oh the mind of a lazy professional

I would haver never thought of that Jay , what a brilliant solution (no UV mapping).

This scene is awesome.

Hey Si

This is lookig really good so far.

I'm going to be doing some sort of city scape soon so I might be mithering you with some texturing questions (that is if your not going to do what Jay said!

Cheers

Steve

---

"No pressure, no diamonds" Thomas Carlyle

You're off to a great start Si,

you're definately going for the Star Trek style future world rather than the Blade Runner look, a very impressive start.

Take it easy,

Mat.

jsprogg,

LOL, I think its something thats really overlooked, especially if you arent animating a scene of this size. Im busy with this type of work alot now, its a real time saver and the results can be stunning. Its a pity its not as useful for characters though LOL

If it was animated you could still reproject the painting back over it for a minor camera move, if its a big camera move then you could set up multiple projections with 2 or more mattes being projected from different angles. A lot less hassle than uving this lot.

Cheers
Jay

THX1138 - Yeah it has similarities with the bridge piece - must be my liking for scenes with big swooping bridges/roads

Jay - It will be a static shot but it never occurred to me that this would be good for a matte painting. Cheers for pointing that out Have you got any examples you've done that we can look at?
Might it be helpful to throw a basic grid texture on the buildings so you know the perspective angles or is that a bit of overkill if it's going to be a background layer in photoshop?
One other thing is - how do you render out just the reflections or shadows? I've heard it mentioned in lots of threads but have never seen ot tried it yet.

Jsprogg - neither would I, its great that professionals like jay are around to offer good advice

Steve - no probs, I might mix and match it a bit to start with till I get into the flow of matte painting (never really done it before but it looks great fun)

happymat27 - thanks It is definitely more of a 'utopian' shot. I've got some manga theme and influence running through the idea at present so it'll probably stay fairly clean.

---

Examples of bTraffic - a traffic animation tool for Maya
bFlocking - a tool for Maya 8.5+ to generate flocking and swarming behaviours
Jan/Feb Challenge 2007 Entry and W.I.P
May/Jun Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Mar/Apr Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Jan/Feb Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Nov/Dec Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Sep/Oct Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Jul/Aug Challenge 2005 Entry
www.flash-fx.net

Hey Si

If you want to just render the shadows then have a look at rendering layers, it depends on the version of maya you have but you basically set up layers (like you would for geo but as a render layer) you then add the geo that you want for each layer, (say you were doing a car on a background you would make 2 layers one with the car and one with the background) then you can either (depending on your version of maya) use the flag options (thats in the render layers control) to set what you want to render, beauty, diffuse, colour etc etc for each layer.

I dont think that theres an actual way to just get the reflections without making a 100% reflective material and rendering it as a new layer and then comping this over the top.

Cheers

Steve

---

"No pressure, no diamonds" Thomas Carlyle

Hey Si

Here you go. But this one is purely photoshop, no 3d anywhere.
Basically, I created the flat 2d shapes in PS using say a beige color, but of slighly different tones so I could work out where the light and shads were coming from and then for the textures used the blendmodes in the layers palette (screen, overlay or soft light) until I was happy with the way the texture was sitting, adjust the perspective as needed - Done!

I have got 3d mattes but Im afraid you cant see them until end of May (Outlaws Stuff)

Cheers
Jay

Heres a quick sample of how I did it. The same principles will apply in 3d but the shadows are done for you obviously. Depending on the texture and the color of the model you will most likely have to adjust certain things like brightness/contrast and even color to get the desired effect

I have some perspective grids if you want me to mail them to you.

Cheers
Jay

Thanks for the help guys, its definitely appreciated

Steve - thanks for explaning it, that makes it sound a lot simpler than what I had going around in my head

Jay - Nice work on the matte, its good to see how you have broken it down to get the end result. I'm looking forward to seeing the Outlaws work using this techinque. The perspective grids sound like just the thing, I'll pm you my email

Si

---

Examples of bTraffic - a traffic animation tool for Maya
bFlocking - a tool for Maya 8.5+ to generate flocking and swarming behaviours
Jan/Feb Challenge 2007 Entry and W.I.P
May/Jun Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Mar/Apr Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Jan/Feb Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Nov/Dec Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Sep/Oct Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Jul/Aug Challenge 2005 Entry
www.flash-fx.net

Si

No probs.

Just read what Steve said about render passes for reflection.

Just last night I fancied watching the making of Star Wars Episode 1 extras (making ofs etc.). In the deleted scenes section they show a waterfall sequence that was deleted from the film but then for about 10 mins show how it was put together. The guy who did it rendered out the submarine separately with a 100% reflective shader and nothing else. He then comped it in after and adjusted the opacity until he was happy with it. So it may help to break down scenes and save them off in pieces for different passes altogether as well.

The guy also show the shot from a completely different camera too, it was a real mess looking at it, but the actual shots were awsome. Oh and just to really piss you off, they used pouring salt for the water falls and shot those on black backgrounds and then comped that into the matte as well, particles were used but very sparingly just to add fluffy bits of spray.....none of this fluid lark, hey ho!! Easy when you know how,

Cheers
Jay

Hey Si

Another thing I do as well as rendering the seppreate passes for the basics (colour, shaddows, specular) ill create new scenes, say with occlusion, reflection and then render the lot using a .bat file that way you can get maya to render sepperate scenes, layers, passes etc that you cant get from the basic layer controls, which when compping gives a lot of control. The downside it that you need the computing power to do it as it tie's up a Pc for a while depending on how complex the scene is.

---

"No pressure, no diamonds" Thomas Carlyle

just got the DVD out and watched that sequence Jay, its great to see exactly how they went about it to get the different results that were needed. I wonder how long it took to get to the final scene

Cheers for the extra tips Steve, it sounds like you've done a fair bit of rendering separate layers in the past

I've just had a quick play and got these layers from the settings. It kind of makes more sense then when you take it into photoshop and start playing with the layer settings.
Dont know if they are right though or if I need to play about with excluding things like reflective/refractive things?

shadow (with backdrop left in):


diffuse:


color:


specular:

---

Examples of bTraffic - a traffic animation tool for Maya
bFlocking - a tool for Maya 8.5+ to generate flocking and swarming behaviours
Jan/Feb Challenge 2007 Entry and W.I.P
May/Jun Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Mar/Apr Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Jan/Feb Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Nov/Dec Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Sep/Oct Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Jul/Aug Challenge 2005 Entry
www.flash-fx.net

Si

Yup its getting there. I'd really watch that shadow pass, as you've got a very black building on the right there. Perhaps do a different light pass for the shads only so they are coming in from one direction perhaps from the right (just a thought) use raytraced shads with a directional light and try the settings for the shadows on Light Angle 20 and the Shadow Rays at 10 or 15.

It may look better for this with one side of the image slightly in shade too.

Ps. Render a Z depth pass too for distance and fog effect. This will give the whole image more scale. This pass is usually set to multiply in PS and then what I do is invert it.


Cheers
Jay

cheers jay
You're really helping me to understand this area of rendering. I guess it'll speed up subsequent work a heck of a lot when its all figured out.
I've just found the presets for the render layers (I'd been manually hacking away at options) and it gives far better results now. I'll try and get some up so you can have a better look. It's shown that the front right building is far too high specularly and like you say there is a building or two with shadow problems.

Si

---

Examples of bTraffic - a traffic animation tool for Maya
bFlocking - a tool for Maya 8.5+ to generate flocking and swarming behaviours
Jan/Feb Challenge 2007 Entry and W.I.P
May/Jun Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Mar/Apr Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Jan/Feb Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Nov/Dec Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Sep/Oct Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Jul/Aug Challenge 2005 Entry
www.flash-fx.net

here's a quick variant to the image after being rendered out in layers and photoshop'ed. Immediately it lets you play with the effects and help spot those problem areas

Jay: That building with the shadow/spec issue is still a default lambert shader whereas the rest have a generic shader on so that might be causing the problem.

I'm still not sure about what effects to use for each layer but this is what the following image has (as an experiment):

specular - color dodge
diffuse - soft light
ambient occlusion - normal
background - normal



Si

---

Examples of bTraffic - a traffic animation tool for Maya
bFlocking - a tool for Maya 8.5+ to generate flocking and swarming behaviours
Jan/Feb Challenge 2007 Entry and W.I.P
May/Jun Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Mar/Apr Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Jan/Feb Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Nov/Dec Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Sep/Oct Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Jul/Aug Challenge 2005 Entry
www.flash-fx.net