Matte Painting: Environments for Film

Learn current industry techniques for creating digital matte painting for features films, from DreamWorks artist Danny Janevski.

Introduction

• Welcome
• What to know
• Exercise files

1. Layout

• Concept frames or inspiration
• Layout geometry in Clarisse
• Layout importance and set breakup

2. Asset Creation

• Import and separate geometry in ZBrush
• Renaming geometry
• Creating a top-down render

3. World Building and Terrain Generation

• Import into World Machine
• Creating nodes in World Machine
• Adjusting height and resolution
• Using erosion in World Machine
• Adding color to erosion
• Mesh and texture output
• Advanced macros
• Rendering through tiled output
• Converting files to use with Clarisse

4. Look Development

• Import OBJs into Clarisse
• Setting up Lookdev
• Shader creation using textures and masks
• Creating a layered shader
• Creating a rock and sand shader

5. Final Layout

• Creating the final layout

6. Project Setup

• Projection setup
• Creating render layers
• Resolution

7. Matte Painting

• Key art: Paint setup
• Key art: Creating a haze
• Key art: Sky setup
• Key art: Painting the sky
• Key art: Painting the mountain
• Key art: Final touches
• Exporting layers

8. Projection

• Importing layers into Nuke
• Shuffle node and scene setup
• Projection
• Compositing
• Rendering
• Final render

Conclusion

• Next steps