Press Release from The Foundry

London, 12.07.10. The Foundry, a leading developer of visual effects software is delighted to announce that Double Negative and Framestore have made a significant investment in it’s newest product – MARI.

MARI is a brand new creative 3D texture painting product originally developed at Weta Digital to handle the exceedingly detailed look development and texture work demanded by Avatar, MARI copes easily with an obsessive level of detail - literally tens of thousands of textures - quickly and elegantly.

MARI has been enthusiastically received across a variety of texture painting communities.  This decision by Double Negative and Framestore to invest while the product is still in beta and set MARI to work on live projects is testament to quality of the product and hunger for development in this area of work.

The Foundry have also received advance orders on a smaller scale from studios worldwide including BaseBlack in London and Fido in Sweden.

Matt Holben, CEO, Double Negative, said, “Development in the world of texture painting has been somewhat stilted in recent years, hence Weta’s development of MARI.  We are all facing increasing demands in terms of scale and detail as new formats become the norm. MARI is what our artists have been waiting for.  We have been employing it on production since alpha and are confident we are making the right move purchasing this software – even pre-release.”

Christophe Meslin, Head of Systems Support, Framestore, said, “Our artists are very excited by MARI and are already using it on live projects.  MARI has been developed with our whole workflow in mind and hence frees up the artists to do what they do best – paint.”

Bill Collis, CEO, The Foundry, said, “We are very excited about MARI and this just proves that excitement is well founded.  Developed on production, it delivers in real-life production situations and that is why people like it so much.  With MARI on Linux due for release this month and a Windows build not far away, we look forward to bringing this truly useful, creative toolset to texture artists across a variety of industries.”

About The Foundry

The Foundry is a world-leading innovator of visual effects and image processing technologies that boost productivity in motion picture and video post-production.
 
The Foundry has a well-established client base that includes leading visual effects facilities worldwide, such as Warner Bros, The Moving Picture Company, Weta Digital, Framestore, Sony Pictures Imageworks and Digital Domain.  It is at the cutting edge of software development, marketing and sales for visual effects compositing.

In June 2009 The Foundry announced a management buyout for an undisclosed sum led by Advent Venture Partners.  Advent backed The Foundry’s management team, led by CEO Dr Bill Collis and the original founders.

The Foundry is highly profitable and has more than doubled in size in the past two years.

The Foundry’s products support a wide range of award-winning host platforms including After Effects, Autodesk® Media and Entertainment Systems, Avid DS, , Nuke, Shake and Final Cut Pro.  In 2007, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded a Sci-Tech Award® to The Foundry’s development team for the Furnace image processing suite – and the company now holds two products with AMPAS Sci-Tech Award® winning technology including high-end compositing system Nuke.
 
The Foundry is headquartered in London, and has offices in Los Angeles. For more information please visit: www.thefoundry.co.uk <http://www.thefoundry.co.uk>

About Double Negative

Double Negative, located in the heart of London’s Soho, was set up in 1998 with a team of just 30. Since then the company has grown to 750+ staff, making it Europe's largest provider of visual effects for Film.

In 2009, Double Negative opened the doors to its Singapore office.