Friday, December 30, 2011

Matte Painting

I attempted to create my very own matte painting today.  However, before I show it to you, I should explain what a matte painting is!

A matte painting is a background that is either 2D or 3D that is used for chroma key replacement.
What?  It is a bunch of pictures all edited into a single photo using a photo editor.  Such as Photoshop or Gimp.

What is chrome key?  Chroma key is the proper way of saying, green screen or blue screen.

Let me give an example.  Lets say that there is a scene in a movie that is being shot by the mountains. You have two options to shoot the scene.

1. Go find some mountains that suit you needs, or
2. Green screen the background out so you can insert a matte painting of your own mountains.

Here is two pictures that demonstrates what I mean...





That is the power of a matte painting!  OK, so now you want to see mine, right.

Here it is!




In this picture I had about 75 layers of items.  I was able to do this matte out of only 9 pictures.  It is still far from perfect!  My green on the vines is still to bright and the proportion of the pillars is not quite fitting to the buildings.  But that is how you learn, right!

Have you ever attempted a matte painting?

8 comments:

  1. Nice job! I've never even heard of that term before. I've done lots of picture similar to this, though.

    I did this one picture where I started with a blank screen; then, I added the sky, grass, plants, dog and butterflies. Lol Mine did not turn out with very accurate proportions, though. =D

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  2. Thank you! Yes, getting the correct proportion isn't very easy!

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  3. Wow, very nice!

    I have only worked with two pictures using perspective (I just placed an item into a background) Kind of like my profile picture and also some on my Photoshop site.

    I'll have to try something like that sometime!

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  4. Thanks!

    I will look forward to seeing your picture sometime!

    By the way, something I learned how to use in doing this picture was the clone stamp tool. I have never used it before now! I found it to be a necessity for blending images together!

    Just a little side note! :)

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  5. Hmm... I never knew what that tool did.

    Speaking of which, what does the sponge tool do? I've tried to use it before, but I never saw any difference.

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  6. You know, I have often wondered the same thing, so a quick trip to Google gave me the answer! :)

    The sponge tool saturates or desaturates an image. When you have the sponge tool selected, look at the options on the top tool bar. You should see the brush and brush size option. You should also see a drop down bar with the options to saturate or desaturate. There will also be another option called flow. This could also be referenced as the amount that is applied.

    Hope that helps! My favorite tool is the burn tool. Being able to create your own wood burn effect is to nice! :)

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  7. Thanks!

    I haven't heard of the burn tool. I'll be sure to use that. My favorite tool is probably the spot healing brush. Very nice to get rid of those pesky marks!

    You can find anything with Google! :D

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  8. I actually used the burn tool to make the wood in my matte look like it was on fire at one point in time. The wood that I used was a fence post that was tan in color.

    Yes, the spot healing brush is very, very useful! :)

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