are noticing this and waking up, the other added benefit is that open-source software is available to every one and the really talented guys who the studios want can easily get accustomed to a piece of software that is freely available to every one.
Maybe some techniques behind Mari, that will benefit The Foundry + Disney if it’s Open Sourced, will be. Like I can think that Disney did PTex inhouse. and it was awesome. But no other 3d suite did it their way. so they though, hey lets open source it and others might catch on to it.
yeah i know it’s amazing. one of my former colleague coded vfxdesktop just inbetween projects and he’s not really a programmer but a lead 3d artist.
and these days blender devs, can get payed! to work 100% full time on just blender. that’s awesome. and the aspect the software is free and open for anyone to peak into. and it’s devs from all around the world.
As far as i understand, mari was developed as an in house tool by Weta, not Disney.
MARI was developed at Weta Digital to handle the massively complex, highly detailed look development work demanded of the texture department by projects such as District 9, The Lovely Bones, and Avatar. http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/mari
they only open-source the rough backend in the hopes the format pervades the industry and that their proprietary content creation tool becomes the most used for such format… common tactic…
i know it’s amazing. one of my former colleague coded vfxdesktop just inbetween projects and he’s not really a programmer but a lead 3d artist.
that’s awesome. and the aspect the software is free and open for anyone to peak into. and it’s devs from all around the world.