Matte Paintings play a significant role in the film and entertainment industries. They are displayed in the background to create and enhance the illusion. Matte painting ideas & techniques are taken as a module in the VFX courses.

In order to generate believable, photorealistic scenes and backdrops for movies or TV shows. A digital matte painter will digitally replace the live/real components from a frame with required art as needed. Nowadays the art even extends to video game backgrounds and game cinematics.

Digital paintings are the application of traditional painting methods using digital tools via a computer and software. And this artwork is created directly on the computer using programs like Corel Painter, Adobe Photoshop, ArtRage, and open canvas. These tools provide painters with a setting that is comparable to that of a real painting.

While matte paintings can depict any background, they most frequently represent urban scenes and scenic views. Even though their panoramas contain fantastical elements, matte artists must be able to render outside views as realistic as possible. Understanding the perspective and how light affects colour on objects is necessary for this.

Even if the viewers are unable to determine the cause of the problem, they will surely recognise that something is wrong if the colour or perspective seems a little odd. The audience can become distracted from the story by even minor visual mistakes.

Matte paints aren’t exclusively for science fiction and fantasy. They can be structures or urban scenes, and the important point is that the absolute greatest ones will appear so realistic that they don’t even look like paintings.

Matte Painting Images

Digital Matte Painting before and after

Difference between Matte painting and Digital Matte painting

A matte painting is a representation of a scene that would be impractical for filmmakers to realistically replicate using traditional techniques. This could be due to the landscape not existing in the actual world, the expense of travelling there, or the inability to expand the set beyond what was filmed.

A matte painting is a painted depiction of a landscape, set, or far-off place. That enables directors to convey the feeling of a specific setting. A matte-painted image and live-action video have been merged in various ways throughout history by matte painters and cinema technicians. Depending on the level of expertise of the artists and technologists, the effect can, at its finest, be described as “seamless” and provide settings that are believable and genuine. The painting portion of the scenes is static, but movements are added on top of it.

The usage of digital 2-D visuals and 3-D computer animation, which replaced the black traditional matte painting with blue or green backdrops, has however superseded the traditional matte painting. Together with the film director, the matte painter creates concept art. That is drawn to utilize different processes. To get the required visual impact, some matte painters utilise Photoshop, while others draw it using pencils, paper, and pastels in the film. Finding reference material for a Photoshop matte painting usually involves looking for mountains, seas, or other objects that best exemplify the concept art.

Digital Matte Painting breakdown

Matte Painting Ideas

The following guidelines must be followed in order to produce realistic and trustworthy digital photographs. For instance, when multiple images are combined, respect for perspective is essential. For instance, if you are creating a city, make sure that every window is facing the same direction.

Photorealism really benefits from colourimetry. For instance, it is vital to colour-match all the merged features when blending mountain photos. This finding is particularly true if the images were captured using a variety of cameras in diverse locations at various times of the day or year. A picture’s colour is shaped by all those little details.

Another important consideration is the balance between light and shadow. If you’ve ever looked at a photograph, you may have observed that the closest elements are darker and the composition is lighter the farther the background recedes. This perspective is atmospheric, like a fog or haze effect. You may give your photographs a deeper impression of depth by blending distant objects with the colour of the sky.

A good and comprehensive image bank must be available. The best way to satisfy this demand could be through the Internet. However, everyone needs to exercise caution when it comes to copyrights and picture quality. Both Photobash.org and Gumroad are great places to get stock pictures. It’s also a terrific idea to use your camera, particularly with a good lens, to build your image bank. On the other hand, consider how long it could take to travel in order to collect as many various types of landscapes as you can.

Digital Matte Painting Techniques

Another widely popular and most common application of matte painting is set extension. This is where only the background immediately behind the action is filmed and for practical, budgetary, or other reasons, the remainder must be painted later. On locked-off shots, the simplest set extensions are possible as well. Finding the scene’s vanishing points will help you understand the perspective of the scene when working on this type of photograph. The line tool in Photoshop makes this task relatively simple to accomplish. Use bright colours so that the lines stand out from the background. A good tip here is to use vector lines on shape layers so that they can easily be repositioned.

The brush and clone tools are generally used to fill in the missing set. To ensure that your new artwork matches the source plate, it’ll be wise to choose the colours directly. But a closer look reveals that the photographic grain seen in the plate is absent from the parts that were painted by hand. Since the footage’s grain animates, it is typically brought back in during compositing; nevertheless, the matte painter might need to give the compositor an alpha channel of the freshly painted area.

Matte Painting VFX

Without much fanfare, the visual effect has helped the entertainment sector expand. The importance of originality, creativity, and an appreciation for aesthetics cannot understated. Because it is the culmination of these qualities that results in the story’s message. Filmmakers are also appreciative of the development of digital visual effects because it has significantly improved the quality of their films. Their movie has been given more creativity, and the results are visible in the output and popularity of the project. Matte painting in Photoshop has revolutionized the media industry, numerous pieces of work including advertising bits have turned into incredible works with the master touch of the Photoshop effect added.