Week 1 – Digital Matte Painting

For our first week we looked at matte painting. Which is the art of making backgrounds for entertainment using different techniques. Historically matte painting have been painted by artists traditionally. Some famous examples come from the Star Wars franchise. However nowadays most projects make digital matte paintings most commonly using a technique where multiple images are composited together to make a cohesive shot.

What makes a good matte painting?

When analysing matte painting there as a few commonalities which stand out:

• Framing and composition of the image to establish a focal point
• Contrast fades towards the background of the image to establish focal point further forward
• Colour theory to make certain aspects stand out. For example, red contrasting with green
• Often the background of images fades to blue
• Depth of field

After this studying we were then set a task to create 3 matte paintings one on each of the themes which were:

• Skyfall inspired highlands
• Bladerunner/futuristic urban scene
• Savannah

Work in class

This is the work I started in class. Here I was learning the tools and thinking through ideas. We worked in Photoshop which is the standard for this discipline.

Bladerunner

Work from home

Skyfall Highlands inspired

A breakdown showing one step per image

The finished comp before colour correction

The final comp

This image highlights the images used, with the red boxes highlighting which elements came from which photograph

Breakdown

Here is a video breakdown of the progress of this matte painting

 

A breakdown showing one step per image

Images used

Before colour correction

 

The final comp

 

Breakdown

Here is a video breakdown of the progress of this matte painting

Savannah

A breakdown showing one step per image

Images used

Before colour correction

Final Comp

Breakdown

Overall thoughts

Having a short deadline for this task meant I had to learn the software quickly so there was a lot of experimenting and trying things out. I got comfortable with adjustment layers and became good at refining key words when searching for images. I found the topics discussed during the lesson really helped when making the pieces as there were aspects of a matt painting that I knew to aim for (especially desaturation). Overall I’m happy with the result although I know with more time they could be improved

Week 2

This we have launched the Frankenstein brief where are tasked with making a shot that could exist within a Frankenstein movie directed by Guillermo del Toro.

My idea is to make an environment with a staircase and potentially a silhouette of the character at the top or the bottom.

References

Dracula 1931

I really like this scene as a reference point as it captures the atmospheric lighting I am looking for and potential framing

These are shots from Crimson Peak (2015) which is another one of Guillermo del Toro’s films. I like the lighting of the first shot with the deep greens. I also quite like the wear on the staircase in the second shot

Using animals or assets for scale

Something I would like to make a note of is using animals and objects for scale.

At the moment my shot will focus on the staircase with some small movement most likely caused by a bat or shadow. Light coming through the windows, atmospheric lighting

Practical work

Making the staircase

To start with I researched making the staircase to try and find the best way to go about it.

Initially my thinking was to use Houdini to make a procedural staircase as I wanted to be able to modify the number of stairs/width throughout the project in case I changed my mind. However I quickly dropped that plan when I realised how many gaps in my knowledge there were with that software. Acknowledging the time scale I have I didn’t think this was worth it.

I then moved into Blender as I had researched a way to do it there.

Here are a few of screenshots of that process.

Ultimately I decided to move in to Maya as it where I am most comfortable with the overall pipeline and I knew I could get help from lecturers if I needed it.

Once settled in Maya I was able to make a staircase I was happy with.

I then moved on to making windows, I knew I wanted them to be a specific style to go with the theme/aesthetic of the piece, so I found a drawing of one that I used as a reference and modelled that and the extruded it out.

Here you can see I made multiple versions and one I left as an outline frame to Boolean out of the side wall.

I then took the whole project over to substance painter. These textures could be refined, I just wanted to add some general texture to the piece now to see how it looks.

Here is the result so far, I am pleased with the overall feeling it gives and I think it’s a good start. The only lighting in the scene right now is one area light coming through the windows as I wanted to see how it looks, but I will refine this and add more light in the future.

Week 3

Presentation of progress

Feedback on the presentation has directed my focus on what needs to be improved which is adding more elements to the scene. An idea was put forward to add in a doorway in the empty space screen left and potentially have a shadow of a figure being cast through. Therefore my next task is to work on making the doorway

In class I did a little bit of work on the door

Working on the door

I first modelled the base door making sure to place the pivot correctly so the door could be opened

I then worked on the frame

Here is the base model finished, I made this by mirroring both objects. I combined the archway into one mesh so that it could be handled correctly

In order to add the door I had to redo the staircase texturing so it looks worse than it did original right now but I will correct that later, for now I just wanted to get the door in place and have a render of that effect

Week 4 Presentation

This is the presentation I made to showcase the work I have done to the project in the last week

In class work on making the door bigger and extending the stairwell

At home work this week

The first thing I did at home was to disrupt the regularity and straight lines of the stair case.

I then imported the stairs into blender so that I could make the bannister rail

Here it is imported into Maya, I haven’t textured it at this point but it is in place and working well with the scene

Next I wanted to try making a candelabra.

Due to time constraints for the project I didn’t want to spend too long on the modelling of this therefore I’m sure I could make it better/fine tune it if I had more time

Adding a pillar was something I remembered to do right at the end of this day. The pillar, bannister and candelabras remain untextured however they are a proof of concept

Modelling and texturing the candles

I decided to make the flame material in Maya as I knew I could make an emissive material with a colour ramp. This ended up working really well and I am pleased with this asset

Creating a camera movement for the shot

 

I camera move to be subtle yet focus on the character shadow so I made a kind of swooping shot that begins to centre on the character throughout

Adding the character

I got the character from Mixamo by Adobe. Imported the character and a walk animation to Maya and resized it to fit the archway I had made for the door

I also modified the light again as I found that a spotlight gave the best shadow.

Additionally I made the character static and chose one pose that they would hold the entire time this is because I wanted a creepy silhouette that I could choose

Adding in a bat animation

Though my original plan was to find a bat animation online potentially using AI, I found it hard to find one that I thought would be suitable. Most were swarms of bats which I didn’t think fit particularly well with th scene, therefore I decided to make my own by tracing a reference and bringing those graphics into After Effects to make an animation

The bat animation isolated

The bat composited on the door opening sequence

The bat composited on the door always open sequence

Overall although combining a new technique and more artistry I felt like this made the look of the piece feel cheap and made it look more like student work. I do like the effect but I don’t think it integrated seamlessly enough. I will see what feedback I get though as I can always add it back into the composition later

This is a still from the first render

This is the result of the first render. I’m pleased with how this turned out however on reflection I would like to change the spot light colour to a slight red, in keeping with the light from the windows as I feel this would make the shot more cohesive. However I do think that the white might end up being for the best because it does contrast well and draw the eye.

Experimenting with the red lighting on the character and a door opening animation

I decided to make some new renders to look at each variation I am contemplating for the final shot

These are

• Door open – white lighting
• Door open – red lighting
• Door animated – white lighting
• Door animated – red lighting

Here is a compilation of the results

Changing the length of the door opening animation

On reflection I decided to change tweak the door animation to make it take longer, I felt this would add more suspense to the scene

This was the result of that experiment. I realised I didn’t like the result as much and also that I had somehow tweaked the camera

Final shot for week 4

After many iterations I decided the one I like the most most is the one with the door constantly open and the light being white (to contrast) the red light from the windows.

Here is that result