Certified Performance

AMD FirePro professional graphics cards are now tested and certified by The Foundry and AMD, giving you optimized performance and reliability when using MARI, NUKE² and MODO. The latest generation AMD FirePro cards feature the new Graphics Core Next (GCN) GPU architecture from AMD which delivers new levels of graphics and compute performance from a single card, making AMD FirePro your ideal choice to meet the needs of modern VFX production, enabling artists to work with textures up to 32K in resolution, on models comprising many millions of polygons.

Shaping the Future of Graphics Together

A demanding task requires a powerful tool – and in the case of texture painting, that tool is MARI. Originally developed for work on Avatar, the 3D paint package is designed to meet the needs of modern VFX production, enabling artists to work with textures up to 32K in resolution, on models comprising many millions of polygons.

To do this, MARI makes extensive use of the GPU, using shaders to provide a real-time 3D preview of the model complete with simulated displacement, ambient occlusion and specular highlights. So when The Foundry set out to optimise the application for AMD’s graphics hardware, the two companies were initiating an intense collaboration: one that would last a full year.

The results became public in December 2012 with the release of MARI 1.6, which numbers AMD’s FirePro W7000, W8000 and W9000 among its supported GPUs – and the work is still going on. Future releases of MARI are expected to support AMD’s new professional cards as well.

More Performance with AMD GCN GPU Architecture and Open Standards

A key advantage of The Foundry’s software is its extensive use of shaders: programs that run on the GPU via its built-in rendering pipeline.

In MARI, The Foundry’s tessellation shader simulates displacement, reducing the geometry count of a scene on the fly. The software also makes use of pixel shaders to apply ambient occlusion and advanced lighting effects.

MARI’s use of shader code means that the graphics card is critical to a responsive user experience. With a fast GPU, a user can change objects and lighting more quickly: a performance boost that becomes more noticeable as a scene gets bigger.

AMD’s support for open standards over proprietary technologies meant that The Foundry had to be rigorous with its code. “We use pretty much every trick in the book to get as much speed out of MARI as possible, so we use OpenGL in some inventive ways,” says MARI Product Manager Jack Greasley. “The AMD drivers conform strictly to the OpenGL standard and we worked hard to ensure our shader code did too.”