Matte from the beginning

#1

Time to bare my soul. I am a very bad matte painter and normally do outrageous mattes.

To reign me in my good friend Everlite suggested to keep things simple and stupid.

This is a real time job as well which I am doing pro bono. The client has given me two subjects one of which they will pick.

It is for there company christmas card and the street is where the clients work. They have not had snow in a long time. They would a like a wintery scene from about the edwardian period.

I went and did a plate shoot today as part of the recce. Tommorrow I agoing to do some recce around the town looking for features that would fit the scene. :arteest:

I did the plate photography in the middle of heavy traffic. It is easier to do a panoramic in portrait. I did this handheld.

If you want more questions on panoramic photography or interested visit my blog and have a look in the archive there is some information there.

Next job for me is to get rid of the keystone effect.

This is so simple I cant believe I only discovered this last week.

Select Marquee tool tick the perspective box. Then select the general area and pull out the corner and match the verticals in the shot. Select apply, voila keystone!.

And for all you Mack Sennett fans a whole load these counts as the Keystone Crops, LOL

More to come.

Rich :wavey:

#2

Looks awesome Rich! thanks for the insight…

How much does a decent camera cost… SLR specifically…

I really want one.

#3

Feel bit of a fool, when I took these shots over a mile away was a major Hollywood film being filmed in secret, the Delicious Penelope Cruz and Daniel Day Lewis were filming “Nine”.

The producers had complained about a motorway being in shot and they spent a fortune building a massive building to screen it off.

If only I had been more vigilant I could have visited the location with my MATTE PAINTER FOR HIRE T-shirt on, Doh…

Steve, you can do panoramics with a point and shoot. You have to turn on focus lock, stick it on f11, and put white balance to cloudy.

The camera I was using was from work and is a D2x with a 28-70 mm lens. Best part of four thousand dollars.

I am getting the sack and will be buying my own slr, I will be buying a Nikon D300 and two lenses. This is going to cost me a fortune. I will be saving as I work at mcdonalds.

I am visiting the location to get some more references.

More to come

Rich :arteest:

#4

Here is the keystoning resolved now to make a plan and do a plate clean up.

Rich

Going to have a play in vanishing point in After effects.

#5

latest stage, cleaning the plate of all 20th century remnants. I am sketching out plans for the far left building. It will be a sweet shop. the road will be deep snow with footprints and tracks. It will be cobbled. I am looking for a decent sky at the moment.

cracking on

Rich :arteest:

#6

Lookin good Rich. never thought of shooting a pano in portrait format, but it makes sense now that I have seen you do it

on a personal note, and totally OT.
I’ve been meaning to ask you… do you know a guy named James J. Lee? He is a staff photographer for The Army Times. Just thought you may have crossed paths somewhere.

we grew up together, and I haven’t seen him an a few years, but I keep up with his work
some of his recent stuff
http://www.militarytimes.com/multimedia/photo/07ramadipolice/
http://www.militarytimes.com/multimedia/photo/070206_falcon/
http://www.militarytimes.com/multimedia/photo/slideshowcastle/
http://www.militarytimes.com/multimedia/photo/baghdadmarket/

rickei

#7

Rickei, I have not met him yet but our paths may cross, they always do in this job… I had a look at his imagery, There is so much history there that he has photographed, probably doesnt realise how important his work really is. Lots of respect for him its an evil place, some moments its like alice in wonderland. Thanks for sharing a photographers work, that means a lot to me as he is a fellow brother in arms. :beer:

Yes the matte is coming on leap ands bounds, I have just finished a quick overpaint to work out forms and colours for the snow. I am using a lot of duck egg blue, worked out the right brush and opacity.

The hard part is to come, I have painted a sweet shop in and have to manipulate a post box in there. I am also missing a sky, as this is early morning at predawn.

Lots more to come

Rich :argh:

#8

latest, this is a overpaint just to judge construction and colour and to iron out problems,

I am going to have put in cobbles and tracks to show the curve going up hill. Lots to do.

still need a sky

Rich

#9

I am going to work on the cobbles as a texture for the road. If anyone knows how to do this I will be interested.

My plan of action is to make a large tiled layer and then use VP in PS to cope with the perspective.

Rich

#10

Hey Rich,

Looking good so far. not too sure about the shop front, the door looks a little small maybe.

Regarding the snow, i understand this is just a paintover at the moment to get a feel, but later you should try to find and use photography, painted snow can sometimes begin to look a little like cotton wool. Where photography exists, always use in first.

I wouldn’t change the sky too much, maybe a subtle warm pink to the right indicated a diffused sun. You could maybe have just a shallow area at the rooftops catching this light … again slightly pink.

I guess you could have a few little lights wrapped around the overhead wooden structure to further the Christmas theme.

Regarding the cobbled road, for this kind of shape i’d probably recreate the road in 3d and just map a cobble texture onto it, play with the bumps and displacement maps too, then just run textures and snow over the final render.

Maybe give a little more contrast in areas, perhaps darken the right slightly. Maybe add in a little mist in the distance.

keep it up,
Dave.

#11

Thanks for looking in Dave, and for the tips. That door is small, though I did measure the height on location. Should I put in some more street furniture?

I have frosted the windows, and worked on the edging, looking for snow at the moment.

I have done the cobbled street surface in VP and it looks awful, I have carrara pro so going to have to learn it now.

Lights on the beam would be a good idea thanks for picking up on that.

Right back to the grindstone

Rich

#12

I agree with Dave on all points.

Rich
here is a Carrara 6 file that should help you. I just eyeballed it, but it should fit in your scene fairly well. just open the file and hit render
You can figure out how I did it by looking at the file later.
DOWNLOAD LINK it’s about 12MB but the textures are embedded in the file.
the scene uses GI for lighting so it may take a while to render.
if you have any Carrara questions, go on over to polyloop
http://forums.polyloop.net/

rickei

#13

Carrara! booo, hisss :wink: use blender :stuck_out_tongue:

#14

Thanks so much for the file, absolutely awesome, many, many thanks.

Shame on you Dave for berating Carrara, I am one of those people that need to be shown how to use it. I have the latest version on my computer ha ha, I open it up and hey presto it goes off again because I dont understand it.

I have asked santa for Cinema 4d, but he owes me a lightsaber, bike, scaletrix grand prix, and a steve austin doll with real bionic arm. I have been a really good boy this year… LOL

Right back to work

Rich

#15

I have till mid November to finish this, I had to remember this is for me to learn the skills to matte paint. I am in the middle of sourcing referencing snow shots. So I thought of what Dave said about snow looking like cotton wool.

I made a discovery, snow is hard angular shapes, triangles and polygons. So I decided to redo the overpaint using sharp and hard edged strokes. The palette is not white. It is duck egg blue, cyans, battleship grey. It has kind of worked.

When I import the photos of snow, I now have a strategy in place to join up the gaps freehand.

As for the cobbled street surface. I have been busy in carrara, and sketchup. This is a hell of a learning experience.

I have got to correct the door. I was right on my research there was a door there and steps leading downwards. These steps need painting in.

As for the sky I will work with Daves suggestion about using pink. However there is a little voice at the back of my head screaming blue for the buildings and pink for the sky. Is this wrong.

I am tempted to use Vanishing point in after effects and make it snow. As for the chimneys I will have to put smoke in.

Little steps at a time.

more to come

Rich

#16

I think your new approach works really well, although only a sketch, the snow looks fairly realistic, well done.

Dave obviously knows his stuff so i’m loathe to disagree, but imho as long as you have some decent source material just doing the cobbles in photoshop would be easier than rendering them. Learning new software and making displacement maps, rendering etc sounds to me more time consuming than it’s worth, but i’d like to hear Dave’s thoughts on that.

http://www.sxc.hu/browse.phtml?f=search&txt=cobbles&w=1&x=0&y=0

^ search result for cobbles on stock.xchng, you could get more results with ‘old street’ or something similar

My only other concerns are the roofs of the house vanishing into the sky, but since you don’t have a sky yet that’s probably not a problem. Also i’m not convinced by the shop front you’ve added it looks a bit pasted on and struggling to fit.

#17

Yes its wrong regarding the blue and pink … whatever colour you use for the sky, use for the lighting on the roof … pink sky, pink light, though to an extend you have to play around, but no blue that’s for sure :slight_smile:

Yeh if you’re painting snow always use a slightly textured hard edge brush, next use a soft falloff …

The snow needs working in a little, but looking ok so far, dont forget shadows later, though work these onto a new layer so you can control opacity etc…

Also note the different coloured snow you have, not sure if this is intended.

The post box, looks small, and looks a little obvious, source another where its turn slightly more to the right, also maybe desaturate it a little, seems to be standing out a little.

Anyway thats it for now, coming on well :slight_smile:

Dave.

#18

cheers Dave and Thomas,

Loads more to work on, thanks for the image of the cobbles that will give me something to work with, that shop front has turned into a pain. Might have quick look in sketchup to see if I can make it more real. Postbox was bugging me, will have a look at that as well.

I am driving down to the location this morning to have a quick look about.

I did a panoramic as the sun set and it does look like a pink sky is the way to go.

Once again thanks guys,

Rich

#19

Work so far gone into sketch up and modeled a new shop front. The upper window is going to be raised as a dormer window. Detailing will follow later. I have inserted a pink sky.

List of stuff to do:

Cobbles (halfway there used sketch up to create a tileable surface to match perspective. I am going to do some research on Christmas Decorations (outdoor) from the victorian era.

Postbox is going to become a snowman. Or become a wall mounted one and the snowman in the foreground.

Having lots of fun doing this.

Rich

#20

I think the sky is working but needs to bleed into the original sky a little towards the left.

The shop front is working much better for me, just get the textures in there :wink:

The post box’ i’d keep this style in there, its very traditional and iconic of a british street. I dont think a snow man would work very well … imagine that street in winter, would u really have a snow man on there?? :slight_smile:

If you stick up a higher resolution of the original plate and your most recent version, i’ll do a paint over to demonstrate some of the ideas i have in mind, including the lighting.

Best,
Dave.