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This matte painting from Alp Altiners forthcoming graphic novel, The Unknown, demonstrates the importance of composition. The viewer is lead into the image and across the bridge
DYLAN COLE
Best known for his work on Return of the King, Dylan has just completed Superman Returns as Lead Matte Painter www.dylancolestudio.com
brief communicated by the lms director: A cold and bleak environment, not too alien in its feel or a historically accurate view of the
Southampton Docks, circa 1912. If the brief hasnt already been visualised by the art department, the concept sketch becomes the digital matte painters rst job. Vital as a development tool for exploring the composition of the nal painting, and also as a method of communicating the look to the director, its only when the concept image has been signed off that work should begin on the actual matte painting. Whether the matte painters role is to reconstruct an entire imaginary background from scratch, or to augment a rudimentary set or existing location, the craftsmanship is essentially the same. These days, the majority of digital mattes start with a background plate; reference footage is sourced, then the layered paintwork begins. Colour-picking a brush and painting from scratch is becoming an increasingly rare task, as digital stills form the foundation of the majority of paintings. Yet, by no means does this equate matte painting to a Photoshop collage. Artistic talent is vital, and even with
CHARLES DARBY
One of the pioneers of digital matte painting, Charless credits include Titanic, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Minority Report www.charlesdarby.com
DAVE EARLY
Currently Digital Matte Painting Supervisor at Cinesite, Daves credits include Gladiator and the Harry Potter lms www.cinesite.com
LUBO HRISTOV
With his own matte painting company, Christov Effects and Design, Lubos credits include The Last Samurai www.christovfx.com
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When Cinesite created the Planet Factory sequence for The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, David Early knew that the movement through this shot would require a combination of 2.5D and 3D projection. Matte painter Sevendalino Khay created a projected dome backdrop for the distant stars the rst in a series of layers.
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Background layers of planets, including the Vegas planet on the right, required much less detail. But each planet was still handed off as a separate layer to the compositors so that, within Shake, they could be positioned in space to create a sense of parallax within the shot.
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The layers containing the foreground planets were painted with greater resolution, as it was known that these would be used for more than one shot. They would later be projected onto spheres and rendered in 3D through the Shot Camera to enable 3D lighting and real shifts in perspective.
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The Douglas Adams planet on the left was created from a cyberscan made of the author while he was still alive. The detailed matte-painted texture was then applied, and the element was rendered as a 3Dprojected matte painting. The render formed another midground layer for the compositors.
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Within Shake, the compositors then assigned the matte paint layers to cards positioned in Z-space. Each card was assigned a distance, so when the live-action camera move tracked from the background plate was imported, a sense of parallax was created in the distant planets as the camera moved through the shot.
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Once the background was complete, the compositors added the 3D-rendered scaffolding and live-action plate, shot in the studio against bluescreen, as foreground elements in Shake. Various lens effects, glows, atmospherics and colour grading were used to create this nal impressive shot.
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The live plate for the shot on the left. Since much of it would be hidden by the set, the composition of the matte painting required careful thought
standard 2,048x1,556 pixel lm resolution creates a safety margin for any unplanned moves on the shot. Better still, take advantage of the benets of downsampling: double your image resolution (work at 4,096x3,112) and youll enjoy the added advantage of more comfortable paintwork. Rather than needing to ensure your brushstrokes are pixel perfect, youll be able to work with broader strokes, then downsample to 2K when your work is nished.
If your nal output will be lm, work in 10-bit log colourspace wherever you can. 10-bit images maintain the full dynamic range of the original camera negative. While maintaining all of the original data, log images look washed-out to the naked eye, so to view them properly, a lookup table (or LUT) is applied to the monitor. The LUT alters the screen to show the log image as though it were a print. If you dont have access to lookup tables, working in 10-bit linear is a good alternative, and while the full dynamic range of the negative isnt present, unless youre making radical colour grades to the scan, youll rarely see the difference. 8-bit linear is the standard for television work, including HDTV.
nows the time to pick up any of the numerous books on the subject and hone those skills.
Good matte painting fools the brain into believing a at image is a truly three-dimensional world. Virtually all of the background for this shot from The Fifth Element is a 2D matte paint
To achieve a photorealistic crane-up on the ancient African city of Carthage, Lubo Hristovs team decided to project a matte paint on a relatively simple 3D model. Once the camera move was nalised, the Projection Camera was set up. Since the city was seen at its widest at the last frame of the shot, the Shot Camera was duplicated at this frame, locked off and renamed as the Projection Camera.
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Once the 3D geometry had been created, a grid texture was projected from the Projection Camera, and the scene rendered through the Shot Camera. Areas showing excessive texture stretching, or those obscured from the view of the Projection Camera, were identied as requiring separate texturing, as revealed in this render of the rst frame of the shot.
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Back in mental ray, three orthogonal, primary coloured distant lights were rendered through the Projection Camera. The resulting render was used as a selection matte in Photoshop to variously isolate the ground, rooftops, side walls and front-facing walls. In the image above, each is shown as a separate colour. This was an essential step for the next part of the process.
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colour-correcting a reference image until it breaks, rely on your artistic skills and, where required, paint areas from scratch.
Because this shot from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire required a zoom into the lit window, the matte painting was an enormous 20K
For Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Charles Darby presented this single A4 watercolour to demonstrate how his nal matte painting would look
A stone procedural shader was applied to the 3D model and rendered through the Projection Camera. The process was repeated with about 20 other brick, stone and tile textures and procedural shaders to create a series of layers. By using the selection matte, appropriate areas within each of these images were combined to form the basis of the matte painting.
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With the texture layers combined as overlay layers in Photoshop, paintwork began. Since the lighting would be rendered in 3D in order to achieve greater realism through real shifts in perspective, a 3D ambient and shadow lighting pass, rendered through the Projection Camera, was added as an overlay layer to preview the effect of the rendered lighting.
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The nal matte painting was projected back through the Projection Camera, and the shot rendered through the Shot Camera, with mental ray lighting. Renders were graded in Shake and additional 3D elements were added, including the ocean, animated boats and people. The trees were textures projected onto cards and then rendered in 3D.
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Initial: as comparison of this sketch and the nal matte painting (reproduced below) shows, all of the important creative decisions should be made in the concept work
Final: the composition, colour tones and feel of the lighting are almost identical to the concept created in Photoshop. Only the foreground building on the left is true 3D
With the saucer building as the only 3D element in this shot, the landscape was created via a combination of photographic reference images and paintwork
From another of Dylan Coles personal projects, this desert town sketch demonstrates just how closely the concept lighting matches the nal matte painting Created from a combination of photographic reference stills and Photoshop paintwork, the blimps were the only elements in this shot derived from basic Cinema 4D models
mountains, background atmosphere and subsequent layers of buildings. You may end up with about 50-100 layers, grouped into about 10 folders for easy colour grading.
14. When the work is complete, get sign-off on your nal image by the Visual Effects Supervisor. 15. Lastly, save out the layers discussed with the compositor, following the studios naming conventions.
List courtesy of Alp Altiner
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