Lights and HDR in Mari

Peter Aversten
Lead Texture Artists
Editor in Chief
Meshmen Studios
“Let there be light and it was light!”
Well Mari does not have lights in biblical terms but you can use them for preview purposes. The environment light can be used to preview shading effects when using a HDR image. Mari ships with a few and you can also get some here for free.
You also have four basic point lights that can have shadows at your disposal


“HDR lights is usefull when you preview specular shading”
Peter Aversten

To be able to acess the lights you need the lights panel. You can find it by right clicking somewhere in a grey are at the top of the mari interface
Lets examine the lights!
Video tutorial Below

If you dont already have The light panel open acess it by right clicking in the top grey are of the UI

To be able to see any lights on your model and not just flat shaded you have to hit one of the shaded balls above in the UI.
by default its F1, F2, F3, where F1 is flat shaded

The light panel interface where you can enable or disable
lights. Here you can see the Env light and a point light active.

When selecting a light you get this dialog with settings for the light.
There will be free HDR images you can use in Mari in the store section
Happy Painting

“Want me to cover something specific? Leave your comments below”
Peter Aversten
Hey! I can’t find where I can download a free hdr. I was told I could find them here http://themarichannel.com/all-hdr/ and it says no post found. I cant find the store section either. I would advice you to oversee your UX because its really hard to navigate on your website!
Im moving all content over to meshmen.com from the mari channel. And yes you are right the hdrs have not made it there yet. I will make an effort to move them soon.
Yes im also continuing to work on the site in the future. Thanks for your feedback