As a quick exercise, we had a go at matte painting digitally. Matte painting was originally painted onto a glass screen, but since there is far more technology now, it's made much easier.
To start my digital matte painting, I went onto Pexels and found a still shot of a running river. It's possible to add a matte painting to a moving shot (something that wasn't possible with traditional methods), but since this is an introduction to the skill, a still shot was a better place to start.
If I did want a matte painting on a moving shot, I'd have to track the camera and then apply the matte painting to the nodes it picks up on and then mask it. Since I'm not, I just downloaded the still shot above.
This is what the original video looks like. Since I'm going to be editing it, the next thing to do was open up Adobe Premiere Pro, which is what I'll be using to edit this footage.
The first thing I did was create a new composition in Premiere Pro, and drag the video into the lower left box. By double clicking it, I could edit it, and by dragging it to the top right box, I could get a timeline for the video.
So that I could correctly edit something into the image, I clicked the small camera tool and exported a frame from the footage. Since the only thing that moves is the river, it doesn't matter which frame I take.
I saved this as a PNG and then opened Photoshop to start matte painting.
I embedded the frame into photoshop, and then went to go and find something to put into the background behind the cliffs. It took me a while to find an image that had the right perspective and that would fit into the image.
I eventually found this image of a ruined castle, which I decided to use. I saved the image and then embedded it in photoshop to start working. I roughly resized it and removed its background with the magic wand tool.
I turned down the visibility to get the positioning of the castle more accurate. I also rotated it slightly to match the direction of the cliffs. Once I was happy with the position, I added a mask layer and started painting out the castle until it blended in with the forest around it.
I made sure to go into more detail when painting out the rails of the bridge.
Once I was happy with the mask, I applied it to the layer, and then quickly changed the hue to closer match the video. Since this is just a warm-up exercise, this didn't have to be perfect for the moment. I also added a small Gaussian Blur, as the image I used was too clear to fit in properly with the footage.
I saved the image as a Photoshop file and went back into Premiere Pro. I then selected the file to be imported, kept it as separate layers (I only selected the castle layer to be visible, so there would be even less work for me to do.
With the matte painting in Premiere Pro, I ran through the footage to check if everything was working correctly. I adjusted the matte painting's duration in the composition to match that of the footage, so that it isn't only there for a frame.
I also went and isolated the castle layer to see how well I'd actually masked it. Since I'd done it in a hurry, I missed a few parts in the corner, but these aren't too noticeable if you don't look for them. I think I masked the bridge and treetops well, despite this.
Here is the finished video with a matte painting on. This was exported and rendered as a Quicktime .mov file.
I think I did well with this exercise. I underestimated how easily it is to create something convincing with only two programs. If I'd spent a few hours on this, I can only imagine what I'd be able to achieve.
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