GG Matte Painting Defined?

[leigh]

The original definition of a matte painting is a painting that was, back in the day, done on glass, and photographed, using a rotoscope camera, to combine it with the filmed plate. The purpose of the painting was to create background elements, or an entire backdrop, for a shot. These days, the glass painting technique isn't really used any more, and has been replaced by digital methods (including 3D, for parallax), but the purpose of the painting remains the same - they're used in films to create backdrops and background elements for shots.

Many, if not most, of the "matte paintings" you see posted around here, are not actually matte paintings at all. I think the term matte painting has become something of a buzzword and everyone wants to jump onto the bandwagon, when in fact their paintings aren't matte paintings since they contain foreground elements and action-posed characters and such which you wouldn't get in a matte.

[Rockhoppermedia]

Some matte painting is done for cosmetic purposes, rather than a heavy FX laden flythru of a scene. For example a rooftop shot done in london today would be unusable for a period piece for example world war two. Instead of a crew of a hundered painstakingly removing satellite dishes and aerials and painting fake wood onto pvc windows, a lone matte painter can paint out all these items. This may take ten minutes or ten days but will be cheaper and quicker to do. Sometimes these little touch ups may be for something quite small. Large starwars type effects are probaly 10 percent of the job. Whereas little touch ups are increasinly more common. I agree with Leigh that todays definition of matte painter is mainly a term of endearment to a fine artist/photorealistic painter. But shockingly if you look at old matte oils on glass they can be quite rough and ready (Bob Foss) style. This is where the fascination for myself comes in. I was introduced to a old film called the black narcissus where a clifftop bell was shot above a terrifying chasm, this scared me as a child. I later found out this was a simple matte paint and have been interested ever since.

A interesting experiment for you try out with a 35 mm slr on a locked off tripod, stand one side of a window and photograph a scene through a window. Place a postcard sized black card on the glass. Photograph it. The black card is your matte. Carefully place a postcard onto the black card. Wind the film back a frame and take another exposure (creating a double exposure). You will see on your print a soft out of focus image of the postcard. Basically what you were doing there is a matte painting. Imagine doing that with a film movie camera. This was the essence in the early days.

This was secret technology and rival studios had the equivalent of a arms race in improving matte technology. Without it there would never have Douglas Fairbanks movies, king kong, gone with the wind. It remained in place till big studios started ripping out the fx budgets. it wasnt until the young guns of the movie industry George Lucas/ Steven Spielberg /Francis Ford Coppolla started reusing the old techniques. Matte painting became very popular in the seventies and eighties. In the nineties CGI came into play and glass and oils were put into museums. The tool of choice now is a wacom tablet and photoshop. There is a argument that the new matte painters are photo manipulators and nothing else. Which having the last eigtheen months as a photoshop professional learning the invisible art you need an artistic background.

My workflow involves Research, concept art, modelling and designing. Photographing a plate. This is before I even start painting digitally. I use bryce, carrara pro 5, photoshop CS3, After Effects, Mark one eyeball. When i am stuck I look up Peter Ellenshaw on the web and pinch myself that I have it easier.
If I were you check out ballistic books on matte painting there is one out and another due for release. There is also one fantastic book called the invisible art.

I watched the filming of children of men whilst at work. The matte painting for that film is admirable as most of it you would never notice. I dont know if I would get more satisfaction knowing that the audience missed my contribution to a film or them noticing it.

I hope you have found the meaning of matte painting,
Good luck
Rich

Prolific poster, matte painter in the making.

[JJASSO]

I wouldn't have said it better thanks Leigh and Richard, matte painters nowadays should be called digital enviroment artist or something like that , matte painters or painting is the religious name given to it because of the historical art it has from the very begginings of film industry

[Suirebit]

Very well put and sumed by James. It's like nowadays UK "Sir"-s if you want...they are no longer knights in the traditional way, but they still retain this title.

We 'stolen' the algoritm/method from the true classic matte paints and brought it to CGI, adapting it to our tools.

As for those who do 'matte paintings' which are actually illustrations using DMP techniques (or better said digital environment creation) ( I myself), this is a long debate. Truth is that when you post on the web to expose yourself you can't just put a background (which is what MP really stands for) because everyone will say 'hey that's just a background, come back when you have something more interesting!'
So we place a subject, make an illustration....and call it matte painting in the 'honor' of the tehcnique we used :)

Religious indeed :)

[scifielf]

Hello Leigh, Rockhoppermedia, James & Siurebit :)


Thanks all of you for such attention to answering my question. I think it is clearer now.

The language of digital art is new for me so wading through looking for the definition was, to say the least, looking like mission impossible. But thanks to all of you the clouds have lifted.

I do get the religious attachment to the term, I think! I believe many careers and industries have their own version of this. Mine has been nursing and there are definitely old words we (and definitely the doctors!) use for new things that bear only a trace resemblence to the original item or treatment of mention.

...Truth is that when you post on the web to expose yourself you can't just put a background (which is what MP really stands for) because everyone will say 'hey that's just a background, come back when you have something more interesting!'
So we place a subject, make an illustration....and call it matte painting in the 'honor' of the tehcnique we used :)....

Suirebit, what you wrote made me laugh in spades. That is hilarious!!

Thanks again, everyone, for helping me understand the new way of "matte painting."

[Artbot]

A quick overview from Craig Barron's 1998 Siggraph presentation:

http://www.matteworld.com/projects/siggraph01.html

I know these terms are covered in depth on other sites, but we really need a (useable) wiki page here for CG terms so the same questions don't get asked again and again. The Wikipedia entry for "matte painting" is much too abbreviated, and searching the CGwiki here returns no results(!).

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