CGSociety

Painting/Texturing

Most of the time, primitive shapes in grey-shaded mode are enough for matte paintings. Painting over the primitive shapes in Photoshop is a good way to save time rather than applying textures on each 3D object, especially if there is no camera movement in the scene. When I render my 3D elements and place them on my original picture and the most interesting part begins – the painting!

First, I make a new layer called ‘rough drawing' and start to paint over my 3D layer rough and quickly. The detail is not important so I don't focus on it in the beginning. I just want to create a general ambiance by roughly putting brush strokes where I want. I am trying to test what works and what doesn't.

I continue to paint in Photoshop by using multiple layers and refining my details as I go along. I create a new layer and, using the rubber stamp tool, I retouch the image, cloning pieces onto the new layer. I use the ‘use all layers' mode for the tool, which allows cloning between layers. To add texture, I use an image with a strong texture like cement or something and overlay this image in places where I need the texture, cleaning it up to fit the objects with the eraser tool. This is a way to break up my brush strokes and add more realism. To make highlights, I create a layer and paint the highlights in and blend this layer using ‘softlight mode' or ‘color dodge mode”. Both of these are great tools to create lighting effects in your scene.

Lighting

The lighting in a matte painting is defined by the original plate. In this case, the sun was coming from the lower right corner of the image so every new building was lit by this light. I made all the lighting effects in Photoshop as I painted, including the drop shadows. The most important thing with lighting is to know where your light source is. When I determine where it is, I draw lines from it to my objects to figure out where the drop shadow will fall and what parts of the objects will be affected by light or shadow.

Compositing and Post-processing

This project was pretty much a Photoshop job because it doesn't need to move. The 3D elements are there mainly to help prevent perspective mistakes and to give a solid base of clean objects with sharp edges, which is difficult to create with a graphic pad.

When I have finished the painting I play with filters and effects to correct the color of image and integrate the painting with the original photograph. The tint and the lighting of your objects are the most important aspects of doing a good integration. I color corrected the image as a whole and also in specific places. Using a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer on a selection of the sky, I made it look like sunset. I made a selection of the dark tones, created a color balance layer, and added more black. Then, I created a color balance layer for the whole image and gave it a yellow tint.

high-resolution detail

Final Image

It was a lot of fun to work on this project. I spent approximately 6 to 8 hours on this image because it was a personal project and there was no deadline. Talaros City was only a work to improve my skills in Photoshop as a Matte Painter. Now that it's finished I hope the image and sharing the process I followed to create it are useful for CGTalkers.

Related Links
Frederic St-Arnaud's website
Talaros City in the CG Choice Gallery
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Words and images by Frederic St-Arnaud