Summer Fest - Tropical City

[jomarie]

Hi everyone,

This is my first attempt at a matte painting. This is just the background image I want to use - I still plan on adding a generous amount of tropical foliage, and the buildings, of course. The background was created by compositing quite a few photos together - adjusting color balance and hues to make everything fit and making some other changes (such as cloning and painting some details) where necessary.

Any comments/suggestions are very welcome!

Please note - the final image will be at the HD resolution of 1920 x 1080. This image resolution is smaller specifically for upload size purposes...

[jomarie]

And some more progress... This is basically the finished image - any suggestions are welcome!

[Nocturn8]

jomarie: hey there dude... it's looking cool already and you're doing great... but i think we still have a lot of time... don't quit on it now... maybe you could work out a little on the left side building which right now looks a little flat and a little on the structures scales too. just a suggestion though!!!

[eyecon]

Hi jomarie,

Hi, your artwork looks fine and I must say it's pretty artistic, unfortunatelly its not quite a mattepainting yet.

You have to work on a few thing sbud, here they are...

1. Your perspective is all wrong, you might want to adjust and paint over a few of those structures, also scaling is not quite good too, Those a re pretty huge waves right there against the overall size of the buildings.

2. Sky is not too convincing, try to use a much more realistic approach when creating skies.

3. You have no depth, overall color is too flat. try to remember that near objects are saturated and far objects are less saturated.

4. Your images are too low res, it destroys the continuity of the image...

Hope this helps man, I'm sorry if it stings a bit but I do mean well and I hope you can improve this one.

[gnome]

I agree with eyecon on the perspective thing. Try to make sure the towers/buildings are parallel in their verticals, or follow a vertical vanishing point (unless that look is intentional, of course).

You could also try to make the buildings blend better into the background. As Nocturn8 said, don't quit on it now.

[jomarie]

Hey guys! Thanks for all your feedback! Eyecon, thanks for the detailed suggestions - this is my first matte painting ever, so the more detail the better. Especially stuff like the saturation and perspective tips are really helpful!

Must admit, I quite agree with all of these comments - after posting the last image here, I had another look and decided I don't like the buildings at all. So I'm currently in the process of redoing them, but it's going a bit slow as I've kinda turned my attention to other things for the moment.

Nocturn, do you have any suggestions on how to make the building look less flat? That was bothering me too, but due to my lack of experience I have no idea how to go about fixing that...

Thanks again for all your feedback! It's really helpful

[chrisskinner]

Hey jomarie! This looks like a great start for a first time matte painter.

I've started working on my tropical city as well which is my first attempt at a matte painting. It's a lot harder than some people make it look I've settled on a simpler, face on perspective for the time being.

Have you read any of these 'making of' tutorials here:
http://forums.3dtotal.com/showthread.php?t=53574

They are defo worth a read. A couple of comments I have with your matte are

1. You have quite a few edges that look too soft, mainly where the land meets the water. Might be worth trying to use a smaller harder brush (not quite sure). Perhaps someone with a bit more experience could advise.

2. I'd watch your use of lens flares, they can be a dead give away of a photoshop render. I always find it useful to add a gaussian blur to them to soften them.

3. You need to start thinking about some kind of global illumination (if thats the right term for matte paintings). You have a strong light coming from back in the distance, so I'm guessing most of the buildings will have strong shadows on the side that the viewer can see.

Right, think I'll go and apply all these comments to my own painting now