MY BLOGZ: 3-D MATTE PAINTING

3D MATTE PAINTING

Ever wondered how locations and backgrounds in many feature films are created even when they do not exist in reality

The answer is simple:

Matte painting

(A matte painting is a painted representation of a landscape, set, or distant location that allows filmmakers to create the illusion of an environment that is not present at the filming location.)

But what is a 3-D Matte Painting?

Traditionally, matte paintings were made by artists using paints or pastels on large sheets of glass for integrating with the live-action footage

Paint has now been superseded by digital images created using photo references, 3-D models, and drawing tablets.

Matte painters combine their digitally matte painted textures within computer-generated 3-D environments, allowing for 3-D camera movement

This allows for a realistic looking 3-D environment in which a the camera can move up to a 180 degree rotation

It is not easy to understand so we dive into this technique with a little example:

A digital matte paint is made of many images cut and put together, so we cut out and make a group of such images

A good combination of these images and a little touch ups,

and

POOF!!!

we create our very own matte painting

The product is a complete background which can be used in a scene with a fixed camera

But what if the camera moves or is animated ?

We then create a 3-D Matte painting using Software like Nuke, Fusion, After Effects and so on

This software combines these images and produces a moving camera matte painting which consists of compositing principles like parallax , light information , depth to it

here we can see the composition in Nuke with all its node graph for the same scene but in 3-D

Here is a camera and single elements view which shows the placement of the different parts of the matte paintings at different positions to create 3-D depth