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I tried my hand at a matte painting for class this week. I quickly discovered that good undersea photographs are hard to come by.
Thanks for the info Rav, I must have missed that link about matte paintings ... I read to fast for my mind to catch up.
That is a really good impression of Bilibine. You captured the serenity and peaceful essence quite nicely. And honestly (no bull) I like yours better... I think its the difference in the overal shading or hue of the complete painting... it appeals to my eye better... But hey, I'm no art critic or even an artist so my opinion probably shouldn't be taken too seriously...
Since I'm trying to learn all I can about Photoshop, I'll be using that. Learning the programs functions more intimately is the goal I had in mind after reading this thread... Again thanks for the info
Del
I tried my hand at a matte painting for class this week. I quickly discovered that good undersea photographs are hard to come by.
Bryan Ray, visual effects artist
http://www.bryanray.name
Wow! Very nice! What did they teach you? Any tips for us self taught types??
That's really quite good Midgard. *applauds*
My Finished Maps | My Challenge Maps | Still poking around occasionally...
Unless otherwise stated by me in the post, all work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Thank you. The most useful thing I picked up was (in Photoshop) image > calculations to improve the contrast of the channels to make extracting a background easier. It's still not easy to seperate blue fish from the blue water, though.
It's best to start with a concept of what you want to make, sketch it out and paint over the sketch, then find images to match that rather than trying to just cram together images that you like.
Don't hesitate to skew, stretch and squash photographs to fit the shapes you need. The clone tool can be used to extend edges.
When dealing with buildings, a polygon lasso selection of one side of the building lets you skew it into a new perspective. I didn't get the opportunity to really use that since I didn't use any nice, clean buildings. I could have tried it on the ruins, but they're so tiny that I don't think the perspective is an issue.
There are probably lots of other things I could mention, but it all blends together in my head. There's a really good DVD from Gnomon on the subject that I watched part of. I need to watch the whole thing soon.
Bryan Ray, visual effects artist
http://www.bryanray.name
Thanks Mid, I think I might go back to making matte's myself soon again too.
Since I mentioned it in that channel extraction tutorial, I should share the new matte painting. This one is significantly better than the last. The bridges come from the photograph "Bixby Canyon Bridge" by Cpt Albert E Theberg, NOAA Corp (ret). The sky, some midground mountains, refinery, and arch come from cgtextures.com and the rest is my own photographs.
The original resolution is 4000 x 2250. This image is scaled for compositing with 720p HD footage.
Bryan Ray, visual effects artist
http://www.bryanray.name
Wow Mid! That's really good!!! Love the sense of desolation it engenders.
One word... AWESOME!
My Finished Maps | My Challenge Maps | Still poking around occasionally...
Unless otherwise stated by me in the post, all work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
When I saw your name Midgard, I knew it had heard it before. Just so happens it is the title of a map I worked on a bit (RJbeals did 95% of it)
And to stay on topichere is a cool matte painting tutorial. Great Stuff
http://www.seb4d.com/tutorials/Matte...ng_english.htm
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