Live brief

Matte painting

The first task given in this module is to create three matte paintings in Photoshop. We were shown three images, that we are to use as references for our work.

What is a matte painting?

A matte painting is made from combining several images, creating a new image that serves as a background. Matte paintings are an illusion of landscape or location in film. They can be created with traditional painting, or with digital drawing software like Photoshop, Procreate, Autodesk sketchbook etc.

Matte paintings are often used in film and television when the desired look is not possible to find on location in reality. Perhaps a fantasy scene with nature not like our own. But it is also often more economical and practical to create a matte painting, rather than creating a full physical set.

By using complementary colors, you can make the image more pleasing to the eye. Complementary colors are colors on the opposite end of the color spectrum. Yellow and purple, green and red and The colors can make a huge difference in the end.

Blade runner

Blade runner color palette

Images used

Color correcting

Final image

Color palette final image

Breakdown

Skyfall

Skyfall color palette

Images used

Final image

Color palette final image

Procreate Timelapse

Breakdown

Savannah

Savannah color palette

Images used

Final image

Color palette final image

Procreate Timelapse

Breakdown

Wall-E Live action reboot

In this module, the task was to create an environment that resembles that of the world Wall-E lives in. My group and I decided to use 3D and 2D elements in the project. I created the 3 room for this project.

Sketch

Moodboard and color palette

Trash and dirt
Matte painting
compositing
3d elements
Simulations
Maya
After effects

Concept art timelapse

Process

In this group project, I created a 3D model of a room. I used the sketch and concept art made by my teammate Rakel, for the style. I started off by blocking out the scene.

I then found myself a couple of window 3D assets online and modeled the rest in Maya. I created curtains by using the nCloth function in Maya and made tears in them to make them look old. I then added a camera in the scene to film from inside the room and towards the door opening.

After I finished with the modeling, I started to find textures I wanted to use for my 3D room at Quixel. I then took the textures into Maya's Hypershade and assigned textures to all the 3D objects. I put lights in at the end, and rendered out an Image sequence from the camera view.

Breakdown 3D room

Final video

My teammates created the sketches and concept art, matte painting and did the compositing for this project. I did the 3D part and was involved with the panning and creation of the moodboard.

Breakdown

The 3D bit was a bit challenging for me to work with to be honest. This was my first time creating a full 3D scene in Maya. I had hoped to do better for this project, as it did not turn out as good as I hoped. But I did learn quite a lot, and I want to become better at this type of work in the future.

Masterclass

Christmas advert

This project was about creating a christmas advert. It could be for a product, or anything christmas related. We were lucky, because we had Josh Parks helping us by giving us advice on our projects.

Advert ideas

For this first class, I presented 3 different ideas for my christmas advert. And I got feedback on which one I should go with.

Sketch 1

Moodboard and color palette

Sketch 2

Sketch 3

First sketch

I was originally going to choose the Coca Cola idea, but after getting feedback I chose to create a scene with the Norwegian julebrus (christmas soda) as my advert idea. I worked further on my sketch for this advert.

Then I got feedback again, and I was reminded that as this is mainly a 3D project, it will be a lot of work for 4 weeks. I then picked out some of the elements I liked, and drew a new sketch.

The background will be christmas lights decorating the houses. It will be a bit out of focus, as the focus will be on the 3D scene in the foreground. The 3D scene will have a glass bottle of julebrus resting in the snow. There will be a pile of snowballs with christmas lights going through it and wraps around the bottle. There will also be snowing in the scene.

Moodboard and color palette

Storyboard

Blocking

I started by blocking out my scene in Maya, to see where everything would be placed in the scene. And also how to place my camera. I sculpted on a plane to create the snow covered ground.

Modeling

I modeled all my objects for the scene and put them in place. I created the bottle by using the CV Curve Tool, drawing a bottle shape. I then filled the bottle with soda by duplicating the inside of the bottle.

I made a cord for my christmas lights wrapping around the bottle.

I sculpted the spheres a bit, so they would look more like snowballs, and not perfect spheres.

Texturing

I found a great texture for my snow at the Quixel website. And I created the actual soda from the orange juice preset for the aistandardsurface texture in Maya, just played around with it a bit.

I found a reference image of the christmas soda's label online, and I used it to draw a fitting label for my model. I assigned an texture containing the image to a chosen selected polygons of the bottle. I did this for both labels.

I used stability.ai to create a background for my project. It was quite an interesting tool.

Nuke

After finishing my 3D scene, I continued working in Nuke, putting it all together. I used green screen footage to create the snow. And I did a bit of color grading. Josh helped me quite a lot with the Nuke part of the project. I learned quite a lot from him. He helped me to understand how I could animate and control each individual light in Nuke, which was quite helpful.

Final Render

Breakdown

Challange

For this project, I wanted to have an object collide with the grass in the scene. I made a short animation of a ball rolling through the grass, and falling into a hole at the golf course. I find the interaction between the different objects in the scene fascinating.

I created a plane and made it paintable. I then used the paint function to paint grass onto the plane. I later animated a sphere, and made it so the grass and sphere collides with each other. I then made an alembic cache for my animation, and converted the paint effect into polygons.