12.03.2024 – Matte painting

Week 20 – Matte Painting and Gizmos

Before you start matte painting work, you should check the resolution and ratio of the shot. As you might need to zoom in on the shot, it’s advisable to work at a larger size than the original resolution.

While PSD files can be imported into Nuke, they may not retain complex information such as blending options and masks. Therefore, it’s best to keep the layers simple, and if grouping is necessary, merge them before transferring to Nuke. Ensure that the color space matches between Photoshop and Nuke. To extract each layer, simply press ‘Breakout Layers.’

Once the layers are broken down, premultiply them if they contain an alpha channel. Then, create cards and connect them to a Scene node. Make sure to reformat the scene to the desired working size. If you can’t see anything in the viewer when checking the scene with ScanlineRender, ensure that the layers are positioned behind the camera. To correct this, input the same values from the camera created in the matchmove stage, such as focal length and horizontal aperture. Then, adjust the Z position to place it correctly.

You can export position and normal data from the ScanlineRender node. Go to the Shader tab, set motion vectors to distance, enable output vectors, set surface point to new, and define the name and channels. Repeat the process for surface normals.