New matte - Mountain

#1

Hi, guys/gals, I don’t post here much but I watch all your work every day. This is a personal piece I recently finished. I’m sure there is much I missed, so fire away.

A little background. Way back when i first started really getting into Photoshop I tried my hand at hand painting. It was a disaster. I wanted to mimic the style of Bob Ross using Photoshop. this was the result but it is the basis for this piece.

So, then I found out about matte painting. I wanted to recreate my first disaster using matte painting techniques. I found this plate.

I added some foreground elements, re-did the sky and atmosphere and added a light source. This is the result. Please, all CC is welcome.

#2

Anyone???

#3

Hey Gene,

I am not sure about that tree in the foreground, it looks like its from the fall season but none of the other trees look that way so it seems a bit out of place to me. Also there is a light patch in the sky on the right side that is a bit confusing me. Is it light rays going throught the clouds? if so you might want to add some more coulds in that area because right now there isnt the type of cloud cover that would create that effect.

Keep it up dude!

#4

Hey Matellis, thanks for the input.

You’re dead on about the tree on the left. I should have noticed that. Ok, now to decide, do I want to add fall color to the rest or change that tree??? Maybe I’ll do both. Good practice. LOL.

gonna work on that light source. Not sure what it should look like but I see your point. guess I’ll research some ref photos for ideas.

Thanks again.

#5

Hey again , here is a little paintover showing where the sun is located in your plate. The sun seems to be far off the the right and closer to the camera. I hope this helps. One thing I find really helpful is to find your source light when beginning a matte. That will save you a lot of headache down the road plus you can make sure to find reference images that have the same lighting to make the process a hell of a lot easier on yourself (if possible).

In my opinion i would suggest going with the fall look. You dont see many mattes taking advantage of that season. and then you can go in and add little things like leaves in the water and shore to make the overall scene have a sence of place.

Another thing is you might want to take another stab at is cropping out that foreground tree from its original photo. If you like, you could post the reference and maybe me and/or another artist can help explaining the best ways to crop.

#6

Thanks again, really appreciated.

Here’s the original plate for the tree. I used the channel method of extracting, It would be great to see where I went wrong. Considering the direction of the light source it looks like I and going to have to re-do the entire sky. I need to sort of reverse the way it goes from dark to light. In your opinion would it be better to relight the mountain?

#7

Hey no problem at all :slight_smile:

I just tried out cropping the tree. Going throught the channels is the best way like you did. But you edges almost seem like they were painted out? im not sure but what i did was go into my blue channel, created a curves mask and slid the bottom point across the bottom in the curve dialog box. Then went into Layer>matting>defring set at 3 pixels. and this was the result. But maybe there is a better way that im not aware of.

And about the mountains. I cant really say what you should do because its all about creating the mood you want. Whether you want the sun in the image or create an interesting sky with the sun thats in the plate. Its all about what you want so i cant make any suggestions about that :smiley:

I will say that relighting a whole scene is a lot of work and if your up to the task then go for it :smiley:

#8

nice change in mood.

for the tree in the foreground, the highlight values are a bit too bright. and the rough edges are giving you away.

I’d sugest adding a layer mask, and start eliminating parts that seem to stick out. Its important to use a layer mask and not just erase, because if you mask out something you wanted to keep, its very easy to mask it back in with white.

Having a clean selection to begin with would of course be ideal, but sometimes you gotta get in there with a brush to make it right.

good luck!

#9

Thanks guys, got caught up late at work but I’ll be sure to get on this tomorrow.

#10

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