Contents

Day to Night Chapter 01

003

Sunshine to Snow Chapter 02

010

Storm Chapter 03
018

Fire and Smoke Chapter 04

024

Tips and Tricks Chapter 05

030

The base image that we

have used within this
tutorial series can be
found within the ‘Matte
Painting.zip’ folder
 Matte Painting Series Day to Night

Created In:
Photoshop

Greetings!
My name is Tiberius Viris and during the course
of this eBook I’m going to be showing you, over
a 5-part series, the basics of Matte Painting, as
well as some more advanced techniques.

The tutorials are aimed at beginners, as well

as those who already have some experience;
however, advanced knowledge of Photoshop is
required in both cases. If you are not familiar
with adjustment layers, layer masks or channels
(RGB), you should read about these topics prior
to starting this tutorial.

Introduction
We will begin the series with a very common
transformation: day-to-night. As a Junior Matte
Painter, you would be asked to do this task quite
often! It’s a method that seems easy at the first

glance, but in truth is a little more complicated.

When darkening an image this much, you must
What are we after?
I’m going to try to show you a good working
be wary of losing depth. You must still have
habit that can be applied anywhere – not just
enough levels to offer us decent details, and
in matte painting – which will save you a lot of
even depth. This means compressing all of the
time and nervousness. The key is to think and
daytime rules into a 4-times-smaller-brightness
plan your image! Sure, as artists we often tend
interval. However, there’s also upside to this,
to rush ahead under the heat of passion, but as
which is the fact that you can hide imperfections
professionals we should first learn how to tame
4-times easier!
that fire, and to make it last as long as we need
it to, especially when we work on big and long
Above you can see the before photo and the
term projects.
after result of what we’re going to be tackling in
this tutorial (Fig.01 and Fig.02). Note: in the
So, the first step is to think about what you
final image (Fig.02), there’s no pure black level
are after. See what you have and, more
in the image – not even close! If you want to get
importantly, what you don’t have. See what you
technical, there are 13 grey levels in difference
need to get for the project (maybe you have
between the lowest grey in the image and pure
to ask your team mates for a 3D render or a
black (out of a 256 levels reference).

www.2dartistmag.com page 4 Chapter 01

day to night Matte Painting Series

cloud formation). When you feel like you have
everything you need, plan your creation steps so
that you don’t work chaotically and lose precious
time.
In this case, we are after a day-to-night
transition. We have a raw photo (Fig.01)
which shouldn’t be altered too much in terms of
elements, so this is pretty straight-forward as far
as material is concerned. So let’s plan out the
creation steps. We will have to:
- adjust the colour values and brightness so
they match a nighttime scenario
- replace the sky
- create artificial light
- refine the atmosphere
- add details and final touches
and give it a nighttime mood. Note: since we
lose a lot of information by doing this, we must
be careful not to darken it too much so we
still retain enough detail! To do this, we must
alter the brightness, the colour values and the
saturation. This translates into 3 adjustment
layers:
- Levels: With this layer we will push the
brightness of the scene towards a dark grey,
this way we prevent any pixel becoming
brighter than that value (Fig.03).
- Colour Balance: Here we will adjust the
colours toward a more blue-cyan palette, to
match an American nighttime scenario. The
amount of each altered value depends from
scene to scene, so I can’t give you a recipe
here. Just play with it until it looks nighttime-
like. If you need to, you can also add a Curves
adjustment to define the mood, but we’ll talk
about this later on.
- Hue/Saturation: Here we will lower the
saturation of the image, because at nighttime

Basic Steps
In any matte painting, the key is to work with
many layers and use adjustment layers for
transformation in order to achieve a lot of
flexibility. By painting the layer’s mask, you
can select which areas to affect and you can
discard/modify any layer at any time.
To start with, we will have to darken the image

www.2dartistmag.com page 5 Chapter 01

 Matte Painting Series
we don’t see too much colour. Note that this levels adjustment which further narrows the
must be on top of the rest to work properly! brightness values) to create a darkening
(Fig.04) gradient over the sky towards the left and the
horizon, and I’ve also painted in some soft
After applying some of these basic layers, I shadows;
achieved the result in Fig.05. Notice how the - I’ve then increased the upper limit of the grey
sky is much brighter than the rest of the scene! values a little, because it felt too dark (this
So we have to options: either we darken it more translates into brighter highlights). I’ve done
than the rest of the scene, or we replace it. this in the original levels layer, which is why it’s
always good to use adjustment layers;
Let’s choose a moon to be somewhere to the - I’ve then created an extra curves adjustment
right of the sky, and out of the scene, like in the layer at this point in order to bring in cyan
original photo. values over the highlights (by going into
the red channel and pulling an anchor point
Before I go any further, I want to do some below the main linear function, this will cast
refining and define the light direction, because a complementary value over the image (cyan
the photo is too uniformly lit for my taste right is the complement of red, by the way)). I
now. For this: always use Curves and Color Balance to
- I’ve created a shadow layer (another create moods because, from my experience, it
creates better results than by using just one of
them (Fig.06).
When this was done I replaced the sky with
a more interesting and suitable one. For this
photo it was very easy to replace the sky with
the help of the Magic Wand, because the sky
www.2dartistmag.com page 6
Day to Night
from the original photo was clear blue and the
rest of the picture had no blue values. So all I
had to do was to make a selection of the sky,
invert it, and then fill it with a black value into the
new sky’s mask.
Sometimes, you may get a more stubborn sky
and then you’ll have to put in more effort to
select it. From case to case, the most common
methods are channel extraction or lasso
selection (note: the final part of this series will
present some extraction methods) (Fig.07).
I also adjusted the depth as the image was too
dark in the distance.
All in all, this covers the basic steps which
define the overall mood and colour palette.
From now on, the work focuses on details that
will bring life and realism to the image!
Artificial Light
It might be just an old castle, but at night
residents and visitors must be able to see
inside it, right? Except in those cases when the
Director specifically wants no light from within,
Chapter 01
day to night Matte Painting Series
the next step in a day-to-night process is to add
artificial light. This is a somewhat tricky step
because you have to plan those lights. Firstly,
you have to place them in places where one
would expect to see them, such as on wall
sections, in halls, door entrances, windows and
so on. Secondly, you have to be careful not to
www.2dartistmag.com
ruin the composition! Sure, a torch on a wall
is realistic enough, but what if that wall is also
hit by moonlight? So we need a compromise
between artistic and real.
The light we use for this task is usually yellow-
orange, and is the complementary colour of the
page 7
overall blue-cyan mood, which pleases the eye.
There are several techniques to create this type
of light, but I’ll present the fastest and simplest.
Duplicate the original layer (the raw photo),
then move in on top of everything. Apply a fiery
colour balance transformation to it (Fig.08) then
apply a negative mask so that it’s invisible. With
a soft round brush, start to paint in the part you
want to be seen (the pool of lights).
This is what I’ve started to do and here’s the
result after adding a light to a behind wall
section (Fig.09).
Now, this massive and old castle has a lot of
windows, but, if lit, most of them would just ruin
that old, ancient feel. The towers are already
being lit by moonlight, so they are not an option,
and the wall section already defines the centre.
It’s a tough choice! So let’s light a window in the
left top tower which will contrast with the dark
sky and show the thick, foggy atmosphere, and
we’ll also add another smaller one to the lower
left in order to lead the eye. Story-wise, the top-
lit window can imply that maybe there’s a leader
or a wizard reading old books at night! (Fig.10)
Chapter 01
Good, well I think this does it for now with
artificial light. You can go further and try to
bring more light in, but I’ll stop here and let you
experiment for yourselves. Be careful though,
since we have such a bright moon you should
not overdo it or you’ll ruin the whole mood!

Do you feel creative?

At this moment, some may call the image done
and go for final adjustments, but how about a
little creativity? This is the step where you bring
that little extra spice – the details that complete
the image!

For this piece, I’m simply going to paint some

low mist over that moat/river which is being lit
slightly by the moon light. It also adds to the
general mood and explains why the atmosphere
is so thick.

Then, to finish it off, I’m going to paint in some

haze, especially over distant parts of the castle
(to do this we just make a new layer, colour
pick the value and lightly paint over those
areas. This adds to the mood and helps to sell
the image. The final result can be seen here
(Fig.11).

I hope this has been of some help to you!

Sunshine To Snow Part 2 of 6

Created In:
Photoshop

Introduction
Greetings, and welcome to the second chapter
of our matte painting tutorial series!

We will continue with another common

transformation: season change. Specifically,
this chapter, we’ll be turning our base image
into a winter scene. This time you will see that
things are getting a little bit more challenging!
While the process itself is not hard, the difficult
part is in finding the right shapes, shades and
places for the now, as well as finding a cool
(literally) yet still realistic colour palette.

From Fig.01 you can see the ‘before’ and ‘after’

results of what we’re going to do!

What are we after?

So this time, we are after a winter scene. We
have again the same raw photo which, as
you can see, was taken most likely during information of what’s behind them and we can’t

the summer, and we want to see how it will recreate that information from other parts of the

look 6 months later... The problem with this image (remember we are not allowed to change

photo is that it’s full of green trees that will lose architecture, so no clone stamp, okay?!). This

their leaves in winter; however, we have no case is perfect tutorial material, because we will
do more than just the average summer to winter;
we will see how to get a little creative, even if
limited by certain restrictions!

So let’s see what we are supposed to do. Let’s

say we have two major restrictions:
1 We must not make major alterations to the
castle architecture;
2 We should keep the size and placement of all
the major elements (such as the river, position
of the trees, etc.)

So with all this in mind, I’ll start by planning the

steps (as I showed you last month):

www.2dartistmag.com page 11 Chapter 02


- Firstly, I should begin by changing the colour
palette into a colder and less saturated one. I
also want to reduce contrast.
- Right from the beginning I decide to “move”
this castle to somewhere in the mountains,
which will contribute to the overall cold
feel and will give more depth. So for the
next step, I want to replace the sky and the
background and add in some nice peaks. I
also want to remove the big, left foreground
tree at this point.
- Then I should consider recreating the
mid-areas, especially the group of trees from
the left and right of the castle. I should also
connect these areas with the background,
probably with an in-between forest and some
mist. This is a process often referred to as
“surgery”.
- Then it’s time to adjust the front lake/river;
give it a frosty look, paint some snow over
it, and then paint some snow infront of the
castle.
- When all this is done we should start
painting in the snow on the castle itself;
firstly on the basic parts, then onto the more
obscure/hidden parts.
www.2dartistmag.com
Part 2 of 6
- After I’m done with the snow painting I
should refine the atmosphere and light. From
the very beginning I don’t like that the original
plate is so uniformly lit, so I want to change
that.
Basic steps
As I told you before, everything begins with
the preparation of our working area. In this
case we are going for a cold atmosphere,
yet not too overcast, so we must do a series
of adjustments, amongst which will involve
reducing the contrast and desaturating and
moving the hues towards colder values, like
cyan and blue.
Depending on your base image, it might
take some time to create the proper feel so
have patience and experiment with various
page 12
Sunshine to snow
adjustment layers. There’s no recipe for
this, but I’ll try to point out the most important
changes that you should make:
1 Reduce the Saturation and Contrast
This is usually done with a Hue/Saturation
adjustment layer; in our case I’ve used -26 for
Saturation (see Fig.02) and I’ve also slightly
increased the brightness. You can also use this
layer to shift the hues a little, but don’t go too
wild – a plus/minus 4 maximum will do! As for
reducing the contrast, there are tonnes of ways
of doing this, amongst which using a Curves
adjustment layer (as I showed you last month),
using a brightness/contrast layer and reducing
the contrast (not as accurate as Levels/Curves),
using layer transitions, and so on (please see
last month’s tutorial part of this series which will
explain and detail most of this for you!) (Fig.02)
Chapter 02
Sunshine To Snow Part 2 of 6
2 Move the Hues Towards Colder Values
This is generally done with a Color Balance
adjustment layer using a combination of Cyan/
Blue sliders where needed. The amount and
side depends on the hues of your base image.
In Fig.03 you can see my values for the shadow
part. Note that the values are quite small, but
they produce very visible effects so don’t go too
wild. Also note that while this effect is applied to
the entire image; it alters the hue by keeping the
contrast with its neighbours, which means that
for low values the effect is subtle and suitable
for in-detail hue changes. Don’t forget that
if you have more areas which need different
adjustments you can use several layers and
paint into their mask! (Fig.03)
3 Change the Overall Mood with a Curves
Adjustment Layer.
Just like before, we will use the red channel to
pull levels towards Cyan. Some people prefer to
use just Color Balance, whilst others will tell you
anything but Curves is wrong! However, as I
told you last month, I have found that using both
(with smaller intensities) produces much better
results. In the end, it doesn’t matter what tool
you use as long as you produce good results, so
feel free to experiment! (Fig.04)
www.2dartistmag.com
After applying all the changes I ended up with
what you can see in Fig.05. It doesn’t seem
very “cold”, but that’s just because there’s a
lot of greenery in the scene which affects the
overall mood. However, if you look at the
original image you’ll see the difference!
Changing the
Background
Luckily for us, the original image has a clear
sky so changing the background should be
page 13
pretty easy! First of all, find a nice mountain
stock image that suits the image and also which
doesn’t load the image too much. We already
have a lot of positive space so we need as much
sky as possible to compensate.
The general process of replacing the
background involves the following steps:
creating a mask for the new background layer,
selecting the sky (and other areas you want to
replace) from the original layer, and finally going
into the mask, inverting the selection and filling it
with black (which will render those parts invisible
while keeping the rest of the layer). In Fig.06
you can see an example of how a mask looks.
What is more or less difficult, depending on the
base image, is the extraction of the area(s).
There are several methods to do this:
- In our case, which is one of the simplest, we
can simply use the Magic Wand tool to quickly
select the sky.
- Moderate problems arrive when the area
you want to replace has many ungrouped hue
values, or, on the contrary, the whole image
has shades of the same hue (think of sepia)
and/or the separation edge contains many
small details (like a tree, for instance). In this
Chapter 02

case the most common method is channel
extraction, generally using the Blue channel
which has the best contrast (please see the
advanced techniques in the last part of the
series!).
- Lastly, the hardest cases are those which
combine all of the above and, in addition,
have also about the same brightness levels,
or their distribution is random. These require
hand work, combining the Lasso tool with
painting into their mask.
Here’s what I got after roughly replacing the
background (Fig.07).
Adjusting the
Middle Ground &
Foreground
Now that we have moved the castle it’s time to
adjust the rest of the elements to fit their new
location, and we will start by recreating the left
middle ground part, which was in the original
photo behind the big tree in the foreground.
Since we don’t know exactly what was there,
we have a lot of freedom for this step (unless
www.2dartistmag.com
Part 2 of 6 Sunshine to snow
we are given specific instructions, of course), so a better idea if I’m on the right path and to spot
it’s up to you to choose what to place in there. any flaws (Fig.09).
For this tutorial, I’ve decided to replace this part
with some pine trees, obviously covered by Finally, we get to adjust the water in order to
snow. The fastest way to do this is to find a nice give it a frosty, cold look. What contributes
stock photo; it doesn’t have to be a full forest – 2 the most to this effect is a drastic desaturation
trees are enough! You can then duplicate them and some snow painting on the places where
all around and modify their edges for variety.
However, do pay attention to the scale! In this
image, one of those front towers has the height
of a 2-3 story building, so the pine trees should
be scaled accordingly.
Once I did this, I felt the need to connect the
group of trees with the distant mountain for
more natural depth. This was done by adding a
distant forest in-between and painting some mist
over it to help integration. I’ve also enhanced
the mist at this point by adding more details
(Fig.08).
It was then time to powder some snow over the
2 trees inside the castle, to match the rest of the
scene. This was done with a hard round brush
with a scattering effect. In the end, I’ve roughly
painted some snow infront of the castle to have
page 14 Chapter 02
Sunshine To Snow Part 2 of 6
the lake meets the shore. Don’t forget about
reflections! Now that it’s frosted in places it will
reflect much more details than in the original
(Fig.10).
Starting to Look
Cold...?
One thing that I don’t like at this point, which is a
heritage from the original photo, is the fact that
the whole image is quite uniformly lit. There’s
nothing wrong with that, in terms of realism,
but since the subject is so big and centred the
eye gets lost in the image. One way to correct
this, at least partially, is to create a gradually
increasing brightness from left to right, but we’ll
address this later.
Painting the Snow
At last, we get to take care of our castle, too.
For some, this might prove a boring step
because it involves a lot of thinking and detail
painting. You have to go in and check every
spot where snow would naturally fall. A high
www.2dartistmag.com
quality original will help the process a lot.
When painting snow use a rough brush to
create irregular shapes. Choose two colours;
one for the regular snow (a white) and one for
the shadowed parts (a grey or a slightly blue-
tinted white). Painting snow involves working
alternatively with these two colours.
In Fig.11 you can see a suggested palette for
painting snow and ice with realistic shades (not
too saturated).
Begin by adding snow on the edges and small
parts where the snow would naturally fall. Then
move onto the roofs and bigger areas (always
do this afterwards because it will be easier to
spot details before you do it). The hardest part
of this process is to think about how the snow
would actually look on the structure and not just
to mindlessly spray it everywhere. If in doubt,
reference photos will help! Don’t be ashamed
to type ‘castle in winter’ into Google and look at
some photos.
page 15
Don’t forget to paint in at least 1.5 times higher
resolution - double resolution is recommended!
Here’s a close-up of the painting, in Fig.12.
In the end, this is what I got (Fig.13).
Refining the
Atmosphere
Finally, when we have everything ready, it’s time
to create that gradual transition I was talking
about. Using two Levels adjustment layers
– one that makes everything darker and one
that makes everything brighter – I’ve painted
in (using their mask) shadows and highlights
to break the monotony and make the image
more interesting – darker to the left, brighter to
the right. I’ve also moved the highlights a little
towards yellow to match the sun’s natural colour
for this kind of setting. In the end, this is what I
got (Fig.14).
I hope this has been helpful! See you in the
next part of the series!
Chapter 02
storm Matte Painting Series
Created In:
Adobe Photoshop
Introduction
Greetings and welcome to the third chapter of
our matte painting tutorial series! This chapter
we will continue with the process of turning a
specific summer’s day scene into a stormy one.
This is usually a smooth process that combines
all the basic techniques you’ve learnt before, in
Chapter One and Two of this tutorial series, and
in this chapter I will teach you how to handle
unwanted shadows – something we deliberately
avoided before!
Here you can see the before and after result of
what we’re going to do (Fig.01).
What are we after?
We start off with the same raw photo, which you
should now be pretty familiar with, and we want
to bring a storm into our scene...
To start with, there are two kinds of ways to
portray a heavy storm (well there are more
www.2dartistmag.com
actually, but let’s say two for the sake of this
tutorial to keep things simple):
- The ‘Artistic’ Way: This is a very popular
type that you’ve probably seen lots of times
before, where you have a dark and distressful
mood (sometimes a little brownish!)
- The ‘Realistic’ Way: In matte painting, we’re
less concerned by artistic impression and
‘how nice it looks’, and more about mimicking
photographic reality. Real storms usually have
grey overcast skies with desaturated moods,
occasionally with small tints of green and cyan
(when the storm is extra heavy).
As I mentioned earlier, the process for this matte
painting is fairly smooth, and it involves the
following steps:
page 19
- First of all(probably the most delicate step),
we need to remove any hard-edged shadows
(if any) from the original image/frame. When
we have an overcast scenario, there is little
shadow information, and even that is diffused
and scattered (at the point of which objects may
start to look flat!);
- We need to achieve the right sky for the scene;
- We need to bring in our new sky (using the
masking techniques you’ve seen in the previous
parts of this tutorial series);
- We need to match the new sky with the Color/
Saturation for the rest of the scene;
- We need to match up the lighting;
- We need to adjust the Color/Saturation of the
scene, according to the type of storm we wish
to portray;
Chapter 03
 Matte Painting Series storm
- Finally, we need to add details, such as
raindrops. Important note: As static details
these are illustrative elements only! In a film,
these would not be done on the matte itself, but
via compositing). However, I’ll add them to this
image to demonstrate the process, as if this was
a frame of certain footage.

Removing Unwanted
Shadows
In the image above, I’ve circled a couple of
hard-edged shadows that are the result of a
bright and clear sky. When cloudy, the light
source (the Sun) is covered and the light is
diffused so much that you can barely make
out a difference between the shadows and the
rest. Therefore, the first step in the process is to
make sure that your scene matches an overcast
scenario. Important note: This translates into
removing hard edges and reducing the contrast
(not overall, but local) (Fig.02).

There are many ways to do this, and, unless

you’re new to Photoshop, you should be familiar
with all the tools they involve. Often you will

have to use a combination of these methods to
reach the desired effect.
- Select the shadows (using the Color Range
tool, for instance) and use a Levels adjustment
layer to brighten them until they match the
highlights. Effect: reduces contrast
- Select the shadows and duplicate them in
Screen mode. Effect: reduces contrast
- If the local area around the shadow doesn’t
hold too much texture information you can use
the Smudge tool (with care!) to blend the colours
and edges. Effect: removes hard edges and
possibly reduces contrast
- You can also use the Dodge tool (with care –
don’t overdo it!) to brighten up certain shadows
- Alternatively, if you want to keep texture
information over a uniform object (such as a
wall) you can use the Clone Stamp tool, set to
Pen Pressure, to lightly overlay highlighted parts
over the shadows. Effect: reduces contrast
and (depending on how well you’ve used it)
removes hard edges.
- You can also use a Levels adjustment layer
and paint into its mask so it affects just the
shadows. Effect: reduces contrast
Here’s an example of a before and after
(Fig.03).

www.2dartistmag.com page 20 Chapter 03

storm Matte Painting Series
Preparing and Adding
the New Sky
Obviously, we need an overcast and cloudy sky
for our scene. You can sample it from a single
source, but it’s usually a good idea too combine
several sources for a more dramatic effect.

In my case, I’ve combined 3 different sources,

as well as painting over, to assure proper
lighting and blending. I’ve then brought it in
using the masking technique, which I’ve shown
you in previous parts of this tutorial series
(Fig.04).

Matching the Scene

Now we need to tone down the rest of the scene
to match both the sky and the scenario. We
will have to bring down the saturation and also
darken it. We will bring down the saturation
using a Hue/Saturation layer (Fig.05) and we’ll
darken it using two identical Levels layers, half
valued (Fig.06). The result of just one of the
Levels layers can be seen here (Fig.07).
The reason I used two layers is because I
wanted to simulate hints of light passing through
the clouds by painting in the second one’s Finally, we adjust the entire scene by slightly further into compositing you should add more
mask, and I thought this would give me better changing the colour tones, using a Color dynamic grain to darker areas). To add noise,
control. The result of both layers can be seen Balance layer on top of everything set to Green go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise and use a
here (Fig.08). +5 and Cyan +3. This way, all the elements slightly lower value than that of the sky (Fig.09).
nicely blend in.
We should also take care at this point of small
Another important thing is to match the grain of depth details, such as painting haze over the
the land with that of the sky (and also, if you go distant hills (Fig.10).

www.2dartistmag.com page 21 Chapter 03

Final Steps
Although this is not a matte painting part and is
more of an illustrative element, we can also add
rain to enhance the feeling of our scene. The
fastest way to do this is to create a new layer
and fill it with black. Then, using the same noise
filter with a value of 15-20, add some noise to
the scene. Finally, use the Filter > Blur > Motion
Blur to simulate rain drops from the noise. Set
this layer mode to Screen and you’re done!

Here is what I got in the end (Fig.11).

I hope this part of the tutorial has helped and will
help you with your own matte painting projects.
I’ll see you in the next part of the series!
fire and smoke Matte Painting Series

Created In:
Adobe Photoshop

Introduction
Greetings and welcome to the fourth chapter of
our matte painting tutorial series! This chapter
we will tackle some pyro effects as we will try to
set our nice castle on fire. What?! Well, at least
we’re not doing it for real!

I must say from the beginning that fire and

smoke have an illustrative character and are
not the subject of classical matte paintings,
which are supposed to be “invisible art” and not
contain any moving elements, such as smoke,
water and birds, etc. (which are later added
to the live plate by means of compositing!).
However, as before, we will assume that this is
an establishing shot or an illustration of some
sort and carry on tackling this brief. So here we
go!

In images Fig.01 and Fig.02 you can see the

before and after results of what we’re going to
do.
1. What are we after?
So we’ve had our castle face winter, storms
and creepy nights so far, and somehow it has
survived them all… Now, let’s see how it will
handle fire! *evil laugh* We will assume that
some heavy explosion occurred just 15 minutes
ago in the upper part of the castle. So, with
that in mind, in this part we will focus less on
adjusting the rest of the scene and more on how
to create the pyro effects and how to think them
through.
2. Scene Preparation
As I mentioned at the beginning of this article,
we will consider this to be an illustrative
piece. Therefore it is very important to sell the
subject using appropriate moods and lighting
to emphasise the feeling. For this very reason
I chose to replace the sky with an overcast
one, in order to bring more heaviness upon the
scene.

The process of replacing the sky by using a

mask is the same as in all the previous parts
(see back issues 026, 027 and 028), and you
will see it again in the final part of this tutorial

www.2dartistmag.com page 25 Chapter 04


which is going to focus on these techniques, so
I won’t go into too much detail with this again
here. Also, the first steps are similar to the
ones we took in Part 3: Storm, and imply a little
desaturation and darkening of the highlights
(Fig.03).
Next we will break the monotony of the
highlights in the original photo by creating
scarce cloud shadows, which is yet another way
to do this. We will simulate such random cast
shadows by painting into the mask of a solid
Color layer with a fairly dark colour set to about
65% opacity (Fig.04). Note that, because the
distance between clouds and land is relatively
high, the shadows cast are always going to be
blurry and rather diffused. If the clouds are quite
small or the sun manages to peak through, you
will see those typical cloud shadowed areas on
the land.
You can control the shadow intensity by various
means, like a grey shade used in the mask,
overall opacity value or transfer mode, but
pay attention never to exceed the 60-70% of
the value of direct shadows (which you can
reference from the original photo). For our
www.2dartistmag.com
Matte Painting Series Fire and smoke
scene I chose a pretty light and diffused shadow
for more subtlety (Fig.05).
3. Let it Burn!
Fire and smoke have always been considered
pretty tough elements to paint if you’re aiming
for realism in your work. In matte painting you
have the optional choice to find a stock that
fits your needs (although these are rare!), or to
use a smoke/gas simulation software (but the
result is not so good sometimes). However,
shockingly enough, we won’t talk about these
here. Instead, I’m going to show you how you
can paint realistic smoke using custom brushes
and some good old thinking!
4. Creating the Brush
When creating the custom brush we have to of view and that affects the expansion pattern
consider the various smoke properties and and speed. Smoke “dissolves” a lot faster than
think how they can be translated into brush a cloud. Another important difference is that
properties. The most important aspects that smoke is generated, hence it’s thicker near the
should be taken into account are shape, opacity source and breaks up as it goes farther.
and variation.
Brush Parameters: Shape – Smoke has
General considerations: Although smoke has a typical shape with irregular edges and
a structure that resembles cloud formation, its resembles cloud structure. The basic brush
composition is different from a chemical point shape can be sampled from an existing cloud
page 26 Chapter 04
fire and smoke Matte Painting Series
texture – almost any would do. The element
should be around 120-200 pixels big. Here you
can find an example, please feel free to use it if
you wish (Fig.06).
Shape dynamics – Smoke tends to gather in
‘groups’ of various sizes, which dissolve faster
or slower depending on their densities and
composition. We can mimic this by using a
shape dynamics modifier set to Pen Pressure
(Fig.07).
Scattering – This completes the above effect
by scattering around the groups within a certain
limit. Use both axes at about 120-130%.
Color dynamics – This assures a variation in
shades. Apply a darker colour to the foreground
and a lighter one to the background, and then
set the foreground/background jitter to around
30% (Fig.08).
www.2dartistmag.com
Other Dynamics – Finally, we also have to
simulate the gaseous nature. The smoke
is thicker if the density is higher, and it gets
less opaque as the volume increases and the
particles scatter around. We will set the Flow
Jitter to ‘Pen Pressure’ and that should do it. If
you need better control for some areas you can
also set the Opacity Jitter to Pen Pressure.
5. Applying the Brush
Now that we have our brush we can go ahead
and paint the fire and smoke. Because fire will
be painted in the same manner, I usually start
with the smoke, but if it helps you to visualise
better you can start with a quick fire placeholder
– your choice!
Before starting it’s good to take into
consideration wind direction and speed because
it affects the way smoke evolves, how fast it
page 27
dissolves and its trajectory. Most of the time,
considering a good smoke source and the
strongest wind, the farthest smoke reaches
without dissolving too much, which translates
into a smaller occupied volume and higher
density (aka higher opacity). In opposition
to this, when there’s almost no wind, smoke
evolves on a vertical trajectory and expands
fast, reaching big volumes in the upper parts
with lower densities.
If the scene already has a predefined wind
(either from a story or existing elements), you
should be consistent with it, otherwise pick one
before starting and try to stay with it. Having the
custom brush and all these in mind you can now
start creating the smoke!
Since this is not a video tutorial I am very limited
to what I can show you, but I can at least guide
you through the process. It is important to be
patient and to not expect immediate results,
as this is a long and tedious process that often
requires plenty of trial and error. Like with any
painting, you should start by blocking down the
basic shape of the smoke with a neutral colour.
At this point you are after two things: shape
and opacity. Take your time refining them as it
will be harder to do this later on! I have made
a quick example to show you what I mean
(Fig.09), but normally you would want to spend
more time on this.
The next step is to lock the layer (including
opacity) and start adding different shades.
Chapter 04
For the beginning choose only two – one for
highlights and one for shadows, which should of
course match your scene’s lightning scenario as
well as smoke composition. Use fairly big sizes
for the brush at this point (Fig.10).

After you lay down the basic shading you can

then get into the details (paint with smaller
sizes) and additional shades. Remember:
lighter shades on the parts exposed to light,
darker shades in shadows and near the fire
source. Again, don’t expect immediate results;
keep doing this until you’re satisfied. You can
also pick slightly coloured smoke – it doesn’t
have to be greyish and it will depend on your
scene.
For this image it took me about 1-2 hours to
paint the smoke. You can see the result here
(Fig.11).

Fire is very simple to paint if you start with the

smoke. The fastest and easiest trick is to pick
a middle-toned orange, set the brush transfer
mode to Color dodge and paint over the smoke.
Or, use an extra layer and set it to Color dodge
transfer mode. The latter offers you better
control as you can later apply filters to just the
fire alone, without affecting the smoke. With
smoke, it takes a while to achieve the desired
effect so be patient and experiment!

6. Final Steps
You can enhance your smoke by adding subtle
motion blur to it; this can often add a great
deal of realism as smoke tends to evolve a
bit faster than the camera shutter, plus it’s a
moving element. For this, use Filters > Blur >
Motion Blur and choose the direction of your
smoke. The intensity should be around 10-15,
depending on the size.

I hope this helps. See you in the next part of the

series!
Matte Painting Tips & Tricks
Created In:
Photoshop
Introduction
Here we are at the end of this series, which I
really do hope you have enjoyed. During the
last four chapter we’ve walked together through
the process of some basic matte painting
techniques, namely day-to-night (Part 1),
summer-to-winter (Part 2), sunny-to-storm (Part
3) and fire and smoke effects (Part 4). You’ve
seen how Photoshop can be a great tool and
how, with only an average knowledge of it, you
can achieve some pretty nice effects!
Shockingly enough, at the end of this series, I
come to tell you that matte painting isn’t actually
just about Photoshop, and all that I have shown
you has just been basics which are meant
to give you a taste and to get your attention.
You are now standing at the beginning of a
wonderful road, but you must know that matte
painting is much more than photo manipulation
www.2dartistmag.com
and, as the name suggests, involves a lot of
art theory and real world understanding, too!
That’s why now, in this last part, we will try to
understand such aspects and see what matte
painting really stands for! So here we go…
1. Origins
Matte painting is all about mimicking
photography. We don’t try to reproduce how the
human eye sees the environments but rather
how the camera captures them.
Traditional matte painting was developed
initially around 1959 for the movies and was
done optically, by painting (literally) on top of a
page 31
piece of glass to be composited with the original
footage – hence the name “matte painting”
(painting done on glass with a mask = matte).
Nowadays, digital matte painting is less about
painting and more about virtual set creation,
yet it retains its old name because it shares the
same goal with its grandfather.
Matte painted scenes are used widely for any
kind of application that requires a virtual set.
But, of course, movies are still where they
are used the most; the goal being to produce
realistic environments (sets) where actors can
perform naturally, as if they were really there.
2. Playing by the Rules
All the rules from traditional art are transferred
here and, in addition, a matte painter has the
difficult task of making everything photorealistic.
There are several elements that “tell” the eye
he’s watching something that exists (even if it
doesn’t):
Depth: This is the natural progression of
colours and focus that you see in nature. In
the distance, elements have less saturation
and contrast and details are harder to spot.
In the extreme distance you will only notice
two shades (highlights and shadows), while
Chapter 05

the objects tend to have a bluish tone, due to
the heavy atmosphere filtering. On the other
hand, the foreground (meaning the objects that
are close to you) has normal saturation and
contrast, full black levels and you can see all the
details in them.
Lighting: While this is obvious in nature, one has
to be careful when creating a matte painting so
that all the highlights and shadows match the
source light and direction.
Scale: Again, it’s very important to match the
scale of every element. You don’t want a tree
to be as tall as mountain, even if it might sound
cool in a fantasy setting!
3. Depth
I. In Real World
Depth, or better said “the way an object behaves
with distance”, is one of the most essential
aspects of realism. This includes two sub-
aspects:
1 - how sharpness is affected;
2 - how colour and contrast recedes/fades
www.2dartistmag.com
The first one is of less importance for us (but not
unimportant!). It’s the classic photographic depth
of field; whereas, on normal shutter settings,
objects that are farther away are blurred. How
much or how less varies from scene to scene.
The second one is more delicate and it’s the
main issue we are interested in. (Fig.01a and
Fig.01b)
In a normally lit environment, the objects in the
foreground have a high contrast, high levels
of black and high saturation, while the objects
in the distance tend to fade towards the colour
of the atmosphere because there’s more “air”
between our eye and them, which acts as a
filter and only lets certain light frequencies pass
through (light is an electromagnetic wave, by
the way!). This translates into low contrast, high
brightness and low saturation. You’ll tend to
know this effect as “haze”.
Take a look again at the following image
and see the explanations. Of course, this
is something that applies to Earth and our
atmospheric observation. If you create an alien
page 32
Tips & Tricks Matte Painting
world matte painting then take into consideration
how atmosphere behaves there when deciding
upon how much haze you should have.(Fig.02)
II. Mimic
Creating haze is quite easy, and there are many
ways to do it. Out of these ways, two seem to
suit almost every situation:
1 - If you have many different layers (e.g. a layer
for a left mountain, another for the mid one, and
another for the far right cliff, etc.), which is the
best way to work? Simply select each layer and
apply a solid colour adjustment layer on top.
Choose the colour of the sky (use the colour
picker – it’s the fastest way to do it!) and reduce
the opacity according to the distance. (E.g. for
a very distant mountain you may use 50-60%,
but for a mid one you might use 20-30%.) Don’t
forget to link this solid layer to the layer that you
wish to affect, otherwise it will affect everything!
(Press Alt & click between the layers) (Fig.03).
2 - If you don’t have everything on its own
layer then it’s time to clean your tablet and
Chapter 05
Matte Painting Tips & Tricks
start painting haze. Use a soft-edged, round
brush, set to pen pressure on both opacity and
fading, and gently paint haze, more onto distant
elements and less onto close ones. Use a layer
mask to brush out if you paint too much. As
before, choose a colour for the sky using the
colour picker and try to paint evenly.
Regardless of the method you use, you may
also want to adjust the individual levels if they
still don’t fit, even after the haze. For that, use a
Levels adjustment layer beneath the solid one
and slightly, ever so slightly, move the black
levels towards the right, or the white levels
towards the left as you need to – less shadow
intensity or less highlight intensity.
4. Scale
I. Real World
Scale seems natural and quite a trivial thing for
many people. Yet, together with perspective, it’s
the main source of errors for many new artists
(and not only them!). It is important to have a
good understanding of these aspects because,
www.2dartistmag.com
together with depth, they are the main elements
which create the illusion of distance. The
human eye and the brain relate to objects in the
scene versus already known sizes in order to
determine how big another one is (or in our case
to spot errors). It’s all contextual and relative.
For instance, we all know how big an average
house is from our daily life experience. Seeing
it in an image next to a pine tree which is half
as small and with no other reference objects
around it, would make us believe the pine tree
is still young (because we know an adult pine
tree should be much bigger). However, take the
same house and put it next to a whole forest
which isn’t taller than half of the house, and
you’d know something was out of whack! Which
one is wrong – forest or house – will depend on
the other elements that are in the scene. See
Fig.04 for an example (which is exaggerated for
the purpose of the example).
II. Mimic
Obviously, making the right scale is easy,
tools-wise. Simply use the Transform tool to
page 33
scale down. It’s a good idea to have the object
rendered very big and scale it down, rather than
scale it up, and paint to compensate for lost
quality. The trick is to choose the right scale.
Look around the area where you want to place
the object, see what else is there and then scale
it in relation to the surrounding objects.
5. Perspective
When it comes to matte paintings, the most
common error you see is that of the angle of
views. Because, with this technique, the artist
uses samples and objects from many different
sources, so it is important that all of them share
the (almost) same perspective.
The second aspect of perspective is that of
camera distortion. Because we try to mimic
photography and not the real world, we should
“copy” the way camera lenses affect an image.
Finally, a matte painting may be required to
have unusual perspectives, like 1-, 2- or 3-point
perspective, or special ones like cycloramas
(take a look at Star Wars Cyclorama matte
paintings – those made public anyway!).
To achieve all of this, you have to plan your
elements well and use your references wisely.
Don’t torture your photograph by stretching it
until it breaks – you won’t solve anything with
that! Instead, try to paint and imply the right
perspective; use another reference or make a
3D object and pose it at the right angle.
6. Light
I. Real World
Last but not least, another important element of
a successful matte painting is light – that is the
way objects are illuminated and shadows form;
something that is so natural, yet, as before, can
also be a great source of errors!
Light can be your friend, but also your
enemy. Use it properly and it can make your
scene dramatic, while at the same time hide
imperfections (in fact this is the main ‘trick’
Chapter 05

used by matte painters – hiding imperfections
in shadow or mist). Use it improperly and it will
destroy your scene!
The main mistake that you can see among
new artists is having objects lit from different
directions, like one from left, another one
from the right and another one from the top
(See Fig.05). You can immediately spot that
there’s something wrong with the house in this
scene. In this case, a simple flip would solve
the problem, but what happens when that’s not
enough…? (Fig.05)
II. Mimic
Creating the proper light is often the most time-
consuming step of a matte painting. Because,
usually, it’s impossible to find references that
fit together and which are also lit from the
same direction (unless you are provided with
plate shots), you must spend a considerable
amount of time correcting the light and making
everything match. There are three main difficulty
levels, which are as follows:
www.2dartistmag.com
1 - If the image you want to use is lit from the
same azimuth/pitch but opposite direction, then
a horizontal flip usually works. However, while
this is okay for landscapes, it doesn’t work so
well on architecture or recognisable patterns.
2 - The second difficulty level is when light
doesn’t match, but the shadows are not too
hard-edged (either overcast or with low intensity/
blurred). In this case, the typical process of
correcting the element is as follows:
- Apply a solid colour adjustment layer
(see Fig03) with a dark colour (that obviously
matches the hue/shade of shadows from the
rest of the scene), and set the opacity to around
50-70%, depending on your needs.
- Duplicate the object layer, dramatically
increase its contrast, and then set it to Screen
with an opacity of 60-100%, again depending on
your scene’s needs.
- Create a mask for this layer and brush out
the parts that are in the shade (hence you will
see the dark layer below), leaving only the parts
that you want to be lit.
page 34
Tips & Tricks Matte Painting
3 - The hardest situation is when the shadows
are many and hard-edged (think of some sort of
a cliff). For this, either find another one or start
painting in shadows and highlights based on the
colours you pick from the original plate.
7. Conclusion
Matte painting is all about creating the illusion
of reality. Depth, scale, perspective and light
are the most important elements that trick the
eye into believing. And, besides having them
right, you can also use light and scale to your
advantage in order to bring drama to your image
and make your scene epic!
The End.
I hope that this series has been of use to you!
Tiberius Viris
For more from this artist visit:
http://www.suirebit.net
Or contact
suirebit@gmail.com
Chapter 05
 : volume 3

Available Now Only!

UK - £32 USD - $64 EUR - €49

Features 60 of the finest digital

2d and 3d artists working in
the indusrty today, from the
likes of:
Alon Chou
Damien Canderlé
Gerhard Mozsi
John Wu
Laurent Pierlot
Levente Peterffy
Marek Denco
Neil Blevins
Nathaniel West
Matt Dixon

Buy the book to see just

how they create their
incredible imagery!
Hardback 21.6cm x 27.9cm in size

288 Full Colour premium paper pages

for more products in our range visit http://www.3dtotal.com/shop