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some great matte paintings


oliviercampagne
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guys, i'm basically unfamilier with this 'matte paintings' thing.

 

(ok ok, i'm well ashamed of myself, but it's sadly true)

 

what exactly are they, or more to the point, how are they done?

 

are they hand painted oil/water colours scanned in? or are they all digitally painted with a tablet? or are they digital photos? or are they a mixture of all 3? what basically is the score?

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Obviously I'm not in the industry, but matte paintings can be whatever medium the artist chooses -- in years past mostly oil paintings, though I'm sure most make heavy use of digital tools these days. I assume they're called "mattes" since they're almost always composited between static areas and those with motion. Dusso shows this in one of the Pirates of the Caribbean images. They're generally for establishing shots or exterior backdrops. When I was a kid growing up on Star Trek The Next Generation I was always amazed by the cityscapes their production designers came up with. They won an Emmy for the Egyptian-esque Klingon capital as I recall. Enough nerdiness.

 

One of the things that really impressed me about the Lord of the Rings was how well WETA employed tried and true techniques like these. Exquisitely detailed physical models shot and composed against panning mattes. I'm always inspired by shots that were created by a handful of artisans that achieve the same thing it would have taken an army of CG artists to put together.

 

Great post. I feel like a grain of sand on a beach... time I finished my BFA!

 

Shaun

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what exactly are they, or more to the point, how are they done?are they hand painted oil/water colours scanned in? or are they all digitally painted with a tablet? or are they digital photos? or are they a mixture of all 3? what basically is the score?

 

 

They use anything and everything, even the kitchen sink if it'll make it look..just real enough.

 

Historically they where hand painted...an incredible talent.

 

Today they can be or derived from any and all image sources. Guess the one thing that makes them "Matte" is that they are developed for a specific scene, whether it's a BG image to be comp'd in or to fit geometry.

 

A wonderful environment example. He used geometry from a 3D app rendered out, I believe both wire frame and a somewhat finished product for the subject. Then using images and a whole buch of painting, cloning, layering techniques created this image. It's both 'Matte' and Matte applied to geometry.

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=298607&page=1&pp=15

 

Attached is also considered matte painting, not a incredible level of skill...using part of an exisitng image ( a reference pic) cloned out the entire building, then painted snow. Used the wire frame to guide the cloning for scale and perspective. The camera for that view was then used to map the 'matte' as a the texure/material in Max for an animation. It's an example ;)

 

WDA

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but dont see it as simple as in archvis like cutting and pasting peoples and trees..

Certainly not. But there's no disputing that there exists architectural renderers whose work is as compelling as a matte painting. They're definitely instructive to look at... and actually there are quite a few decent matte painting Photoshop tuts online. Might be instructive for peoples in our line of work.

Shaun

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Certainly not. But there's no disputing that there exists architectural renderers whose work is as compelling as a matte painting.

 

A few of the entries in this years AVC come to mind, but not much else.

 

With CG rendering we tend to work from objects to images. Matte painters work from images to objects--starting with a mental image of how the scene should look and put in the objects and effects needed to create that vision. Rendering starts with a building, a setting--as objects--then works towards making some sort of cohesive scene out of them. It is always helpful to start a rendering project with some sketches of how a final might look.

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Wow, these are fantastic.

 

In my jaded middle-age, I rarely see much new that really amazes me, but these are really excellent examples of work.

 

Truly inspiring - such talent shouldn't be allowed in one person!

 

Many thanks for posting this up, Olivier.

 

Cheers,

 

D.

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I don't find it puzzling at all that the Star Wars films were so beautiful and so equally vacuous at the same time. ILM did a great job. The director and screenwriter both need to be shot.

 

Sorry George, but it's true.

 

I'm far too young to be as jaded as I am already when it comes to "what the kids are watching these days," but movie studios today will bend over backwards to avoid going over the heads of the audience. I know historically there have always been crappy movies peppered with a few gems, but Star Wars seems like it was written as a vehicle for ILM to top their own demo reel.

 

I was pleasantly surprised to see Narnia this weekend. Granted the director had an extremely popular story from the get go, but the casting and screenplay was nevertheless top knotch and for the first time in a long, long time I was spellbound by hordes of CG characters, rather than scratching my head asking "was that shot really necessary?" Here's hoping Kong is just as cool!

 

Shaun

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Dusso has created a series of training DVD's for gnomon, as has a few other matte painters. I have one of dusso's, and have dabled in some of the techniques off and on. I think I'm going to take a class on digital painting this summer, not becuase I think I'll use it a lot (maybe some though), but more because it is just so much darn fun!

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The reason why i also found this interesting is that this work ( matte painting) has a lot of links with architectural visualization. Maybe, as Ernest said, it is a different approach.. but still you feel that there is something in common, obviously not only the technic, even if they are a bit different. But the final result is to show a setup, a atmosphere.. a vision ... and it must interesting to work out some architectural visualization as a matte painting... But my guess is that this has to be done in collaboration with the architect, and matte painting is not really in their mind...

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