What is Matte Painting?

Matte painting is one of the oldest techniques in the visual effects industry and one of the most widely applied techniques as well. The concept of matte painting is simple: “Use one or few paintings to replace a background.” Although the concept is so simple, but the technique of matte painting is quite skillful and artistically demanding because the paintings used to replace background have to be realistic enough and support the film style so the audiences can think it’s a real background.

Blue Screen	Matte painting background This is one the most common vfx shots in film making. You shoot your actors in front of green or blue screen, then apply a single painting to the background. With this technique, you can make your film look like it was filmed anywhere around the world, even if the world doesn’t exist.
A 2D matte painting replacing the blue screen
The challenge of matte painting is when the camera is moving it’s position. After all, it’s just a flat 2D painting. If it’s a locked off shot then it’s easy to just put the painting in the background with the right amount of focus blur and it’ll look real. But when the camera starts moving, it will reveal that the environment is just a flat 2D painting. Even before vfx turned digital, there was a way to solve this problem. The artist (matte painter) will paint on layered glasses. The foreground of the painting will go on the glass that is in the front, the background will go on the glass in the back. This will provide parallax when the camera starts to move, making it feel 3D. Of course you still can’t rotate or move the camera too much. But for most shots that need environments, this is enough.
matte painting on layered glasses. Image from: http://www.digitalmattepaintinghandbook.com	shooting with matte painting on glass. Image from http://forum.cfsl.net/
Matte painting Environment As VFX moved into the digital age, the abilities of matte painting expanded. With 3D programs’ help, the camera movement can be more free. You can animate the camera flying through paintings in 3D software to create a helicopter fly-over shot with less trouble and cost. Instead of painting on glass, we can apply a technique called “camera projection” or “3D projection”. This technique allows artists to put their paintings in 3D software and create simple 3D geometry to match the shape of the environment. You can create as many 3D objects with paintings as you want and position them any place or position as you need to create the right parallax. Layered matte painting in 3D software. Image from: http://conceptartandmattepainting.blogspot.de/ What’s the different between using a matte painting in 3D software than just building a full 3D scene for your environment? Well, think about a realistic looking environment for a moment. There are thousands and millions of details. There might be a thousands of leafs just on one tree positioned in different ways and receiving light in different ways, imagine how many are needed for an entire tree covered mountain. Every window on a building all have a lot of different faces and they all receive light causing shadows in a different way. If you try to build these in 3D software, you will have to make all those details and light them well in order to look realistic. Of course the 3D software nowadays has a lot of functions that can help you achieve this easier. But it still takes a lot more work than a matte painter who manipulates photos in Photoshop to get the same details. It’s easier to control and fine tune the look, no endless render time, and you need only one matte painter rather than modelers, texture artists, lighting artists and render artists. This means faster, cheaper, and a better look for your film. Here are some video examples of applying matte painting to make digital environments. . For more examples please visit LightRay FX