Desert City WIP

#1

Here’s an image I’ve been working on recently, its a projection mapped in Maya so I can do a camera move. Dust needs to go in still - finding it tricky creating some that will animate, I think I’m going to us Maya fluids and will just composite it in afterwards. Also textures need adding to the wood lying around in the foreground, I think the shapes need some variation too - same with the cloth (too many hard edges). The bridge arches also need some work so I’m going to look at that. Finally the camera move needs to be rendered out…so nearly there!
If anyone can add anything I would really appreciate it, I’d like to finish this in the next few days so any input would be great!
I realize I should have posted some earlier examples but I’ve only just found the Matte section on this site! also apologies to anyone over at Mattepainting.org for duplicating the post here.

Thanks

Tim

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#2

hey Tim welcome to this forums, now you know where to get more feedback
well I like what you have here but I think it looks overexposed, the detail in the upper part of the image is almost none, also I think you need to paint out those perfect lines you have on the walls and edges, so when you re project it, the sharp lines will loke better broken or just not too perfect
show us all the process , looking forward to see this finished good luck

#3

Hi Jamie,

Thanks for your comments, just had a look at your portfolio too…amazing stuff! I particularly like the city matte with the train, one of the best I’ve seen.
Here’s todays update. The birds are in and moving thanks to the CD on the cover of 3D world magazine. The dust is there and should be moving and I’ve redone some of the textures on the bridge. The next stage is to refine the camera move, all the dynamics on the cloth is killing my mac so its taking more time than I hoped. I might work some more into the cloth texture, the alpha channel has loads of texture in it, but it doesn’t seem to come out in this render.
The highlights will still need pulling in a bit in the final render, I’ve added lots of bumps to the edge of the buildings but they don’t show that well, would it be done in geometry or paint?
The birds flight path needs to be adjusted before the final render.
Here are the stages on this one:

Concept sketch:

Heres the wireframe: No doubt more experienced Matte painters and modelers will reel back in horror after looking at this, up until now my experience has been solely in animation and traditional painting so I sure there is some rough modeling here!

An early render:

Todays update:

#4

that last image is looking great. Can you maybe render out like a playblast or something so we can see the camera move you are planning :slight_smile: ? lookign good!

#5

Here’s a playblast of the camera move, sorry its wireframe but if I smooth shade everything the birds disappear! Again I must point out the birds are not my creation all I did was change the animation path and timing. The originals came free with 3D world magazine. I did a render of the camera move at half res and it showed up the limitations of the image I painted in photoshop. I’m going to start breaking the image up onto separate layers now so I can paint in the missing bits. I’m going to continue to work into the photoshop file as well, I asked a friend for his opinion and he thought it wasn’t photoreal enough yet. One of the problems I’m having is the graphics card on my laptop is slowing to a crawl when I use hardware texturing making it very difficult to adjust the geometry to the texture, has anyone got any ideas as to how to get round that?
I still need to rebuild the arches, I’ve re-worked the texture on those hopefully they will work better now. The one nearest to camera is now a full arch, I think that make more sense architecturally, I think the one I have at the moment would be prone to collapse if it was really built that way!
Thanks

Heres a link to the video: Playblast
Tim

#6

Hi,

Here’s a render of the camera move. There are a couple of weird things going on with the textures, the spire on the dome seems to go in and out of focus and the texture slips on the far building. A bit strange given they are projected from the same camera as the rest of the scene?! Also there a flicker on the bridge. The camera move will be extended on the next pass to include the right foreground elements of the original painting. I’ve tried to reduce the render times and weight of the scene as I’m working on a laptop and its really struggling! At the moment it takes 4mins to render each frame at half res.

to watch the video please click here

#7

I really dig your painting style.
On the camera move the front building seems to stand a little bit too far from the building behind with the bridge to the left, causing a little too much parallax in relation to the other objects in my opinion.

#8

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