tudor street

#1

Working plan

This a current WIP lots and lots to do the above is an outline plan of what I have to do, comments are more than welcome,

Rich

#2

The painting is in an early stage, so there is not much I can say.
But there is something strange going on with the perspective. To many vanishing points. Kind of a mix between wide angle and tele.
Also the size of the house in the middle looks off.

Looking forward to see where you are going with this one. :slight_smile:

#3

We’ll see what comes out of this. But personally, I would recommend you start with a sketch, where you can go wild. Going straight seem ok on a set extension, but you never know what you could have come up with in the sketching phase.

I don’t really like the diffuse lighting as well. I suggest you change it or add at least some fitting interesting cloudy sky.

What’s the story behind it? A personal matte, or work for a client? What is the description of the project?

Anyway, keep it up, will be watching you.

#4

This is a personal matte for myself, Its to teach myself the finer points of matte painting. I am approaching this as I would do normally to brief.

The shot is for a programme about the Tudor period.

I am glad you have noticed the lighting is diffuse, this is because part of my brief is that I can revisit the matte for the duration of the series and give it lighting and weather for any period. I know this sounds strange, but budget and flexibility are keywords that I hear all the time from my clients. So snow can be added, rain water, day for night, fog, dusk dawn, which is why there is diffuse lighting. Glad you spotted it.

As for the scale and perspective, This is a multi stitched photo, so I have lost the orignal settings, my calculation is at 16 mm lens which is below the recommended production lens (5omm). I was concerned about this so have gone into sketch up and photoshop extended and used the measure facility. I also matched up height variations in the original image to pedestrians. It actually matches. This is due to lens foreshortening, a phenonema that I would not have if I had taken the original plate images.

However I deliberately set out to use imagery from a non photographer to really push it out further for me. Keystoning, barrelling on architectural shots are something I do not experience. However a production assistant handing me images on a point and shoot camera is more real life,

I have set myself some goals and obstacles in the forming of this, I am at the very begginning of it.

The mercy of the shot is that It would be easy to break it down into after effects and doing a traditional planar pan (disney) using flats and enable a awesome camera move.

I am also planning on doing a four seasons in after effects plus a day for night.

I have learnt lots on this and the original 4k image has a lot of detail in it. My biggest challenge is Gamma slamming the various components so they all match.

Self discipline is key to this, keeping away from sharpening, adding noise to create gain, no lens flares, this has to stand as a boring shot taken from a window on a point and shoot.
This has to convince a member of the public for a duration of 2-3 sconds. That is all. Something I learnt in the last two years is that using a single brush stroke correctly makes up for time instead of fifty on a detail that is going to be overlooked.

I really do appreciate everyones comments, so keep posting, and lets learn of each other.

Rich

#5

Hi Richard,

Hope you had a good christmas :slight_smile:

So you have an interesting plate to begin with and a realistic idea for a brief. This is how i would do this if it came to me …

Get photo refs from every possible angle …

Take the plate and undistort it best you can

The thing to remember is that the brief is to come up with a Tudor street. Given you’re adding a post move and its not from an existing shot, You should look at the plate itself as an asset and not a fixed shot that you’re pinned to.

Clean up the shot, remove the people, modern day elements, colour correct and balance it out …

Add in perspective lines

Strip out what you want to keep and just matte out the crap. Create an alpha matte and this will help for layout in any 3d work that will need be done.

Take it into a 3d program and layout the environment as is in the shot itself, set up the painting on a camera plane, recreate the camera etc …

Add in various cubes etc to build up the new buildings, at this point its up to you with how far you go with the 3d, you can just block in for good perspective reference or go a little further and create them in detail … really depends on the kind of reference you have to begin with. Personally i would try to source the houses from photo refs, as for the street furniture i’d build these in 3d then over paint them post render to bring them to a photo real finish.

The reality is, for a lot of the work you’re doing in this painting, you should be creating 3d elements as much as possible and tweak them post render to a photo realistic level.

Don’t paint anything from scratch. Use references, and where they dont exist, create them in 3d. As a matte painter you really do need a basic understanding of modelling, texturing and rendering. In an ideal world you will be provided with these assets, but the reality is, all too often the client simply doesnt understand the need for a 3d artist when they think matte painting involves painting with a brush! If you cant do the 3d work then hook up with someone who can and outsource it. Getting the end result done asap to a professional standard is more important than the process, and if you try to paint elements to a photo realistic level that can easily be done in 3d then you’re shooting yourself in the foot…

You often struggle with perspective and scale so take care with this; good reason to layout in 3d first :slight_smile:

Again, DONT PAINT!! :slight_smile:

Best
Dave.

#6

Hi Dave,

nice to hear from you hope you had a good Christmas also,

Yes I think dont paint is the way to go. One of the guys at work has Cinema 4d on his computer and I have been playing with it. It looks pretty complicated at first however, I think I can have a go at it. It has projection man on it and there is only one tutorial on the net on how to use it. So frustrated I will have to learn to do it in trial and error.

I have used photoshop to create a VPE file for after effects, it does work only on a camera pushin and is limited.

Tried to build primitives in Sketchup, what a nightmare that turned out to be.

So going to have to bite the bullet and learn cinema 4d.

As for the market stalls, got loads of reference for that, I spend more time on research than on the actual image LOL.

I think this would be simple primitives to create. However I agree with you for photo realism do not paint. Though I have discovered that I can do simple textures quite well.

The painting I have done that I used for removing modern day stuff and fixing bits and pieces I am actually quite proud of. I have slowly realised the Syd Dutton, Mike Pangranzio way of painting though beautiful and invisble does not lend itself to the HD world we now live in.

I was hopefully going to finsih this before Sunday, but learning a 3d program on a shared computer is going to be quite hard work.

Hope everything is going well for you Dave, and once again thanks for the help really appreciated here.

Happy New Year

Rich

#7

Hey Richard,

There’s a few good tutorials kicking around on the projection man for cinema … there’s a VERY good tutorial over at http://www.cmivfx.com/ that goes indepth into the process, after seeing that you’ll know everythjng there is to know … Cinema’s definately a good tool to learn for projections. Sadly most studios use maya though.

Alternatively if you dont have access to cinema or maya then learn blender, and no laughing, this really is a respectable program that can be used by matte painters, it has everything you need, especially for modelling, texturing and rendering … and without saying too much i used blender a number of times in professional work when licenses were unavailable at the time. Get up to speed with a few hundred free video tutorials here: http://www.blendervideos.com/ and here: http://www.blendercookie.com/

Hey, can you recommend any good locations for similar houses as those you photographed? i often find a need for these but never know quite where they’re hidden.

Best
Dave.

#8

Hi Dave,

I normally find these tucked out the way, especially when my SatNav is on the blink,

Here goes,

Salisbury, Wiltshire (Cranford shot here), Essex (ignore the stone cladding LOL) Find a few in Herefordshire and Gloucestshire. The shot in the painting is from Chester, Shrewsbury has good location.

Ledbury in Glostershire has some awesome streets, I have yet to find time for this one.

last years matte was done in Stamford, (Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and tons of other films including Revolution.)

I have a habit of finding these way out of the way places. I always factor in an extra hour on the journey back from jobs to get stock shots.

Thanks for the links

will be studying them intently

Cheers

Happy New Year

Rich

#9

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