Welcome to the 10th Digital Matte Painting monthly challenge, presented by CGSociety! These short monthly challenges will give you a chance to hone in your skills or learn new ones. We will be providing a different theme each month, with (sometimes) a base plate, as well as guidelines. It will be judged as usual by David Luong, Milan Schere and a special guest judge with this one already determined as returning judge, Jason Horley (DMP Supervisor from ILM London).
Please refer to his previous spotlight month in February here for more info: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=7972886&postcount=23
These are meant to be fun while at the same time, allow you to hopefully, create a nice looking piece in the end (and win some prizes if you place in the top 3!). These pieces will be a production styleframe to be presented to the client for approval, so it could be a clean matte painting, or a concept in photo real quality. As always, supporting the story according to the theme is paramount in both technical terms, and creative terms.
All skill levels of artists are welcome in this challenge!
The prizes for top 3 placements are:
1st Prize: 1 x CGWorkshop, 1 x CGTOD, 1 x Ballistic Book of Choice, 1 x CGSConnect Membership
2nd Prize: 1x CGTOD, 1 x Ballistic Book of Choice, 1 x CGSConnect Membership
3rd Prize: 1 x Ballistic Book of Choice, 1 x CGSConnect Membership
Required in every monthly challenge to qualify for the prizes:
An early rough concept of your idea, at least TWO W.I.P’s (work in progress drafts) in the forum for critiques or you will not qualify. Your final draft must be delivered on or before 11:59pm PST on the last day of the month of the challenge.
To enter, simply create a new thread in this forum with the DATE of challenge and name such as: “April 2015 - Jason Horley”
Instructions and Scenario:
In a production meeting, you get briefed with the details of an upcoming project. This is a modern day cityscape skyline, but use that to your creative liking as many “modern day areas” are more or less decorated according to their region.
This is an exercise that is very much representative of a task a DMP artist will likely do on a production (using cg renders, either greyscale of textured).
In general, keep to the building layout, especially the major buildings. But as this model is made up in general of cubes the shape and detail of the buildings can be changed of course. This render is a guide. As long as the final DMP keeps the feeling of the layout you’re good.
Keep to the lighting direction.
Things to watch out for…
As you’ll be piecing together many different reference images to create the final DMP make sure the quality is the same throughout… level of blur, amount of grain, quality of photos must be consistent. When reviewing the final DMP we should not be able to tell where one source photo ends and another starts, so take care when blending photos together.
Watch out for bad edges… edge fringing, hard cuts, rough masks should be taken in to careful consideration.
For this you must use photographs and paint over the existing environment, utilizing Matte Painting techniques, in order to achieve the desired look. Your final “clean” DMP should not only communicate your idea clearly but also display a strong solution to the logistical challenge, while presenting an actual finished product to the potential clients. We recommend you shoot your own photos of roof tops if possible, in a safe manner, or up on higher level skyscrapers/hotels through a window if you can. Or help each other find royalty free stock images of high angled cityscapes via the internet. This is common practice on pitch projects but for legal reasons all copyright aspects must be respected throughout the process.
Please check out my Flickr album of New York City for inspiration and feel free to use any of the photos there: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ackdoh/sets/72157625002145338/
Base 3D Render Plate, as provided by Jason Horley and Milan Schere (right click download):
You’ll notice it’s a little higher res than regular 2k or HD. Use it to your advantage, then shrink it back down to 1920x817 for your final image.
REQUIREMENTS:
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Read the provided description and come up with your own unique idea or story based on the instructions. Matte painting is all about supporting the story!
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Resolution: Please submit works in both 1000px wide for preview, and 1920x817 HD .JPG format in the end.
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Note the 2.35:1 aspect ratio, no black bars needed for final submission, just the image cropped to the right aspect.
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The final image can include atmospherics but should ideally NOT contain animated objects such as water, vehicles (again NO spaceships) or people, as we will be judging primarily based on the clean DMP itself.
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Works in progress (W.I.P.) MUST be shown here in order to be considered for prize placement. You must have at least a basic concept, AND at least two rough versions posted in the forum for critiques or you will not qualify.
Well be judging on technical and artistic skills in these. Good luck to everyone! Please feel free to ask any questions here.
As always, you can ask general digital matte painting questions, and post WIP work not pertaining to this challenge in the regular DMP forum here: http://forums.cgsociety.org/forumdisplay.php?f=196
So looking forward to this!