Xuan Prada

Lets say that importing masks in to Mari 2 created in other software, is something very common and all the texture artist out there do every single day.

I’m talking about painted masks in Photoshop or Nuke, or baked masks in Maya, Softimage or just cavities, occlusions and other important maps generated in Zbrush or Mudbox.

Using all these programs and more is something pretty normal in any VFX boutique nowdays.

When I started working with the first alpha version of Mari 2 I found a bit tricky the way to import maps generated in others software packages in to Mari as layer masks.

The way to paint layer masks in Mari seems to be pretty straightforward but as I said if you want to import a texture as layer mask you need to follow some steps.

I’m pretty sure that if you are a new Mari 2 user you can’t find how to do this before spend some time struggling your mind to figure out how to do this simple thing.

I spent probably more than 30 minutes to find this out and just realize that a lot of texture artist are having the same problems to find a way to do it.

So, follow these steps to import layer masks in to Mari and save your precious time

And of course, if you have another fastest way to do it, I’ll be glad to hear it.

- Import you mask as new layer.

- Add a reveal layer mask to the layer that you want to mask with your imported map.

- Make a mask group.

- Double click on the mask group icon to open the masks window.

- Drag your imported mask layer to the list.

- Remove the previous mask created by default.

- Yo can invert the mask if needed.
- Done, your imported mask is working perfectly.