Matte Paintings, Photo-Realistic FX

We talked about how we are soon going to start to learn about using photos of birds, and animate and composite them in our scene to make them look life its actual video of birds actually moving rather than still images. And also add smoke or any kind of atmosphere to the composition to help blend all of the layers together so that it adds a little extra something to sell the effect.

This made me think of this particular tutorial about Matte paintings. Matte paintings are images that are used to add an element to a scene that otherwise doesn't exist. These are commonly used to extend a set or add things into the background of a scene to help make the world of the story more dynamic.

In this tutorial from Corridor Digital, Niko shows us how to make a mountain appear that doesnt actually exist, using simple photos, some 3D tracking, and adding some atmosphere to help make the mountain look like it actually was there in real life.

This also basically explains how compositing is very important in the animation/visual effects/CG process, as it uses multiple elements/layers and blends them together to make one impressive final result.

"Watercolour"

I've been really thinking about how much music can impact the animations you decide to create, sometimes even shaping the overarching themes in their entirety. So - here's a music video from the Australian EDM group 'Pendulum'. It uses some pretty interesting 3D animations and color effects, so I thought I'd share. You can see a planet (or... something like it) throughout the video that slowly moves around a giant lighted orb of some sort (star?), until eventually these giant rays of light that it's shooting bust the planet open. Pretty sweet stuff. And the track is awesome too.