Do Matte Painters Actually Paint?, or do they use Photos?

#41

as you can see there are many opinions.

code nothing thinks that a matte painting is 2d and once you move to 3d then you have a digital environment. deke also mentioned in his first post how matte paintings are generally 2d. they have their own view of what matte painter does.

i don’t think there would be many matte painters who would agree with their categorization though. with modern filming styles 2d matte paintings are moving far into the background and the majority of work nowadays is 2.5d or 3d.

it is all about alchemy really. at what point does one thing transmute into another?

for codenothing as soon as something moves then it transmutes. it changes from being a matte painting into an environment.

for yourself you think their is no transmutation. the is always gold we just aren’t looking at it in the right way.

i use these criteria:

film>>>>>>>>>>>>non-film

is it used in a film? is it used in a non-film related area? films have matte paintings. book jackets don’t. you can’t show me an illustration and say it is a matte painting. what are the problems with this? where do games fit in here? is an environment in a game using matte painting techniques still a matte painting?

photorealistic>>>>>>>>>>>>non-photorealistic

is it photorealistic? is is non-photorealistic? stick boys adventures in stickland are a no-no. despite the best will in the world they are not and never can be a matte painting simply because they have moved to far along the line away from photorealism. problems with this? deke would mention (and has, several times) the wizard of oz and mary poppins because for him they are moving away from pure photorealism towards stylization. the same thing goes for speed racer and ratatouille. but how far towards stylization have they actually gone with the matte paintings? how many of the rules of photorealism have they broken and how many have they adapted and adjusted?

one artist>>>>>>>>>>>>many artists

a matte painting exists on the far left of this line. in general a single artist shepherds the shot through to completion. there may be a senior/junior thing going on, or layout/finishing, etc. but once you move towards large scale groups working on a image you are not working with a matte painting this is always a digital environment. this links in to:

unique pipeline>>>>>>>>traditional cg pipeline

matte painters will often use unique pipelines for their work. if you give a shot to 10 different matte painters they will have 10 different approaches from getting from A to Z. they will each use different methods for getting the final result from 2d paint, photography, 3d, 2.5d, model making etc. digital environments are often created in a fixed cg pipeline by groups of people. you will have modellers, texture artists, lighting artists, etc. this is why yusei making a shot of coruscant is in my eyes a matte painting (single artist using a unique pipeline) even though it is indistinguishable from the results produced by the cg department at ILM.

so for mary poppins it it moving to the right in the photoreal/non-photoreal stakes but still picks up enough points in the single artist/many artists area to move back into the realm of matte painting. for ratatouille you can argue that it matches mary poppins in the photoreal stakes (or even surpasses it) but i find that actually it would move too far to the right in the single artist/many artists area.

it seems that even the ves are getting annoyed by this whole what is a matte painting thing because of how many times they changed the rules over the years (so now we have the ‘created environment’ in there).

i think that about wraps this up for me so i’m going back to annoying the people in the c4d forum. thanks for the interesting discussions everyone.

cheers, simon w.

#42

Yep, i agree.
There will always be differences in where people draw the line. For me, i think that that particular ratatouille shot was created by one person as a matte (no definitive proof here, im just guessing) purely because it is a one off shot, wide angle, and some areas definitely look sketchy as opposed to it all being a 3d environment where you would expect the same level of detail / sharpness all over. And like you say, it probably does surpass mary Poppins in realism, so personally, that one fits into the matte painting category for me.

However, its only since ratatouille that ive been looking at animations differently, because up until then, id only really considered live action as having matte paintings. Ratatouille forced me to really take a step back and reassess where the line lies, and ive noticed a lot more that do the same since then.

I really dont think its a bad thing that everybody has a different place to draw the line, as long as peoples opinions are respected, and the real point is, nobody can say anyone is just plain ‘wrong’ because nobody can know for sure… No matte painting instruction manual has come out yet that tells us where it becomes something else :wink:

It may come as a surprise that being so open about what matte painting is in films, i have quite a purist view when it comes into illustration…
Once i see moving elements in a still matte painting, it has crossed the line into illustration for me. Still fire, still birds, still people etc… Things you would never put in if it was going to be comped into a film.

Other people are very free about that and dont mind at all… I find it quite jarring. But the same point goes there, its all about an individual opinion.

If VES cant even categorise it firmly, what hope have the rest of us got! lol

Anyways, thats it for me too, must get back to work. Cheers all!

Nick

#43

film>>>>>>>>>>>>non-film

is it used in a film? is it used in a non-film related area? films have matte paintings. book jackets don’t. you can’t show me an illustration and say it is a matte painting. what are the problems with this? where do games fit in here? is an environment in a game using matte painting techniques still a matte painting?

exactly. Films have mattes, book jackets do not. An illustration, or even photo realistic environment painting is not a matte untill it is being used for the purpose of expanding or enhancing an environment. A matte is there to “fool” you into thinking there is something there when there is not. The same goes for a video game. You look off into the distance, and if the matte was done well (like gears of war 2) you think to yourself: “How the hell are they rendering this MASSIVE environment in real time??” and the answer is, they are not. There are a bunch of 2D matte paintings that look like rendered geometry in the background. It is a cheap inexpensive way to enhance, and expand, the environment.

photorealistic>>>>>>>>>>>>non-photorealistic

you are still confusing the term ‘matte painting’ as being a deffinition of a THING, and not a USE for a thing.

The style of the matte must fit the style of the project. If your doing live action, real world movies, you need mattes that are photo realitic so that the matte convinces you the environment is real. Thats its purpose. If your doing a CG film (pixar) you need to do a matte that looks like a massive rendered CG pixar environment. Thats its purpose. If your making a matte for a video game, the matte needs to match the real-time style graphics of the rest of the game, without actually modeling it, or wasting valuble memory space rendering it. That’s its purpose.

If you put a real human being walking around a pixar matte painting, it would instantly look awefull. Just as Having a pixar character walking in front of a photo real environment would instantly look out of place. But both are stille mattes, when used properly in there own project, because a photo real matte in a movie makes you think the environment is bigger or grander than it realy is, and the pixar matte makes you think they rendered and modeled the entire city of Paris when they did not. Both fool the viewer, for the sake of time, and money.

one artist>>>>>>>>>>>>many artists

generaly your right about the single artist theory, but thats more because of the ‘nature’ of a matte painting being something cheap and fast. Thats the entire POINT of a matte, is to not need a huge team of people to make the city of paris. to just have one guy PAINT the wide shot instead of a building of people modeling and rendering it. Mattes generaly take no more than a week for a single artist, so it doesnt make much sense for more than one artist to work on it. But, if 10 people had there hands on it before it make it into the film, it doesnt make it any less of a matte, because its still serving its purpose.

unique pipeline>>>>>>>>traditional cg pipeline

I agree there are many many different pipelines that will get you to a finished product. and matte painters are notorious for there unique problem solving abilities. One artist may sit down with a palette of acrylics and a lot of time on his hands, another sits down with Photoshop. Both are working for the same goal, and theres no ‘wrong’ way to make a matte.

That doesnt stop the deffinition of a matte being a 2D element, that fools you into thinking the environment is bigger, or grander, than it realy is, to save time and money.

and to be specific, as soon as something ‘moves’ it does not transmute out of the ‘matte painting’ catagory, only as soon as it becomes 3 dimensional. Plently of matte composites require, for example, the mountains in the distance to all be on different layers so that the camera can pan and it will FOOL you into thinking theres real mountains back there in 3D space. But theres not are there? no. they are 2D LAYERS that LOOK like mountains. This falls apart as soon as the camera rotates around it, or flies over it. Because its a matte, it can only fool you under certain conditions. If you want the camera to fly around and view things at multiple angles, you need to make a 3D model, or in the case of LOTR you need to make a ‘Bigature’ because there’s no other way to do it! These are not MATTES! they are 3D or ‘traditional’ environment elements, that are filmed.

Obviously film makers try to avoid making models and massive CG environments because its EXPENSIVE. So when ever they can they try to make any ‘wide’ shot a still shot or at most a slight pan. That way a simple 2D image (a matte) can fool the viewer into thinking the environment is something its not. That they built the city, when they didnt, or they shot on location at an active volcano, when they didn’t.

It would have been entirely possible to make the entire LOTR trilogy without making a single Bigature. But you would have had to change all the flying environment shots to still shots or pans, and the flying shots is what made that film stand out so much. This doesnt mean “CG is getting so good soon there will be no use for mattes” Because CG and model environments are freaking expensive, and film makers still want to use 2D matte elements as much as possible because its CHEAPER. This also does not mean “well CG films are now using new technolagy and are bluring the lines of what a matte is…” NO! Because a matte is still a 2D element used to fool you into thinking an environment is bigger or grander than it really is! No matter how you came to make that 2D element, its still being used for the same purpose!

I really don’t understand the confusion behind this.

#44

The boundaries must be changing, or this issue would have been done-and-dusted a long time ago. :argh:

I personally don’t really see there is much confusion - any job advertised as a ‘matte painter’ position is one I’m capable of doing, so even if it’s not a strictly accurate description, it conveys the correct information. Job done.

I think some of the laboring with the strict definition comes when a (usually) beginner posts a crappy photo-montage, with blurry paint strokes and a bunch of people badly composited on top, and calls it a ‘matte painting’. Technically speaking, it probably IS a matte painting. It’s just a really, really bad one. :surprised

On the topic of painting by hand - I think it’s essential, I do it all the time, and if you can’t paint by hand I think it’s a bit like doing a job with one hand tied behind your back. Doesn’t mean the job won’t get done, or that it won’t be any good, it’s just that you’ve not got access to a very powerful tool, like never using a 3d package, or not having photoshop.

It IS all about saving time, and sometimes the quickest method is actually the paint something from scratch. Finding, manipulating and cutting out photos would take longer than busting out a size 4 chalk brush, so that’s what you do.

I love some of the old mattes - up close they look like a bunch of rough, sketchy paint strokes. On film, they look photo-realistic. I think a lot of modern matte paintings are actually suffering from being scrutinised too closely - they are so finished, rendered and polished that they stop looking real, in a weird kind of way.

I’m not going to post any images in this thread, for fear of it looking too much like gratuitous self-promotion. But some of my mattes have been as much as 90% hand painted, just because that was (interestingly) quicker - check my site if you are interested.

AJ

#45

Nice interview link you supplied Nick… never read it before. I think it contains great information on this subject matter.

Also I wanted to throw in that mattepainting has evolved. Yes it was considered background painting/set extensions but now I see alot of work involving FG/MG painting as well. For instance some guys at Eden FX are working on a feature my company is working on to and one shot shows a mattepainting involving painted grunge and weathered effects to a vehicle and road in the MG area but this is considered in our pipeline and theirs as a “matte painting.”

#46

“Matte-painting” is a short term, explained above many times.
When there was only a black and white camera it was “matte-painting”.
When the film got digital, “digital matte painting” was named. But oops!..suddenly we got new motion fields: video games, tv and other multimedia, so the “digital matte-painting” was extended to those categories as well. But woops-oops, at the same time, a lot of new techniques were explored and new software were produced, so the category extended even more! Because of the so wide area and so many techniques used “matte-painters” should be generally re-named “digital environment artists”. But “matte-painting” is still more easy to spell. Maybe in the future we are all called DEA’s :smiley:

Hope my story made any point and my prophecy will come true :slight_smile:

#47

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