My first Matte Painting - wip

#1

Hello everyone,

This is my first thread in the matte painting forum and my first matte painting. I started this today and worked on it for about 2 or 3 hours. When I’m finished I plan on taking it into Cinema 4D for some camera mapping and adding extra cg elements.

I’m new to matte painting and I would very much appreciate any critiques, tips, or comments. I have a short background in professional vfx but figured learning more about matte painting and camera mapping would be a great asset.

I attached a before and After wip.
Thanks,
Josh

#2

I think a sky would help to get a glimpse of what you are intending to end up with. The small hills and cliffs are pretty cool, but the great mountain is a bit to smooth I think. It should be more rough and rocky. Maybe by adding some shadow on the right side and by working on the smooth transition, to make it seem more like there are rocks coming out of the snow that are really defined, not the PS-brush smoothness. Hard for me to explain. I hope you got my point. Good picture anyway, if you continue to work on it. But who am I to juge others? I’m just working on my first matte painting, too.

#3

Thanks man I agree with the critique. I was thinking the same thing about the smoothness of the snow to mountain top.

-Josh

#4

Hi Josh, good start mate.

I would add some sky as Freaky4 says, also extend the top of the image a little so the uppermost mountain is not cropped, as compositionally this looks a little odd, and getting the whole shape in there will give it some good definition.

I think you need more contrast in the image, add some more shadows and maybe try a couple of closer rocky hills if you have some good source material. If you darken them in comparison to the background & up the contrast it’ll give you more depth in your image as well.

good luck with it, oh and welcome to the matte forums :slight_smile:

edit: just to add, you might struggle a little with your source photo, as the resolution/jpeg compression is not so good. stock.xchng is a good free stock photography site if you need something high res.

#5

Thanks so much for the critique, website info and tips Tomas. Thanks for the warm welcome too.

Good point about the mountain top being cropped I’ll have to fix that along with the contrast and shadows. I’ll see what I can do with the sky too although I might just add that in Cinema 4D.

-Josh

#6

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