What is matte painting?

[tufif]

Isn't that like when they used to make a big painting and use it for the background in a movie scene?

[unwrap]

I dunno :shrug:. But why painting and not 3d for instance?

[hiphopcr]

The front page of cgtalk.com has a couple references to matte painting.

As for 3D, why create an entire 3D scene with buildings, trees, mountains, or whatever, and texture and render them if you can just use a flat painting in the background?

[Dutchman]

As for 3D, why create an entire 3D scene with buildings, trees, mountains, or whatever, and texture and render them if you can just use a flat painting in the background?
It is also often a mix, isn't it...? For instance for Star Wars (3) they used mainly 3ds Max with Brazil renderer, to render some nice buildings and so, and to manipulate them in 2D in PS and so...?!

In fact at the end it still becomes 3D, by having various layers, that are set to 3D layers in the compositing software (so that you can still get quite good and not-too-much warping when the cam moves :) ).

On VFXWorld.com there is a very nice feature article about the Matte Paintings in Star Wars 3: CLICK (http://www.vfxworld.com/?atype=articles&id=2508) To read it, you'll need a (free) account, but that won't be a problem mentioning that VFXWorld is one of the most awesome VFX-sites around! (with veeery awesome interviews and so... It's alsmost as awesome as the VFX-Blog ;) !)

I hope you'll understand after reading this & that ;) !,

Greetz,
Gijs

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