This week, I researched pictures that I would use for my matte paintings in Photoshop to then implement the m in Nuke for my final comp. I also rendered again my scene from Maya with motion blur added.
Motion blur added in Maya render
I was not convinced about the way the render of the scene was looking, so I asked Marianna for help and advice. I explained that the image look too sharp and neat, and it did not look realistic at all as it was missing depth of field and some blur. Then she explained to me that in Maya I could really easily apply motion blur in my render settings (literally just need to tick an option), and Maya would add the motion blur and depth of field for me.
Matte paintings in Photoshop
For the sky matte painting, I took a sunset sky picture and using the ‘offset’ and the ‘stamp’ tools in Photoshop, I made an ‘infinite’ picture so the edge of this is not visible if applied in a sphere or a cylinder to recreate the environment background. The background mountains were made like this too, however, in the rest of the matte paintings I only removed the the sky of the pictures.
Compositing in Nuke and SFX in After Effects
In Nuke I added those matte paintings previously made in Photoshop. I added the sky as a sphere texture so it looks more realistic and has more sense of depth. The background mountains were added to a cylinder was they were going to surround the whole scene (as the camera movement rotates through all the scene, this needs to be visible from all the angles). The foreground mountain and the extra rainforest bits were added as projections to simple cards since they constitute small sections only so do not need curved surface. To give more depth to the scene, I added some highlights and shadows to the mountains using rotoscoping. Lastly, I decided to search a clip of a waterfall to add it to the back of the scene so the river position has sense and continuity. Since the cards of the waterfall were giving me problems as they would get in the middle of the camera movement and they would show were the should not, I set their lifetime until only farm 400 so they disappear after. I also had to colour correct the water if the waterfall to match the colour of the river and I also gave the sky an orange/yellow tone so it matches the sunset sky’s colour.