Insel Face how difficult?

#1

As my Bachelor thesis I do 3-4 matte paintings.
How difficult is it to make a custom island e.g. a shape of a indian face with photomaipulation and drawing?
I will use Vue 10 to show some workflow improvement and to make such an island in vue is easy so I wanted to know if it is difficult with “normal” matte painting techniques?

#2

Just to be clear, you want to make an island that looks like a human face? Or am I misunderstanding something?
It should be pretty easy to do, if i was approaching this i would probably do a quick sculpt in zbrush or mudbox (or even poser) to use to set up your shots and make sure the basic shapes of the face are consistant from shot to shot…

Can you post up any sketches to show what you are attempting?

N

#3

yes the island should look like a human face and planted with trees etc.
My bachelor thesis is a better workflow for matte paintings via Vue 10.
Because I’m still new to matte painting I wanted to know if it is difficult to make a face island planted with trees that you see from above, because in Vue it is pretty easy to do.

A sketch I don’t have at the moment it is just an idea that poped up in my head :wink:

#4

Well you’ve certainly set yourself a tough challenge to improve the matte painting workflow whilst not having much experience of it. The point at which matte painting has to become full CG really depends on the requirements of the specific shot. For something as specific as your example, having full CG would definitely have its benefits.

As a starting point, here are the reasons I don’t use Vue more in production work:

  • Loooong render times.
  • Renders never look photoreal without further matte painting work, which removes the benefits of working in full 3D.
  • Lack of easy integration with other packages, like being able to import and export cameras and geo easily to maya and nuke.

I havent used Vue too much, but its always been just to use as a base and not an end product. If you can find ways to improve this and make Vue a really great matte painting tool, you might be on to a winner.

Hope it helps a bit.
N

#5

So if you make a full CGI scene like such an island it still count as matte painting?

Hm Vue 10 xStream has a lot of nice functions to make nice landscapes but yes ofc some things look even in Vue unrealistic so you need for near shots still reference photos but for far away objects you csn’t say if it is a photo or CGI :wink:

Yes I still lack a lot of experience in Matte Painting and I realized how complex it is but I falling more and more in love with it :wink:

The render time is long yes but they improved that with Vue 10 and I think to find a really good 2k + real footage takes maybe almost the same time then rendering the object inside Vue. Or?
I can’t look back on a long year of experience I just look what can be done with the programms and how matte painting works generally and thinking with my head :wink:

I heard from Matte Painters that used Vue before it was a big advantage to import and export camera in and out vue and using geo projection. That why I looked deeper on Vue 10 for my bachelor thesis.

I’m really thankful for your answers and yes they helped me out a lot already :slight_smile:

#6

No, you are right, once we get into fully lit and rendered CG, its not a matte painting anymore it is environment TD work. The lines are very blurred between the two these days, but if you want to stay in the realm of matte painting, then full CG Vue Scenes aren’t really the right thing.

If I was going to use Vue in a shot tomorrow, this is how I would want it to work (I havent used it extensively enough to know whether it can do all this yet because its not integrated into our pipeline at work):

  1. Set up some geo in Maya.
  2. Detail the geo in either Zbrush or procedurally in Vue.
  3. Import a HDR and other lights from Maya to Vue.
  4. Add ecosystems in Vue
  5. Generate camera animation and some projection cams in Maya and export to Vue.
  6. Render some high res still frames from Vue through the projection cameras.
  7. Export to Photoshop to repaint the stills and make them look all sexy and photoreal.
  8. Export the low res base mesh geo and all cameras to Nuke.
  9. Project the stills back onto the low res geo.
  10. Render from Nuke through the animated shot camera.

That would be my preferred workflow. A shot like that could acheive photoreal results very quickly, but I’ve yet to try it all exactly as described above, mostly because I tend to reach for photos rather than go to Vue, but for some situations Vue can be a massive benefit…

Hope that helps a bit…

N

#7

that helped a lot thx :slight_smile:
I will try to make a workflow like that and try to get all benefits with Vue out of it.

I looked now a bit into camera projection.
When do you use Maya with low res geo + projection and when you can use After Effects/Nuke without 3D geo?
I thought 3D geo you need if you make a camera panning with let say 45 degree and After Effects you can use if you move your camera staight forward.
Am I wrong? Or can you use Nuke/after Effects only if you don’t move the camera just animate the elements?

I think after that question is clear I have a good basis to make the bachelor thesis a success, because I got great help from you nickmarshallvfx.

#8

I’m not sure what After Effects 3D abilities are these days but in Nuke you can import full geo from Maya as a .obj file and set up projections in there to do extensive camera moves. In theory with projections you can keep patching and reprojecting to create as much of an environment as you want, but there does come a point where its more efficient to switch to full CG.
Of course, you can do camera projection in Maya and it is a bit more powerful as you can do things like reflect the projected matte painting into other CG objects and do seperate spec/depth etc passes. But for ease of setup and immediacy of results, Nuke is just unbeatable.

Be careful when you make your differentiation between 2D and 3D, because Nuke does have full 3D capability, just not to the extent where you can set up complex shaders and lighting (though again you can easily set up basic shaders and lights…)

N

#9

So for extensive camera moves you need 3D geo in Nuke and if you have a simple movement just layers without 3D object are ok?

I try both but for the analysis/breakdown part of my thesis I wanna clear these thing up and somehow I couldn’t find anything on the internet .

#10

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