Help in Camera Matching

[Suirebit]

what's that? :o I can't even understand what's in the photo...is it a rock in a river/pond of some sort?

[schajee]

Haha... unfortunatley yes.

The rock is my 'Island' and I plan on building a castle on top of it based on Edinburgh or the Bumburgh castles.

Most probably I have a bad mesh of the stone (island) and the castle walls never seem to go around the stone, as they should, but its the straight up that irks me a lot. The slight angle of the walls somehow doesn't seem to fit right.

[Suirebit]

You are aware that it won't work because of scale? I mean it will look silly to have a castle there, unless it's a shot from The Ant Bully or Little Foot :D

[JJASSO]

yeah I agree about the scale, it look really tiny , and the castle will look like micro machines toy, at that huge scale, yo won´t see water transparency, the rock or island would need to look detailed and with lots of different texture and complex shapes, you will need some aereal perspective as well and more detail on modeling

[schajee]

Yes the castle is a bit tiny, but then the castle is just a part of the comp. Here's an early mockup I did...

http://www.schajee.com/crit0/final.jpg

From here it didn't look too bad, specially when u consider that later it'll have a some heavy effects applied during post-production to give it a Steampunk look... something like Sky Captain but with a lot of fantasy elements.

The plane is ready for now... haven't textured it. Working on getting the castle right... IF i like the way the camera matching goes :)

http://www.schajee.com/baron_01.jpg

[Suirebit]

why don't you just use a normal island shot...i don't get it...there are plenty island photos...or you can even create one in vue....

[schajee]

Like I said in my first post... I'm stuck with it. No way of getting out. I'm not even sure in the end if it remains a matte-painting or not. I might end up covering every inch of real-estate.

[nickmarshallvfx]

I can only agree with the other posters. That plate is going to really harm the final shot. WHy can't you change? You could even use Terragen as a base which is a free software, and it would give better results.

Nick

[phix314]

I dunno man, I think you can get some other shots of similar, but larger, situations (beaches, etc) and comp em in there.

[MarkyG]

The water is flat so I'd align my grid to that. I'd then go about modeling a rough version of that rock and get it to look right and line up with the real one.

Do you have any other photo's of the scene you can pull ref from?

[Dtox]

Because of the scale, the wet part of the rock that comes up from the water has HUGE specular highlights.
It should also have a sand layer at the base instead with possibly some foliage, as an island like that would.
You could raise the rock up and drop the base lower with a sandy beach and still remain true to the BG plate.

[thundering1]

"I'm supposed to do a matte painting based on this image..."

Many posts above have asked about WHY you chose this image - was this chosen FOR you as a student assignment, or the directors specifically WANTS this image? In any case, it sounds like the choice of your starting/base image is out of your hands.

Someone above (name? - sorry can't see right now) mentioned the flat water plane - he/she's right - try and make a perspective grid from that.

Good luck-
-Lew ;-)

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