DMP Mini Challenge 013 - December 2015 - Pit Stop

#1

Welcome back to our monthly Digital Matte Painting challenge presented by CGSociety! Please, follow the provided brief and guidelines. This challenge will be judged by David Luong, Milan Schere and one guest judge, at the end of the month.

All skill levels of artists are welcome in this challenge! Please, respect this if you decide to participate.

Brief: “Pit Stop” is an upcoming R rated feature film directed by Guy Ritchie. Jack Cole, played by Tom Hardy, is an aspiring car race enthusiast currently down on his luck but dreaming of becoming a successful racer in the near future. While waiting for his shot, Jack makes a living running his own little garage, barely squeezing by every month.
Create an establishing shot, based on the provided plate, depicting the main character’s 1 bedroom apartment which he built himself above his garage. It is put together in a sad shabby way, having cut all costs possible, and shows a serious lack of maintenance, plus heavy weathering. You should feel sorry for the dude who has to be sleeping there every night. Make sure to replace the “Mr. Lube” sign with an original “Jack’s Garage” logo of your own creation. Do not cut into any moving elements unless you know how to rotoscope.

[vimeo]147279839[/vimeo]

The prizes for top 3 placements are:

1st Prize:

  • A spot in CGWorkshop of choice
  • Feedback on your work from David Luong

2nd Prize:

  • An ArtRage Lite licence
  • Feedback on your work from Milan Schere

3rd Prize:

  • One 3D World Pro package
  • Feedback on your work from our professional guest judge

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Ambient Design ArtRage Lite - A realistic painting program for Windows & Mac OSX, part of the range of ArtRage painting apps from Ambient Design. ArtRage offers something different to the standard digital art program: a bit messier, a bit more room for inspiration, and extremely flexible. No other program offers the gorgeous textures, easy colour mixing and creative freedom that ArtRage does: www.artrage.com/artrage-lite

Delivery of the prizes is the responsibility of the sponsors, not CGSociety.

Required in this month’s challenge to qualify for the prizes:
0. Download the 1080p HD clip from https://vimeo.com/seemaschere/dmpmc

  1. A conceptual art piece visualizing your idea of the finished shot at a 2.40:1 aspect ratio
  2. One image of the finished Matte Painting colour matched to the footage, without any grading
  3. Your final colour corrected shot embedded as online video at a 2.4 ratio, submitted before 2016

To enter, simply create a new thread in this forum with the DATE of challenge and name such as: “December 2015 - Michael Pangrazio”

We’ll be judging on creativity and execution in this challenge. Good luck to everyone! Please feel free to ask any questions here.

Tips: Design the adobe properly, add extra touches such as snow gently starting to fall, match the grain/noise, Set the mood with your grade at the end, etc.

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

#2

Excited for this one, I did mention to David that a video one would be awesome! :smiley: Can’t wait to get started :slight_smile:

#3

Yar! Milan shot and came up with this one, I know many have been wanting a moving plate :stuck_out_tongue: gl all!

#4

Do we have to make a video clip? If yes, what should be the duration and format?

#5

Please use and download the video provided by Milan from Vimeo.

#6

HI the challenge is great but can we add extra elements in the scene or our job is to add the extra apartment on top of the provided garage plate.

#7

cool! :applause:

#8

This looks really fun! I love it has some compositing aspect to this too
cheers guys!

#9

Can we add external elements taken from other sources?

#10

:keenly: :keenly: :keenly:

#11

Hoping I find some time for this one…

Quick technical query - how should we extract the still image to paint on from the movie clip? Just do a screengrab? Or are we expected to do the paintwork in something like After Effects?

Thanks,

Derek

#12

You can comp additional elements in but you don’t have to. Chances are it’ll turn into a compositing challenge for you if you do and you won’t have enough time to concentrate on the Matte Painting. So, be mindful of that. Plan ahead and schedule yourself.

There are many ways to extract the image you. Most softwares can export as image sequence, even Quicktime has that ability. Fusion 7 is for free at the moment. You guys should all jump on that while you can. Nuke and After Effects etc.

The bulk of your work will need to be done in Photoshop as always. Then you export those layers with alphas and slap it on top of the plate. Add some grain/noise, colour correct the whole thing, and you’re done.

We’ll be announcing our guest judge soon. Stay tuned.

#13

Thanks Milan.

I’m a bit new at this and probably missing something, but you say to download the HD 1080 footage from the attached link.

I can only see links to download SD 360 and HD 720 footage on the page…?

EDIT: Tried signing up with Vimeo, and then you get the option. So if you can’t see the original res, join Vimeo and log in!

#14

Hi Milan,

I have a question about the format for the video and image.

In your brief, you ask a 2.40 aspect ratio (12:5 if I’m correct ?), but what is the resolution ? 1920x800 ?

The Vimeo HD uploaded video is in 16:9 720p.

Shall we extend the video to reach the 12:5 ?

Edit : It’s OK, i had not read the preview post, thanks Derek :slight_smile:

#15

Nice challenge!

I’ll need to learn a lot for this one. I haven’t done any DMP in over 3 years, but this looks perfect for getting back into things. I recently bought Modo 901 and Mari 3. Nuke is free to learn with on a non-commercial basis. Hope that helps anyone!

I’m still a beginner at Modo and haven’t touched Mari or Nuke yet. Can anyone recommend some tutorials for me to follow from Digital Tutors for learning Nuke that might be specific for working on this shot?

For this shot I want to challenge myself by:

  1. Building the new logo sign in Modo to replace the one in shot.
  2. Texture new logo sign in Mari.
  3. Add in weather elements like a little snow as suggested above (love that, no idea how to go about doing it however).
  4. Maybe add in some distant buildings/skyscapers?
  5. Replace sky with a slight moving one. I’d probably just use photos as I’ve set up shots like that before.

I’m guessing I’ll need to learn how to grade, composite and rotoscope in Nuke to handle the above, aye?

Any advice and help is appreciated! Look forward to seeing everyone progress with this challenge!

#16

Hey Anthony
good to see you’re coming back to these challenges!
Im not too sure about digital tutors but FXPHD has lots of fantastic courses on nuke.
I just got this tutorial a couple weeks ago which goes through 3d projection setups in nuke which you might find very useful too! https://vimeo.com/ondemand/33566
Since this shot is almost static you should be able to use just a 2d tracker and apply that motion on to your rotoshapes and use that to bring your matte painting in.
If you have any questions with your nuke setup feel free to send me a message

Jack.

#17

Thanks Jack! It’s good to be back doing these challenges again. FXPHD looks cool, but I already paid for a subscription with Digital Tutors. It’s bookmarked all the same.

The Industry Workshop tutorial looks great for what I’m looking for and even covers snow!! Thanks for sharing! I’m having issues trying to install the license in Nuke at the moment. Hopefully will be sorted in a couplea days once The Foundry get back in touch.

Hope you’re doing good? Congrats again on DN ;D

Best,

Tony

#18

Yeah man, that tutorial covers a lot of good stuff. Ill let you know if I hear of a good nuke tutorial on DT.
My friend at work also recently tried to get the non commercial version ove the weekend and he told me he was having trouble with the liscense so maybe its something on their end.

Yeah man Im doing great thanks my contract is on til February and then I will see whats happening but Ive been having a great time and learning a load of new stuff. If youre ever in london hit me up and we can grab a pint.

#19

Hi, guys.
Unfortunately there is no 1080p version. I logged in to Vimeo as Derek Jackson advised, but unsuccessfully.
Can you tell me, please, where else I can get the 1080p version?

Thanks in advance!

#20

I have a doubt?
Can I use some 3D objects or effects to enhance my matte painting? Or just painting and pratical effects?
Gooood challenge!!!
I’ve been waiting for a video =D