Case Study: Weta Digital creates detailed Avatar textures with Foundry Mari

Weta Digital paints 2.5 million textures for Avatar with Foundry

The customer, Weta Digital, faced the immense challenge of creating thousands of highly detailed visual effects shots for the film Avatar. Their existing 3D painting software could not handle the scale and complexity required, forcing artists to manage hundreds of texture patches per model, which was inefficient and difficult to manage. They needed a powerful new paint tool that could run on Linux and integrate into their pipeline to realize director James Cameron's vision.

The vendor, Foundry, provided its product Mari, a high-performance 3D painting tool developed in collaboration with Weta. Mari allowed artists to paint directly on incredibly high-resolution models with tens of gigabytes of textures loaded at once, eliminating the need to split models into small sections. This solution enabled Weta's team to paint the 2.5 million textures required for the film efficiently, reducing paint-render-review cycles and allowing artists to focus on creativity over technical limitations. Foundry's Mari was used on almost every asset in the film and was essential to its success.

Weta Digital