Matte practice - London Street

#1

Hi all,

MileDream started a thread (early 19th century London matte) on Everlite’s plates. It looked like fun, and I asked for a permission to jump in. The Plates are provided by Everlite (Thanks!) and this is purely a learning process.

I have been interested on matte painting for ages, and tried my wings on couple of occations. Nothing has ever been finished, tho.

Hope this one will.

Anyway, here are the plates (thanks, MileDream for putting these up):

http://img246.imageshack.us/img246/2007/dsc0136bj9.jpg
http://img357.imageshack.us/img357/8599/dsc0149fc5.jpg

And here is where I’m at after exactly one hour of work:

This is basically just stretching the plate images, building a road from scratch (using cgtextures road texture) and adding a preliminary sky. This is basically just building an initial composition, I propably need to redo everything later on.

But it’s coming together, and now I will focus on the rest of the street. Comments are welcome, expecially since this is a learning process.

#2

Toughts and questions: These look like administrative buildings. Usually this kind of buildings are not located on a narrow(ish) street. There seems to be a park also on the plate images. Does this matter? I mean, do we pursue the ultimate realism or just make a matte based on a few plate images? Same goes for London. I have never been there, and I have no idea about the surrounding buildings. Do I need to research and try to get it right, or can I just go with the flow and add buildings I see fit (even some that are not from London, but suitable for the periodic image)?
As this is a matte painting, I take there should not be any animate objects (people, horse drawn carriages etc.) So the props will be only stuff that you could find on empty street?

While waiting for the answers I will continue. I found a nice set of buildings I think fit in there nicely. They are from Prague, but I take the route of sticking in the period, not in the actual location. I figure I can always undo these changes if this is the wrong direction.

#3

Update: Prague added. There’s still work on the perspective, and I need to match the colors and levels better. I took the liberty of cutting the rightmost building prematurely, since it continues on the horizon. I don’t want to make the street straight as drawn with a ruler, since it doesn’t seem very realistic. Nor interesting. There will be slight uphill and then a slight downhill, along with a slight curve to the left.

#4

Final for today, I think:

Just a doodling, trying to sketch a mood to it. Nothing in this is final, since I discovered Everlite initially posted bigger pictures than these I started working with. Oh well, it doesn’t matter. I can make this as a sketch for the final.

Anyway, here’s me getting way ahead of myself. But I just had to try.

#5

First update today: Have upped the size, now 6579 * 2000. I’m building the higher resolution version on top of the lower.

I think the most of this image-scratch is done, and after I get the last few houses cleaned up and fitted into perspective I will start painting the bits that need fixing. So far there’s virtually nothing painted, everything is photos from Everlite’s plates and sxc.hu.

The perspective is made by shifting the vanishing point slightly to the left after first houses. At the far end of the road it’s how it was in the base image. Even if I zoom close to it, it doesn’t bother me, and at this scale no-one is able to even see it.



The second house on the left is the weakest now, and I think about changing it. It needed to be stretched so much it doesn’t look very realistic anymore.

I need to extend the pavements on both sides and construct some variation on the altitude of the road.

All in all, I’m pretty satisfied so far, and still looking forward to start dressing this up for a winter / christmas / night / rain / sunshine. I think I do 3d mapping-version too while I’m at it.

Everlite, if you would be so kind and comment this. What are the things I need to improve before I move forward? Should I toss the other houses exept yours and try to find shots from London instead of them? What are the most serious faults?

#6

Process is slowing down… And I’m in need of some pointers, so anyone please!

I changed the weakest building. The city at the back is quite a frankenstein already. Everything is stretched and mangled to a point where it looks horrible. I am thinking of doing a total repaint for this section on top of the image-mashup.

For this image I magnified the area that needs the most work.

As of last update, I’ve changed the road and tweaked a lot of this & that. I am planning to make the light uniform for the whole image, and reduce shininess of the foreground buildings. The purpose is to texture everything later to be consistent of the era of coal-heated London.
I have a real itch to start making a painting out of this, but I will not, as of yet. The purpose of this whole thing is to produce as-near-as-possible photorealistic matte painting, and I will do the base plate as good as I can. Once that is done its time to start making variations.

Please, give me pointers on what to do.

#7

Howdy Joat,

Please see my comments on the other poster, many of the issues appearing seem to apply to your painting too.

Specific to yours my main concern is the street is beginning to look like a south european village. Lose the house that you’ve added, the style doesn’t match and doesn’t feel like a london building.

The street appear to be going up an incline. It really needs to be much flatter. Also avoid curving the streets.

Check the design pattern of the road, this feels very irregular.

Again same with the previous poster, the street feels too narrow and needs opening up.

Thanks my only thoughts for the moment :slight_smile:

Dave.

#8

Thanks for the pointers!

Here is the revised version. I’m quite reluctant to change the right side’s perspective unless absolutely necessary. I tried it several times, and the sad fact is that distortion shows in that building much worse than it does on the left side building.

I got rid of the Praque and Nice - imagery on the center of the screen, and now I need to find periodic british buildings. The road is also at it’s former state, actually even worse since I widened it and used just cut & paste to fill the gaps.

How do you think this is as a starting point? Is the road wide enough? I can do a bit for the distortion on leftmost house, but removing it altogether will be a lot of work. Should it be done?

#9

Yeh thats probably too wide, though it will present more clearly when you extend to the vanishing point. Try half way between this version and the last. To be honest i’m wondering if its the right side that needs pulling out to the right a little. The left side seemed fine. So yeh, maybe pull the left back and try opening up to the right.

Hey i took that cloud pic :slight_smile: thought i recognised the small house.

Regarding the road, i think it was more uniformed cobbles, do a little web search, im sure you’ll find some pariod pics of london streets.

Dave.

#10

Regarding the road: I think I got it covered, cgtextures has a good selection of the sort. =)

The cloud pic is from cgtextures as well, it’s got stadium and other stuff too. Small world, I’d say. And excellent picture.

You meant I should narrow the road to the midway of what it was and what it is now? I can do that, and it will let me distort the left side house a little less.

I somehow like the vanishing point not to be in the centre of image. But it doesn’t actually play any role now, since this is supposed to be a matte painting that’s hopefully cameramapped too at some point in the future.

I’m calling it a day (4:33 am here), and continue tomorrow if I can steal some time for this.

#11

I needed to test before calling it a day:

I pulled the right side back a little, left the left side as it were before and stretched the road wider to the right. I think it is better.

Should I continue with this setting?

#12

[left]Yeh, i’ll comment more later, but the gap is looking pretty much spot on :)[/left]
[left] [/left]
[left]If you continue down with the perspective lines this will lead to a vanishing point thats off center to the right, which is ok.[/left]
[left] [/left]
[left]No this probably wouldn’t be projected, if so then it would be a very sutble camera move.[/left]
[left] [/left]
[left]Yeh the cloud pic was taken at york races last year, cool sky though a little dramatic. For this painting i’d be going for a sutble pariod mood, nothing too intense :)[/left]
[left] [/left]

[left]Dave.[/left]

#13

Regarding the cameramapping thing: This is prpably because of the metal railing on the front of the houses? I was thinking about that, and it will get really ugly looking with slightest move. Then again, if I get the perspective right, it would be quite easy to construct the rails in Blender and erase them from the projection image. I have been thinking about that on the grounds of getting better control to the basement apartments lights later on.

I searched the web for the area and periodic buildings. It is quite posh neighbourhood, this. And also quite well known, I think. But I’d take the purpose of this is not to be true to life in terms of location, but more in terms of the period.

I check what I can do with some of the houses I found from the web later in the evening. It is good to know I have at least two first elements as they should be.

You seem to have quite strict photorealistic goal with this,so I play along as good as I can. I try to make a painting that would sit nicely and unnoticeably as a backdrop on some periodic british movie setting.

It will be something else I initially had in mind, but it will also be better as a reference if I get it where I picture it. A series of photos of a street at the early 19th century. Taken with a good quality modern camera.

This will be hard beyond imagination. And a really good learning experience.

#14

Yeh dont go by the actually location :slight_smile: that’s quite a unique street, however the design is farely typical.

Check the vertical lines on the buildings, make sure they’re streight. they seem to lean a little.

You seem to have quite strict photorealistic goal with this,so I play along as good as I can. I try to make a painting that would sit nicely and unnoticeably as a backdrop on some periodic british movie setting.

Well photorealism is the foundation of a matte painting, in most cases :slight_smile:

it would be best to try and repeat the existing buildings you have. I had some shots kicking around of similar streets, i’ll see if i can dig them out.

Regarding the projection, you could get away with using very simple geometry with a short camera move.

Dave.

#15

Ok, i’ve dug out a few photos i took in march. Just uploading, please see link:

http://www.capturefx.co.uk/web/london_02.rar

Note the lighting is very different but no serious shadows or anything, so should be able to tone down. Its worth noting, always even the lighting out across all elements before adding it back in, then you have a uniform canvas to work with.

I’ve also renamed your thread to something slightly more helpfull :slight_smile:

Hope that helps,

Dave.

#16

Update: Road.


How’s this for the road texture? It’s a quickie, but it should be enough to get the point across.

I’ll check the pictures as I finis writing this.

#17

Yeh could work, though maybe a little too distracting. For this stage its important to block in the big areas first, concentrate on extending the street and getting the composition nailed, then worry about small details later :wink:

Also if you can, you should work to a less wide ratio (add to top and bottom), even if you crop into it later you still have room to play with.

Dave.

#18

Awesome images!

I will propably use the red hotel as the next building on the left. There is some artificial light to undo, but the building and the perspective are easily workable. And it fits the style of the first building ok too.

In Finland this kind of buildings can only be seen as townhouses or administrative buildings in three of the biggest cities.

I’ll post some updates as soon as I have gotten the new house(s) added.

#19

Update: New image size, more neutral sky and trial fit of the hotel.

#20

hmmm not sure if the buildings work, needs grading to the foreground maybe. Or perhaps try replacing the foreground with one of the new pics. Not feeling it quite yet :slight_smile:

Dave.