Digital matte test

[The Dark Elf]

Fancied trying something different for a change, haven't done a matte in years. Wanted to try get a Van Helsing style to it, so dug up a photo from Notre Dame facing Sacre Coeur.

Finished image, obviously a number of elements (Rain, smoke, fire, "maybe" the clouds) would be done in a separate pass and animated. But for the sake of this its not important.

Original image.


Wondering if something like this would make for a neat second contest?

 

[bliink]

veeery nice :thumbs:

 

[The Dark Elf]

veeery nice :thumbs:

Thankies

 

[switch]

Well done, I always love how these turn out.

I would like to force myself to try one of these, so I second the idea of using this as a contest theme!

 

[CREMATOR666]

Nice rain effects...I love rains....:thumbs:

 

[The Dark Elf]

Nice rain effects...I love rains....:thumbs:

Thanks

 

[Toffee]

Ooh, very nice indeed. No idea how you did it.
Umm, what is matte? What program did you use for that effect? :monkee:

 

[Romel]

wonderfully done....

 

[Ren.182]

Wow, that's very "Van Hellsing!" I love it.
How did you do that?

 

[The Dark Elf]

Ooh, very nice indeed. No idea how you did it.
Umm, what is matte? What program did you use for that effect? :monkee:

A matte is something used in Film/TV to make a scene look better, completely different or just to change day to night, add snow, change the weather, increase the size of the set.

So using the above example, that would be a background matte and you'd have part of a set of Notre Dame and an actor in the foreground, perhaps stood on the roof of Notre Dame, against greenscreen, then you'd put that matte in place of the greenscreen and heypresto your actor is looking out onto a burning view of Paris. And none of it would be filmed outside of a studio, but once its in the movie/program, you'd not really know.

Other uses would be building part of a set, then leaving the rest empty, say, build it only just above the height of your tallest actor or whatever in that particular scene, film it, then an artist would come along and create the rest of the set and overlay it onto the frames, creating the complete set, matching everything up to the live action set. On screen if they did a good job you'd never know.

Other times you might simply want to change a location, say you had to film somewhere that has a street in it you didn't want, you'd use a matte to remove it and replace it with something else. Or if you filmed a night scene, often filmed during the day and then edited to appear like nighttime, then add a matte to it to clean things up, bring out detail in the background you'd normally not see at that point. Faking it but making it more pleasing to the eye on screen, eg: making the moon bigger, putting a moon in there in the first place heh. Removing and changing the look of the clouds and so on.

Say you needed to film a scene during the winter, chances are in the location you chose, it either wont snow for months, or if it does it wont how you'd like it to. So you'd use fake snow in the area the cast are. Then have an artist work on the rest of the scene, matching it up and giving the impression of there being heavy snow without anyone having to go around and cover what could be miles of view with snow, and freeze lakes to get the effect. So it saves tons of work, and the matte in question would have holes in it for where the live action would be seen.

Some matte's are edited photo's, or frames from a film or such, some are completely painted from scratch, these days a lot are 3D models, sometimes mixed with 2D elements.

IIRC even Coronation Street uses a digital matte in the intro, to show a street beyond some arches, which in the actual set the street doesn't exist.

Think of it a tiny bit like a skybox/3D skybox, its not real but it gives the impression it is.

And I used photoshop

 

[CR0M]

Any pointers as to how to create a black and white alpha matte in photoshop?

 

[Asuka]

Very nice.

 

[The Dark Elf]

Any pointers as to how to create a black and white alpha matte in photoshop?

I was gonna reply but decided I'll do a quick n dirty tutorial for you in another thread.. back in a bit

 

[CR0M]

okey dokey

 

[Ennui]

very pretty and very well done, mate.

 

[The Dark Elf]

okey dokey

It's taking a while cause I decided to try camtasia out with it. I've no idea if this is gonna work or not lol. Prolly end up with a huge file thats no good to anyone

 

[CR0M]

no worries.
I'm kinda busy at work today anyway, will check back later tho

 

[The Dark Elf]

no worries.
I'm kinda busy at work today anyway, will check back later tho

all done

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?p=1194238#post1194238

 

[simmo]

Jeeeesus holy monkey balls TDE, your brilliant!

 

[The Dark Elf]

Jeeeesus holy monkey balls TDE, your brilliant!

aww shucks , ta simmo

 

[CREMATOR666]

My skills in Matte Painting is non-existant...for now

 

[The Dark Elf]

My skills in Matte Painting is non-existant...for now

It's fun, i forgot how much fun it could be. I didn't realise I missed working on films so much

I miss using high end software to fake the old style effects too, like purposely doing bluescreen CG just to get the errors I grew up with from Star Wars hehe.

 

[CREMATOR666]

You used to work on films?!!! :O You rock, TDE

 

[Jimmeh]

Amazing stuff TDE :O

I can never get a sense of depth in any picture I draw.

But still, incredible work!

 

[Druckles]

a) Never hear of a matte, unless it's the thing I stand on when I walk into the house
b) Isn't it bluescreen (that's funny, the first time I hear greenscreen used and then i hear it almost an hour later on the same day...)? I have no idea what the difference is
c) Never done a matte before
d) Still don't get what a matte is
e) Glad to see you got Camtasia working
f) Didn't you post this in another thread (Im now confused)
g) Nice work matte :thumbs: (pun! )

 

[The Dark Elf]

a) Never hear of a matte, unless it's the thing I stand on when I walk into the house
b) Isn't it bluescreen (that's funny, the first time I hear greenscreen used and then i hear it almost an hour later on the same day...)? I have no idea what the difference is
c) Never done a matte before
d) Still don't get what a matte is
e) Glad to see you got Camtasia working
f) Didn't you post this in another thread (Im now confused)
g) Nice work matte :thumbs: (pun! )

a) explained above
b) can't use a bluescreen if the scene has more than a small amount of blue. Greenscreen works better these days cause of the materials used, and it can be keyed better.
c) try it, its fun, and it might be the next contest
d) explained above basically every film you see these days will have one, you just don't notice them.
e) yeppers
f) yeppers
g) thanks lol.

 

[Druckles]

a) I read it
b) Right, makes sense
c) I don't think so. It looks like I definitely won't be entering. I don't even know what one is!
d) Yeah, and I don't understand it!

 

[CR0M]

all done

cheers, nice job. Going to get banned from yet another CoD clan server tonight for kicking their whiney noob asses, then have a go at a matte later.

Ah, the advantages of being too ill to go out on a friday night

 

[Druckles]

And the disadvantage being boredom :hmph:

 

[Jangle]

that looks brilliant. :thumbs:
I wish i had the talent/patience to do something like that..

 

[The Dark Elf]

that looks brilliant. :thumbs:
I wish i had the talent/patience to do something like that..

Thanks

It didn't take all that long, course done properly it would take a lot longer, just didn't want to put much effort into it cause of the original being such a low resolution. If I could get my hands on much higher res images I'd be very happy.