Virtual Space
Self Evaluation
The final outcome of this project was exactly the way I intended it to be through the concept. I was faithful to the concept design and made no drastic changes. The only difference between the final matte painting and the concept design were the docks and the space shuttles in the in the city. I felt that this would have been more strenuous as my modelling skills aren’t that good compared to the matte painting.
I could have improved the layering in the clouds through Photoshop because in the camera mapping there aren’t any movement going on and so as a result it doesn’t look 3d compared to the other areas in the piece where there is a parallax. So in future reference I would always remember to layer everything so that it will make the final camera mapping look more 3d.
The waves in the shore didn’t look real in any form or shape because they were static. This ultimately brought the level of 3d down a few notches. As before, my modelling skills weren’t at a level were I was able to create what I wanted. For things like seas and oceans, it would be better to film and use that as a template over the matte painting to create the real effect.
It was a great experience to have finally executed a matte painting as well as camera mapping for this module and will be looking forward to doing more in he near future.
For research skills I will give myself a 7/10. I felt that I lacked the research in layering through camera mapping as well as film templates.
For contextual awareness I will give myself an 8/10 due to the knowledge and understanding of olden styled matte paintings and how it has developed from 2d to 3d pieces.
For research material I will give myself a 5/10. This is due to the limitation of my research by only using digital based research.
For critical analysis of the subject I will give myself a 9/10 because I thoroughly justified every facet of the piece.
For creativity, originality and innovation I will give myself an 8/10. The idea behind the piece was very creative and led me to use a new technique I had never introduced before, camera mapping.
For application of theory to practice I will give myself a 6/10. There were some changes to the piece as it was undergoing development.
For technical development I will give myself a 9/10 because the piece had undergone a few stages and didn’t just stick to one: mappe painting, camera mapping and film editing.
The organisation and time planning was exactly the way I wanted it to go and for that I award myself a 10/10.
Project Development
Having documented every step in developing the matte painting up to its final stage was noted as well as every other skilled I had picked up. For that I give myself an 8/10.
Camera Mapping Process
Creating the anaglyph was easy, I simply followed a set of instructions from this website: Anaglyph
The next stage was for me to animate the sea and the waterfall. Creating the animated sea was done by applying a texture on a material which happens to be a pre-set on C4d, Having adjusted the wind and the perspective of the layer, I accurately positioned it on top of the sea I had in the matte painting. I wanted to retain some of he detail from the sea I had I done in the matte painting as well as the reflection, so I simply applied the transparency which helped make this possible.
Using the emitter tool but the frustrating thing about created the waterfall was applying the correct colour to match the matte painting. I feel that this was the only let down in the piece. I had to have had a waterfall in the piece otherwise it wouldn’t have looked 3d. Applying the sound effects in Final Cut Pro really made it stand out and helped the waterfall appear more real.
The buildings were the hardest ones to assemble because the further away I wanted to position them, the smaller they became in size. Naturally I had to resize them according to the matte painting. This was very tricky because the images that I was uploading into C4d were low in resolution and so the only way I was able to view the correct resolution was to tender it, which took quite some time. This process of positioning, resizing and rendering to check if the space between one another was very time consuming but was a great challenge.
Another problem that I had occurred once the positioning of all the layers were complete, was the camera movement. I was assembling that the layers to match the matte painting so much that when I used the camera in C4d to illustrate the timeline in the animation, the layers were moving in space in an unnatural manner. For example, when he camera had reached to the right hand side of the landscape, the parallax made it seem as if the buildings were floating in space. This meant that I had to adjust the position of the buildings to avoid this problem.
The cameramapping was the next obstacle I had to face. Using Cinema 4D I had to recreate the matte painting by positioning them in the x,y and z to mirror the exact image from the matte painting but adjusting each layer according to its own space. For example, when positioning the island that was in the middle of the bottom piece, in order to create a 3d space, I had to position it much closer to the camera than for example the snow mountain so that when the camera moves in to the landscape, it would appear that we would be moving away from the middle island and getting closer to the our surroundings.
Matte Painting Process
This is the finished article of the matte painting. I reused some of the buildings but slightly changed them in sized and colour. This helped me save time but also populate the city. I also inputted cast shadows on the town from the tall buildings to help achieve scale and distance.
I was cautious with the amount of reflection I wanted to reveal. Because it’s an external shot and the buildings are mammoth in size and surpass that of natures, I wanted to create a tropical atmosphere to really beautify it.
Finally, I added a few adjustment layers that enabled me to have certain parts in contrast than others without destroying the original piece. I added an orange tint that creates a late afternoon feel.
This process of editing buildings and changing the perspective to match that of my landscape was simply repetitive. At one point the colours from the building made it look out of place and look as if it belonged in the piece. Through series of colour correction and adjustments I was able to finalise it. Because the light is coming from the right side of the piece, it naturally would affect the colour of the right side of the building, I chose bright ochre. For the shade I went for its opposite, blue. It was difficult to find the exact saturation because I still wanted to retain the detail on the parts where there was shade. So I used a colour overlay that enabled me to do this. I then duplicated the layer and made I higher contrast to create the light hitting on the right side without affecting the original piece.
Having finished both islands, the mountain and the snow mountain, I was now home in on the city. Every building had to be in a separate layer because it was going help me create the parallax when doing the cameramapping. I used photos that I got a hold of from the Internet to create the monuments. Buildings are a lot more intricate to pull of in a matte painting than mountains because perspective comes in to play, the lighting will be more diverse and the creativity of putting together the buildings will be more complex. A matte painter can get an image and put it into a scene and make it look as if though it belongs there but a better matte painter can manipulate the image to their own will and not just use it as it is.
Once the left island was finished, I swiftly moved on to the mountain behind it. I applied the same technique as the before; cloning and painting over. I had to be weary of the colour I was using because I had to take in to account that this mountain was much further away, and so I used less saturated colours compared to the island. By also adding a gradient at the bottom of the mountain, it heightened the distance between the islands in front and the mountain itself.
The rocky part of the mountain was more difficult to execute because this time there weren’t any vegetation to cover up the mountain. I had to be more careful when I was cloning, but instead of just adding one mountain and just cloning it like I did before, I imported three to four different types of mountain and then matted out some parts and pained over it fuse them into one mountain. The same process was applied to the right island in the landscape.
When doing the matte painting of the mountain behind the two islands, I had to make sure that I was doing it in its entirety and not just the parts that were visible because it was going to cause problems when doing the cameramapping.
I began doing the matte painting on the left hand side of the landscape because it was going to be the easiest compared to the right where it involved more complex shapes.
I imported a photo of a hill that resembled the same quantity of foliage to the concept art and I began to clone the imported photo until it took shape of the island. It didn’t look accomplished because I was cloning the same part of the imported hill and so it looked flat and bland. However, I painted over it with several preset Photoshop brushes to give it a natural randomness. Working on such a large canvas, I was able to zoom in and apply detail as well definition so that when I was viewing it on a normal scale, it looked more real and was beginning to stake shape.
I separated the two hills on the left island because I knew I wanted there to be a parallax when I was going to import it in Cinema 4D to do the cameramapping. The desert regions in the left island were a bit tricky to pull of because there wasn’t one photo that I could have used. So I gathered a handful of rock and sand textures and blended them together by creating the alpha. I also collected a few images of mountains to give the island shape and form to avoid having it appear flat.
Concept Design
Knowing that the finished article was going to be a short 3d animation, I had to have worked on a really large canvas on Photoshop. The animation would was going to be a track shot and so the canvas size I choose was 7000 x 3000 pixels wide, enabling me to detail as much of the piece I can.
To me, the concept design is by far the most important thing before even approaching a matte painting. The reason being is that the all the ideas, colours, composition and scale have to be crystallised so that when the matte painting is pending, you have a solid idea as to what it is your doing and you wont be sitting around and making up ideas as you go along. A the same time I didn’t want to want to spend too much time making the concept design looking fantastically real but I did however put detail on certain parts of the piece where I knew I would have needed them so that I had a better understanding of the piece. An example would be the left part of the mountain where the trees/grass fade from the shadow and into light and also applying rich lime green/yellow to areas where the light hits. This eventually adds up because it will render the mountain as having grooves and bumps and will prevent is from looking like a flat terrain.
The mountain behind it was a struggle because selecting the right green was critical in making it appear in the distance. Having the clouds hide parts of the feature also brings forward a distant feature that works really well and brings everything together.
I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the building, not because I was reluctant but because it really didn’t need it. I knew in my head what the main theme of the architecture would be; tall and hen clustered buildings forming as one. Time was the enemy and so I had to proceed as quickly as I could.
In an external shot such as this, no matter how perfect you get a landscape or a cityscape, cloudscape takes more visualization than any other, depending on what shot it is. For this piece, the cloud brings everything together more than anything else in the piece, which is why I went on and inputted a realistic cloudscape.
Concept Proposal and Contextual Analysis
What I find to be interesting about this piece is as well as having random landscapes and fractals being thrown at me, I’m more drawn in to the sound. It almost changes the way I see each piece. Being amazing sceneries that they are the sound makes the art seem more mysterious and has more to it than meets the eye. The louder the music becomes the stranger the work is displayed. Using sound as part of a virtual space as opened me and will try to investigate it thoroughly to perhaps input something similar for my final piece.
Pervasive Gaming
Pervasive gaming is another form of game interaction where it involves a much wider space of game play and location. ‘Watch Your Back’ is a great example because it involves human interaction that then ties into the game play. It involves teamwork that then becomes betrayal in order to score points. It is very much a virtual space piece because some form of technology is in use but there is also an infinite space that could be in use to perform the activity that naturally make you get drawn into it.
3D Anaglyphs
We had a go at stereograms in lesson, and we were in for a real treat. There’s a way to create a 3D space simply by position the images. Like the example above, I take a photo and then when positioned the camera slightly to the right and took another photo. It was key to maintain stillness in this procedure. I inserted the two images into Photoshop and positioned the left of the photograph in the right canvas in Photoshop and the right photograph on left canvas in Photoshop. And so what I was left with were two images that looked exactly like each other side by side. The way in which you create the 3D space is by crossing eyes until a third image appears in the centre of the piece, blurring out the images that are on the side, and what you are left is a 3D space in which you can reveal certain parts that the photograph didn’t offer.
Camera Mapping
Here are two camera maps I had a go at doing. Using my matte painting, I inserted them into C4D and played around with distancing them according to the matte painting. Afterwards I stuck a camera in there to reveal the parallax.
This is the original piece
This is the original piece
Examples of Camera Mapping
Camera mapping is a technique that is often used in the film industry to introduce the audience to a scene; something like an establishing shot would better describe it. Depending on the camera movement the compositors would model certain parts of the matte painting in a 3D software and place them accordingly to where they are in the image. If however, the camera is going to be a simple pan or zoom, modelling parts of the shot wouldn’t a necessity, what would happen is that is that image would be put on a flat plane, tweaking with the alpha channel so that that the image that would be place behind it, would be visible. Again, depending on the distance in the matte painting, the plane would have to be moved back to create a 3D space. This process it repeated until the entire matte painting is with in the 3D software. What would then happen, is that when the camera gets animated to move into the shot, there would be an accurate reading of the scene moving towards us and you see hidden parts of the painting to create the illusion of space.
An artist by the name Chris Stoski, is a master in this field. He’s been in the film industry for over ten years and has worked on a variety of movies such as Star Wars Episode III, The Ring, The Last Samurai, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, and many others. I will be dissect his methods in this skill and approach it by creating a few of my own.
I had in mind to produce a matte painting for the final piece. Because I like to plan it ahead, it gives me time to prepare myself and gather all that I need. I was told of camera mapping and its ties to matte painting. I was immediately drawn to new terrains and was excited to research new techniques and ideas in helping me create an amazing piece.
Janine Pauke was brought to my attention because she delves into matte painting and camera mapping. She was the matte painter for the ‘Alien vs Predator’ movie. She also demonstrates how to produce a camera map on Cinema 4D. The technique needs getting used to, but is ultimately doable.
UNITY
We started to use a software called ‘Unity’ that allows the user to create a virtual space in a game. Some of the interface is similar to that of Cinema 4D but still had its differences. We examined some of its tools and began to experiment. After a few trial and errors and getting in to grips with it. A created a little game that involves jumping on to platforms until you reached the top.
I had modelled an Aztec looking platform. The texture worked well with its ancient appearance, by having worn out effect with a few cracks and bumps.
I adjusted the speed and gravity in the game, so it felt that the user had special abilities. It’s quite difficult to gather how much speed you need and where you need to dismount from the platform in order to land successfully on the other without falling. It took me about 12 tries until I finally nailed it.
The Legible City
In this installation, the visitor cycles a stationary bike through a virtual space that is presented as a three dimensional letters than form words and sentences along the sides of the street. The visitor controls the direction of where they would want to go.
At first the piece is quite exciting but unfortunately it doesn’t remain to be after a minute or so. It only gives the audience so little and from that, the piece soon becomes bland.
QTVR
In lesson, we looked out how to create a virtual space using photos. We went out and starting taking photos but we were told to stand and pivot only the camera. We were creating Quicktime VR’s which I’m very new to. I heard that matte painting could also be involved after assembling the photos. I got a hold of a few pre-set from flickr and started to play around with this ‘virtual space’ and so inputted a few characters using Adobe Photoshop. I tried to make the characters fit perfectly into the scene. Here’s the result…
Click, hold and now drag the mouse
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