FXPHD - DMP205 - Digital Matte Painitng: The Castle Project

The heart of the program is a series of thee courses (DMP201, DMP202, DMP203) which cover the fundamental techniques of the craft. This course brings it all together with the goal of completing a single digital matte painting over the duration of the term. We'll fly to Westeros and go through all the steps to create a environment inspired by the Game of Thrones TV series. From concept to final DMP, members will go through 3D modeling, texturing and lighting, and will examine how to bring a CG castle to life. The aim of the course is to create a high quality digital matte painting which is ready to be sent to compositing.

Ludo is a Digital Matte Artist/Lead Environment Artist working at Double Negative, London. His credits include a variety of projects, from Bourne Ultimatum, Quantum of Solace, Tree of Life, or Love in the time of Cholera, to Thor - the Dark World, Hellboy 2, Total Recall or Dredd.

course syllabus:
Class 1: Introduction to the project and initial concept design for further refinement.
Class 2: Setting up the initial 3D scene to block out shapes similar to the first dmp.
Class 3: Starting with preliminary textures for our 3D model and properly laying out UVs.
Class 4: Combining multiple render passes together to work on the castle wall surface.
Class 5: Integration of our digital model with the scene and working on lighting improvements.
Class 6: Introducing elements to help reduce the artificial nature of the CG render and starting on creating a waterfront.
Class 7: Further refinements and working with the background to fully seat the castle in the scene.
Class 8: Working in more foreground elements to balance out the dmp and starting to add polish.
Class 9: From Maya to Nuke, setting up the geometry for projection to create depth with a small camera move.
Class 10: Finalizing the 2.5D composite and cleaning up the last few mistakes to complete our DMP.