Introduction

This lesson focuses on using matte painting to create a composition in after effects.

Matte painting in VFX is the technique of creating a photorealistic image of an environment that wouldn’t have been possible to capture otherwise. These fictional environments are created using a mixture of photo editing and digital painting techniques.

Elements of a Digital Matte Painting

Some important elements of a matte painting include:

• Perspective
• Composition
• Lighting and Reflections
• Atmospheric perspective/Haze
• Narrative/World Building

This is the matte painting that I created this lesson. I used the following tools and techniques to create the matte painting:

• Lasso select
• Quick select
• Eraser
• Editing the hue, saturation and brightness of layers using Ctrl + U
• Merging layers with Ctrl + E
• Blur tool
• Blur filters (gaussian blur)
• Adjustment layers
• Clipping masks
• Patch tool
• Healing brush tool

In the next lesson, I will be animating the matte painting in After Effects.

Conclusion

In this session I had good practise with tools in photoshop as well as more general composition skills such as perspective and choosing the right photos. I also had important practise colour grading, and getting different images to look the same in the composition.