WelcomeIntroduction| 00:04 | Hi! This is David Mattingly, author of the
Digital Matte Painting Handbook. For this
| | 00:10 | Digital Matte Painting Tutorial,
| | 00:11 | we're going to take this plate showing
an Alpine chalet in the mountains and
| | 00:16 | using some great digital matte
painting techniques I'll demonstrate,
| | 00:20 | take this from a summer scene to a winter scene.
| | 00:23 | First, we're going to get rid of the
grass in the foreground and replace it
| | 00:27 | with a snow texture,
| | 00:29 | then add snow to the foothills, and
winterize the mountains. Then we're going to
| | 00:34 | add snow to the roof of the chalet
and all of the shrubs surrounding it.
| | 00:39 | Next, replace the sky with two layers of
new clouds and create a dusk version of
| | 00:45 | the same scene, again, replacing the sky.
| | 00:49 | Then we will add a glow to the
foothills, add lit windows to the chalet, and add
| | 00:55 | some smoke rising up out of the chimney.
| | 00:58 | Then finally, we're going to create an
animated version of the scene in After
| | 01:02 | Effects, where we will cross-dissolve
between the summer and winter versions.
| | 01:08 | This may look like a lot of work,
but using the advanced techniques I'll show
| | 01:12 | you, we'll do all of this from start to
finish in real time in under two hours.
| | 01:18 | So let's get started.
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| What you should know before watching this course| 00:00 | Here's what you need to know before
watching this video tutorial. First, even
| | 00:05 | though I will be painting in the newest
version, Photoshop CS6, and animating
| | 00:09 | in After Effects 5.5,
this course is not version-specific;
| | 00:14 | all the tools I use are available in
much older versions of these programs,
| | 00:18 | even if the details of the interface
may vary. I've made every effort to make
| | 00:23 | this tutorial accessible to non-experts,
| | 00:25 | but you will need to have basic
Photoshop and After Effects skills.
| | 00:30 | lynda.com offer several excellent
introductory courses on these programs and
| | 00:35 | both the Photoshop CS6 Essential
Training and After Effects CS6 Essential
| | 00:40 | Training are great starting points
for anyone learning these programs.
| | 00:45 | But even if you are not an expert in
either of these programs, I hope you'll be
| | 00:49 | able to follow along and understand
the techniques being demonstrated.
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| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | If you're a Premium member of the
lynda.com online training library, you have
| | 00:04 | access to the exercise files
used throughout this tutorial.
| | 00:08 | All of the files are contained in the
Exercise Files folder, and I recommend that
| | 00:13 | you copy that to your desktop for easy access.
| | 00:17 | The files are organized into three
basic categories: Plate, which contains the
| | 00:22 | raw plate I'll be using for the demonstration--
| | 00:25 | the Plate folder also contains the
final version of the painting called
| | 00:29 | Mountain_Chalet.psd they you can
refer to at any point in this tutorial;
| | 00:35 | the second folder is Reference, which
contains all of the photographic materials
| | 00:39 | used in this project;
| | 00:41 | and AfterEffects, which has the finished
painting ready to be used in the animation.
| | 00:47 | This project was done in After
Effects 5. Projects created in a newer
| | 00:51 | version of After Effects cannot
be opened in an older version,
| | 00:55 | so you'll have to have After
Effects 5 or later to use this file.
| | 01:01 | There is also a copy of the
final render to compare your own work to, once
| | 01:05 | you've finished the lessons.
| | 01:08 | Even if you're not a Premium member,
you'll have access to the raw plate
| | 01:12 | so you can work over the same scene as I do.
| | 01:15 | Just go up to the Exercise Files
tab at the top of the chapter listing
| | 01:19 | to download the files.
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|
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1. Revising the PlateMaking selections using the Color Range command| 00:00 | Here is a plate of a mountain chalet that
we're going to be using for this tutorial.
| | 00:05 | It is from the Corel stock
photo library and it's royalty-free.
| | 00:10 | It's included with the course materials,
so please open it up right now and work
| | 00:14 | right along with me.
| | 00:16 | Before we get started,
you need to do a little file setup.
| | 00:20 | First, let's duplicate the plate.
| | 00:22 | A lot of times while I'm working,
I will accidentally paint on the original
| | 00:26 | plate, and it's good to have a
clean copy underneath it to refer to.
| | 00:31 | Next, let's add a little extra room around
the edge of the canvas to use as a workspace.
| | 00:36 | Go up to the top of the interface and
choose Image > Canvas Size, and add an
| | 00:41 | extra 300 pixels on each side.
| | 00:44 | Now, press Command or Ctrl and click
into the layer icon preview of the copy of
| | 00:50 | the plate and make a new layer.
| | 00:53 | Then select Inverse to select the
area around the image. Load black into
| | 00:58 | the foreground color picker, and go up to
the top menu and choose Edit and then Fill.
| | 01:04 | Then fill the selection full of black.
| | 01:07 | Rename the layer Mask.
| | 01:09 | As you start to drop in photo reference,
it's useful to turn on and off the mask
| | 01:14 | to see what you have
beyond the edge of the image.
| | 01:18 | The first thing you'll want to do when
changing a scene from summer to winter is
| | 01:22 | to examine the alpha channels.
| | 01:24 | You'll notice that the alpha channels
already look rather wintry because all of
| | 01:28 | the color has gone out of the scene.
| | 01:32 | One of the main things that's making the scene
look so summery is this bright green lawn.
| | 01:37 | So, let's deal with that first.
| | 01:39 | We're going to use several different
techniques while we're working on this project,
| | 01:43 | but the first one is select Color Range.
| | 01:46 | So, let's go up to the top,
choose Select > Color Range.
| | 01:50 | The Eyedropper tool appears
automatically while using the Select > Color Range,
| | 01:55 | and you need to click into the green
of the lawn, and then holding down the
| | 01:59 | Shift key, click into several more
greens to select more of the lawn.
| | 02:04 | You can also use the Fuzziness slider to
select more or less of the green color.
| | 02:10 | I only want to select the green of the lawn,
not the sky, the mountains, or the house,
| | 02:15 | so I'm looking in this little
preview to see exactly what I'm getting.
| | 02:18 | I am going to accept that selection.
| | 02:21 | You can see I've got a lot of little
speckles in here. I don't want that,
| | 02:26 | so I am going to have to zoom in, and
then holding down the Shift key, get this
| | 02:30 | whole lawn nicely cleaned up.
| | 02:32 | It looks like I've got the same thing up here.
| | 02:35 | I want to add to the selection here,
| | 02:38 | so I'm holding down the Shift key
and the Option+Alt key to bring up the
| | 02:43 | Polygonal Lasso tool.
| | 02:45 | I need to hand select all of this up here.
| | 02:47 | That looks pretty good.
| | 02:51 | You can see I'm also getting some of
this greenery up here, and that's fine.
| | 02:55 | I will probably have to hand
paint a lot of these shrubs.
| | 02:58 | I'm going to try just desaturating and
lightening this area first to see how that works.
| | 03:03 | First, I am going to hide this
selection, which is Command+Ctrl+H, and then make
| | 03:09 | sure I'm on the copy of the plate.
| | 03:10 | Then I'm going to press Command+Ctrl+U
to bring up the Hue/Saturation dialog.
| | 03:16 | I'm going to pull the Saturation
slider all the way to the left and then
| | 03:21 | lighten it quite a bit so
it looks more like snow.
| | 03:24 | It's better, but it's completely
blown out, and it doesn't look like
| | 03:28 | very realistic snow.
| | 03:30 | In the next lesson, we're going to
use some photographic reference of snow
| | 03:33 | to fix that problem.
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| Integrating an outside reference using layer masks| 00:00 | I'm going to turn on the
visibility of the snow selection by hitting
| | 00:03 | Command+Ctrl+H. I have a nice piece of
photo reference of a snowy hillside in
| | 00:09 | Colorado that I'm going to use for this project.
| | 00:12 | I am going to use the Rectangular
Selection tool to grab just the bottom of this.
| | 00:16 | I don't need the sky, and I'll copy it out.
| | 00:20 | I'm going to return to my mountain_
chalet document, but rather than pasting
| | 00:23 | the snowy hillside directly in, I'm going to
use the selection I have as a mask for the snow.
| | 00:29 | I am going to go up to the top menu and
choose Edit > Paste Special > Paste Into.
| | 00:36 | Paste Special pastes the material
into the selection in your document.
| | 00:41 | It also creates a layer mask on the new layer.
| | 00:45 | Notice that the link between the color
layer and the layer mask is turned off.
| | 00:50 | If I turn it on and then move the
layer around, they both move together, but
| | 00:54 | that's not what I want;
| | 00:56 | I want to move the color
layer independent of the mask,
| | 00:59 | so I'm going to turn the link off.
| | 01:02 | Now, I can move my color layer
independent of the layer mask.
| | 01:06 | For now, I want to turn off my layer mask.
| | 01:09 | I do that by right-clicking on the
layer mask preview and selecting Disable
| | 01:14 | Layer Mask from the dropdown menu.
| | 01:17 | Now I can see the entire piece of photo
reference without the layer mask applied.
| | 01:21 | I like these little footsteps in the snow, but I
think this would look better if it was flipped
| | 01:27 | so it looked as someone had
wandered off the path on the left side.
| | 01:31 | Press Command or Ctrl+T to bring up the
Transform tool and then reverse it, and
| | 01:37 | I want to get the footsteps
lined up with the edge of the path.
| | 01:40 | I am going to squash it a little bit
so it will more closely match the
| | 01:44 | perspective of the
hillside that I'm dealing with.
| | 01:47 | The resolution of this piece of photo
reference doesn't exactly match what I've
| | 01:51 | got in the original plate, but that
doesn't really matter because I'm using this
| | 01:55 | more as a texture than a
direct piece of photo reference.
| | 01:59 | Anything that doesn't look quite sharp
enough in the end, I'll just paint over.
| | 02:02 | Now, move that new section of snow up a
bit more and move it to one side to see
| | 02:09 | how it lines up with the plate.
| | 02:11 | Then hit Return to accept the
Transformation and right-click on the layer mask
| | 02:16 | preview icon and select Enable
Layer Mask to turn it back on.
| | 02:21 | One thing that didn't quite work out
right on this masked piece of photo
| | 02:25 | reference is the bright
highlight on the black hill.
| | 02:29 | Use the Marquee tool to select a piece
of background snow and go up to Select >
| | 02:34 | Modify > Feather, and add an eight-pixel feather.
| | 02:39 | Press Command+J or Ctrl+J to copy
that selection out onto a new layer.
| | 02:44 | The copied section doesn't have the
layer mask applied to it, so you can move it
| | 02:48 | around until it covers the bright highlight.
| | 02:52 | Now, take a big soft eraser and erase
the edges so that a line doesn't show
| | 02:57 | up where the two pieces
of reference come together.
| | 03:01 | With the layer with the patch selected,
press Command+E or Ctrl+E to merge it with
| | 03:06 | the layer beneath it.
| | 03:08 | Then press Preserve to preserve the layer
mask that has already been applied to the snow.
| | 03:14 | Now, rename the layer Snow.
| | 03:17 | There needs to be some color
correction done on the snow.
| | 03:19 | It looks too dark to fit into the scene,
and the midtones look rather red and
| | 03:24 | the highlights yellow.
| | 03:26 | Now, press Command+M or Ctrl+M
to bring up the Curves dialog.
| | 03:30 | First, brighten the highlights on
the snow by pulling the white point in.
| | 03:35 | This will brighten the highlights,
but you want to be careful not to clip the
| | 03:39 | highlights or force them to 100% white.
| | 03:43 | Then raise the midtones so
that the overall snow is lighter.
| | 03:46 | It is important to keep some of the
contrast in the darker tones of the snow,
| | 03:51 | so use the Eyedropper to find
out where those tones reside.
| | 03:55 | Now, pull that point down.
| | 03:58 | After that adjustment, raise the
lighter midtones up slightly more.
| | 04:03 | Now, deal with the red cast of the
midtones by pulling the midpoint of the red
| | 04:08 | curve down a small amount.
| | 04:10 | The snow, especially in the
highlights, is too yellow.
| | 04:15 | To correct that, go to the blue channel and
pull up on the blue curve right in the middle.
| | 04:20 | That adds more blue to the
snow, removing some of the yellow.
| | 04:25 | Now, the snow looks like it matches
the mountains in the background better.
| | 04:30 | Next up, you'll find out how to extract
some masks and turn the background hill
| | 04:34 | into a snow-covered forest using
information taken out of the alpha channels.
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| Extracting the foothills| 00:00 | I am going to use a different technique
to deal with these background foothills:
| | 00:04 | one on the right and one on the left.
| | 00:07 | I need to separate the foothills from
the background mountain, because I'm not
| | 00:11 | going to handle the mountain the same way.
| | 00:14 | Once again, I am going to look to my
alpha channels and see which one has the
| | 00:18 | most contrast between the
foothills and the background mountain.
| | 00:22 | The blue channel is the best choice
because it offers the most contrast.
| | 00:27 | Duplicate the blue channel
and then apply a Curve to it.
| | 00:32 | You'll want to make everything on the
foreground foothills black and everything on
| | 00:35 | the background mountains white.
| | 00:38 | Pull the white point to the left till
the mountains turn completely white. Then
| | 00:44 | pull the black point to the right,
until the foothills turn completely black.
| | 00:48 | You won't be able to get it absolutely perfect,
but it'll work fine with a little cleanup.
| | 00:55 | Now zoom in on the alpha channel and
with the Lasso tool, get rid of this little
| | 01:00 | bit of bleed-through from
the background mountains.
| | 01:05 | I've got black in the background channel.
| | 01:07 | I am going to press X to load in white.
| | 01:09 | That way when I hit Delete,
it'll fill the selection with white.
| | 01:13 | Now I'll quickly clean up the other
side. Once again, I press Delete to load
| | 01:21 | white into the selection.
| | 01:23 | I need to do some cleanup on the
interior of the foothills also.
| | 01:28 | Press X to swap the foreground and
background colors and load black into the
| | 01:33 | background color picker.
| | 01:34 | The house still needs to be
removed from the alpha channel.
| | 01:37 | It's helpful to turn on the RGB along
with the alpha channel, so you can see
| | 01:42 | what you still need to do.
| | 01:45 | Press Delete to fill the selection with white.
| | 01:47 | While using the Lasso tool, if you
press and hold the Option key on the Mac or
| | 01:52 | the Alt key on the PC, it temporarily
turns the regular Lasso tool into the
| | 01:57 | Polygonal Lasso tool, so you can
lift and click, lift and click, to create
| | 02:02 | straight-line selections.
| | 02:03 | I am having a hard time seeing the RGB
through the alpha channel, so I'm going
| | 02:09 | to select the alpha channel I'm working
on, then go to the upper-right corner of
| | 02:13 | the Channels panel and choose Channel Options.
| | 02:18 | You can reduce the opacity of the color
overlay of the alpha channel so you can
| | 02:22 | see the RGB channel more clearly.
| | 02:27 | Now remove the house on the
far left from the alpha channel.
| | 02:33 | You can turn your alpha channels on and
off so you can see exactly what you're
| | 02:37 | getting in the selection.
| | 02:39 | Now zoom out and you can see there is a
little bit of cleanup at the bottom of
| | 02:42 | the house and the snowfield.
| | 02:45 | Now select All, Command+A or Ctrl+A,
and then hit Invert, which is Command+I or Ctrl+I
| | 02:53 | to invert the entire alpha channel.
| | 02:56 | Now, Command+Click or Ctrl+Click
into the layer icon preview of the alpha
| | 03:00 | channel to load the selection that
contains just the background hills.
| | 03:05 | What we want to do is take the
black-and-white Information from one of
| | 03:09 | these alpha channels, copy it out, and make a
new layer and paste it into the RGB document.
| | 03:15 | But we need to figure out which channel
has the right amount of detail and contrast.
| | 03:19 | The red channel doesn't have
much detail and is too dark.
| | 03:23 | The green has a nice amount of detail
and good contrast. And the blue has too
| | 03:27 | little detail and contrast.
| | 03:29 | So the green channel is the
best one in this instance.
| | 03:33 | Before you copy the green channel out, you need
to deal with the ragged edges on the selection.
| | 03:38 | You can do that by Command+Option+
Clicking in the layer icon preview on the Mac
| | 03:43 | and Ctrl+Alt+Clicking in the
layer icon preview on the PC.
| | 03:48 | That subtracts the mask from the
selection and now it has only the foothills.
| | 03:54 | Making sure that the green
channel is selected, do a Copy Merged.
| | 03:58 | The keyboard shortcut for that is
Command+Shift+C, or Ctrl+Shift+C. That
| | 04:03 | copies all of the pixels inside of the
selection, not just the pixels on the current layer.
| | 04:09 | Click on the RGB icon in the Channels
panel to return to full color and then
| | 04:14 | go into the Layers panel.
| | 04:17 | With the Snow layer selected, paste
the information from the green alpha
| | 04:21 | channel into a new layer.
| | 04:24 | The selection from the alpha channel is
now pasted into the layer in black and white.
| | 04:29 | Right now it doesn't look very much
like a snowy hillside, but watch what
| | 04:33 | happens when I apply a curve to it.
| | 04:36 | Now drag the white point quite a
bit to the left, but still try to avoid
| | 04:40 | severe clipping or the tones
going completely white.
| | 04:44 | Also, drag the midpoint up, until it starts
to look like the hillside is covered with snow.
| | 04:49 | The white point still needs to be
pulled in a bit and the midpoint even further
| | 04:54 | up, but it quickly begins to look
like a convincing snow-covered hillside.
| | 04:59 | The one downside of using alpha
channel information like this is it comes
| | 05:03 | in completely black and white, and there
is none of the natural color variation
| | 05:08 | that is found in nature.
| | 05:09 | We'll deal with that by
restoring some of the color.
| | 05:13 | First, name the layer Foothills and
zoom out again so you can compare the color
| | 05:18 | to the rest of the plate.
| | 05:20 | Select the Brush tool again and holding
down the Option or Alt key, select some
| | 05:26 | of the color from the snow.
| | 05:28 | Now choose a large soft round brush
and Command+Click or Ctrl+Click into the
| | 05:34 | layer icon preview for the
foothills to load the selection.
| | 05:38 | Then, from the dropdown menu to choose to the
Transfer mode for the brush, choose Color.
| | 05:44 | Now, softly brush that color into
these foothills so that they more closely
| | 05:49 | match the foreground snow.
| | 05:53 | Next up, we will deal with the
background mountains and make them look like they
| | 05:57 | are in the middle of winter.
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| Extracting the mountains| 00:00 | Now it's time to deal with
the background mountains.
| | 00:03 | We need to extract the
mountains, for two reasons.
| | 00:06 | First, we're going to handle them in a
different manner than the other elements
| | 00:10 | in the matte painting.
| | 00:11 | Second, we're going to add moving
clouds later on in After Affects, so the
| | 00:15 | clouds need to be separated from the mountains.
| | 00:19 | Let's start by looking to our alpha
channels and see which channel has the most
| | 00:23 | contrast between the mountains and the sky.
| | 00:26 | The red channel has the most
contrast, but this is going to have to be
| | 00:31 | a two-step process.
| | 00:32 | On the left side the mountains are
nicely silhouetted against the white sky,
| | 00:36 | but on the right side, you can see that the
mountains are light against a darker sky.
| | 00:42 | So we need to make two copies of this
channel to apply different curves to
| | 00:46 | isolate different sections of the mountains.
| | 00:49 | I'm going to select the first copy of
the red channel, then press Command+M on
| | 00:54 | the Mac and Ctrl+M on Windows
to open up the Curves dialog.
| | 00:59 | Now I'll click into the white part of
the sky with the Eyedropper tool and
| | 01:03 | that shows where on the curve the
white point needs to be moved, to make the
| | 01:07 | sky completely white.
| | 01:09 | I'll use the eyedropper again against
the mountains and take note of where the
| | 01:13 | circle shows up on the curve.
| | 01:16 | That's where the black point
needs to be moved in to make the
| | 01:18 | mountains completely black.
| | 01:20 | I'll work back and forth on this curve a
bit to see which gives me the best results.
| | 01:25 | I want the mountains as completely
isolated as possible from the sky.
| | 01:31 | You're not going to get it perfect;
| | 01:33 | you'll have to do some cleanup on this plate.
| | 01:36 | Now select the second copy of the alpha
channel, and we're going to do the opposite.
| | 01:40 | We're going to try and make the
mountain white and sky completely black.
| | 01:46 | Again, use the Eyedropper tool on the
plate to identify where that gray is and
| | 01:51 | then pull the black point in to
make that gray completely black.
| | 01:56 | Then pull the white point in to the left
to get the mountains as white as possible.
| | 02:01 | Again, this isn't going to be perfect,
and you'll want to do a little bit of
| | 02:04 | adjusting to get the best possible result.
| | 02:08 | That looks about as good as it's going to get.
| | 02:10 | Now we need the opposite of this, so
select all and then Command+I or Ctrl+I
| | 02:16 | to invert the channel.
| | 02:18 | Now we've got the black mountains
against the white sky, which we can use as a
| | 02:22 | mask to paint into on the other alpha channel.
| | 02:25 | We'll need to do some cleanup on
this channel before we start using it,
| | 02:29 | so zoom in so you can
really see what you're doing
| | 02:32 | and lasso all the way around this to
try and get the mountain completely black.
| | 02:37 | Luckily, the edge is pretty well
defined by the high-contrast mask.
| | 02:42 | With black loaded into the background
color picker, I'm going to hit Delete, and
| | 02:46 | I'm going to turn on the visibility of
the RGB channel so I can see where the
| | 02:50 | edge of the mountain is.
| | 02:53 | And there's also some cleanup that needs
to be done in the white part of the sky.
| | 02:58 | I need to hit X to make sure white
is loaded into my background color
| | 03:02 | picker and hit Delete.
| | 03:05 | Make sure you've got all of these
little white specks on the edge cleaned up.
| | 03:09 | Now I want to load this selection I
created in by Command+Clicking into the
| | 03:14 | layer icon Preview on the Mac
and Ctrl+Clicking on Windows.
| | 03:18 | Then return to that first copy of the
alpha channel and we're going to use this
| | 03:22 | selection to paint in to.
| | 03:24 | Now I'm going to use a brush with
the Opacity set to 100% to paint white
| | 03:30 | into the selection.
| | 03:32 | I can be fairly sloppy here, since the
selection has this area nicely defined.
| | 03:37 | Once I've painted over the edge,
I need to invert the selection.
| | 03:41 | So go up to the top menu and choose
Select > Inverse and then load black into the
| | 03:46 | foreground color picker and
paint along the top of the mountain.
| | 03:52 | Right about now you're probably saying
to yourself, man, this masking stuff is a
| | 03:56 | lot of work. Why don't you just hand marquee it?
| | 03:59 | The answer is that hand marqueeing will
never give you an edge as nice as what
| | 04:03 | you can get by pulling a
mask from the source material.
| | 04:07 | And as you become more adapt to creating
masks, it will be much faster than hand
| | 04:12 | marqueeing around the complex surface.
| | 04:16 | There are some areas you won't be
able to get with this high-contrast-mask
| | 04:20 | technique and you'll end up doing some
hand marqueeing. So that you can clearly
| | 04:24 | see the edge of the mountain,
| | 04:26 | you may want to turn off the
visibility on the alpha channel and turn on the
| | 04:30 | visibility of the RGB channel.
| | 04:32 | With a selection made, I'm going to
select and turn back on my alpha channel,
| | 04:38 | hit Delete, and then invert the
channel and paint into it with black.
| | 04:42 | I've got to do a little bit of
touch-up on this left side of the mountain.
| | 04:50 | I could paint this, but the
lasso will probably be quicker.
| | 04:56 | I still need to clean up this entire
bottom area, so I'm going to marquee select
| | 05:02 | it and with black loaded into the
background color picker, hit Delete.
| | 05:09 | I still need to clean up the top and
I'll do that with the Lasso tool, again.
| | 05:12 | I'll press X to load white into the
background color picker and then hit Delete.
| | 05:19 | On this right side, neither of the
masks got the edge of the mountain, and I'm
| | 05:23 | going to have to hand marquee that.
| | 05:26 | Using the Lasso tool, carefully
trace around the edge of the mountain.
| | 05:31 | You can turn off the visibility of
the alpha channel so that you can more
| | 05:35 | clearly see the scene as you're tracing.
| | 05:38 | When you're done, turn alpha channel
back on, press X to load white into the
| | 05:43 | background color picker, and hit Delete.
| | 05:46 | Then invert the selection and with
black loaded into the brush, touch up that
| | 05:50 | edge of the mountain.
| | 05:51 | I almost have the mountain isolated,
but I still want to subtract these
| | 05:58 | foothills from the selection.
| | 06:02 | Now I'll load in that first mask
that was used to isolate the foothills
| | 06:06 | by Command+Clicking or Ctrl+Clicking into
the layer icon preview and then hit Delete.
| | 06:13 | Now all I've got to do is lasso
trace around the roof of the mountain chalet.
| | 06:18 | With the Lasso tool selected,
I'm going to hold down on the Option+Alt key to
| | 06:22 | temporarily turn this into the
Polygonal Lasso tool and then draw around the
| | 06:27 | straight hard surfaces of the roof.
| | 06:31 | Then lasso around the entire bottom
area of the composition. Hit Delete.
| | 06:37 | Now we have the mountains nicely separated out.
| | 06:41 | This is actually the opposite of what is needed,
| | 06:43 | so select All, which is Command+A
on the Mac and Ctrl+A on Windows,
| | 06:49 | and then select the Inverse, which is
Command+I on the Mac and Ctrl+I on Windows.
| | 06:56 | Now, Command+Click or Ctrl+Click
into the layer icon preview to load the
| | 07:00 | selection that we've just created.
| | 07:02 | We're going to copy the mountains out,
but we need to make sure the RGB channel
| | 07:07 | is selected and not one of the alpha channels.
| | 07:10 | Then return at the Layers panel
and select any of the RGB layers.
| | 07:15 | Now we need to do a Copy
Merge to copy the mountains out.
| | 07:19 | Press Command+Ctrl+Shift+C on the
Mac and Ctrl+Shift+C on Windows.
| | 07:25 | If you do a regular copy, it only
copies the pixels on the current layer, not
| | 07:30 | all of the pixels under the current selection.
| | 07:34 | Then Command+Shift+V on the Mac and
Ctrl+Shift+V on Windows to paste the
| | 07:40 | information back into the exact
same place you copied it out of.
| | 07:44 | And then rename the layer Mountains.
| | 07:47 | If you press on the eyeball to the
left of the layer while holding down the
| | 07:51 | Option key on the Mac or the Alt key
on Windows, it will solo that layer.
| | 07:56 | And that can be useful for confirming
that you've got the mountains nicely
| | 08:00 | isolated on the layer.
| | 08:02 | With our mountains separated,
we're ready to do some color correction on them
| | 08:06 | and make them look like
they're completely covered with snow.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Color correcting the mountains| 00:00 | Now that the mountains are separated
from the background, it's time to apply
| | 00:03 | a curve to them to make them look as though
they're in the middle of winter, covered with snow.
| | 00:09 | Now open the Curves dialog: Command+M
or Ctrl+M. I'm going to have to do this
| | 00:14 | in a couple of passes.
| | 00:16 | Let me move the Curves dialog to one
side so we can see what we are doing.
| | 00:20 | I want to make the mountains a lot
whiter, but I don't want to blow out any of the
| | 00:25 | areas, or make them go to 100% white.
| | 00:28 | The white point needs to be pulled to the
left as far as it can without losing detail.
| | 00:34 | Then select the Lasso tool and
let's add an eighteen-pixel feather to it.
| | 00:40 | Then I want to lasso around these
darker parts of the mountain on the left side
| | 00:43 | of the composition and then
apply another curve on that area.
| | 00:48 | Again, we'll stop when you start to lose detail.
| | 00:52 | This section of the mountain even
further on the left side of the composition
| | 00:56 | still needs to be lightened some more,
so apply another curve to that area.
| | 01:02 | And then these lower parts of the
mountains look like they could have yet another
| | 01:06 | curve applied to them,
and lighten them even more.
| | 01:12 | That looks pretty good, but now the
mountains look too blue, because the curve
| | 01:16 | has added a lot of saturation to the color.
| | 01:19 | Rather than handling this color issue
with a curve, I think it could be better
| | 01:23 | to desaturate the mountains overall.
| | 01:26 | Press Command+U or Ctrl+U to
open up the Hue/Saturation dialog.
| | 01:31 | Then pull the Saturation slider to the left.
| | 01:34 | You don't want to take all of the
saturation out the mountains or they'll go dead,
| | 01:39 | so stop when it starts to look fairly natural.
| | 01:42 | The mountains still look a little magenta,
so I'll used another curve to correct that.
| | 01:48 | First I'm going to go to green channel and
see if I can pull some of the red out there.
| | 01:53 | Then select the red channel and pull down on
the midtones to add a little bit more green.
| | 01:59 | That looks better.
| | 02:01 | I think it could use one
more hit of desaturation.
| | 02:05 | That's a decent start on getting
the mountains to look snow covered.
| | 02:08 | I'm almost ready to start painting the
trees on this background mountain, but
| | 02:13 | I want to adjust some of the contrast
between the foothills and the background mountains.
| | 02:19 | These trees on the
mountains look too contrasty to me,
| | 02:22 | so I'm going to click into the layer
icon preview for the mountains to load this
| | 02:27 | selection, make sure you're on the
Mountains layer, then choose a big soft round
| | 02:32 | brush like this, and then press
5 to set the Opacity to 50%.
| | 02:38 | With the Brush Transfer mode set to
Normal, just haze that mountain back a
| | 02:43 | little bit. Then click into the
Foothills layer and load the selection.
| | 02:48 | I'm not satisfied with the
light effect on this hill;
| | 02:51 | it doesn't seem to be curving around properly.
| | 02:54 | I'd like there to be more light on
the top of the hill and then have it get
| | 02:58 | darker so it gets to the base.
| | 03:01 | For this I am going to set my brush to
Overlay. Overlay won't wipe out quite as
| | 03:05 | much of the detail as the Normal mode.
And I'm going to just go over the top of
| | 03:10 | this hill to lighten it.
| | 03:12 | That makes the hill
curve around a little better.
| | 03:15 | And the whole top of this
hill should also be lighter.
| | 03:18 | That now looks more fully formed.
| | 03:21 | I'm ready to add a paint layer
and start painting the trees on the
| | 03:25 | background mountain.
| | 03:26 | We'll do that in the next lesson.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
2. Painting Over the PlateCreating a custom brush| 00:00 | Now the mountains are looking snowcapped, but we
still have these green trees in the background.
| | 00:05 | We are going to get rid
of them with some painting.
| | 00:08 | So let's select the Mountain
layer and create a new layer above it.
| | 00:12 | And will name this new
layer, creatively enough, Painting.
| | 00:16 | It can be useful to confine your
painting to a separate layer so that you can
| | 00:21 | go back later and color correct the base layer.
| | 00:23 | I'm build custom brush to
paint the background trees.
| | 00:28 | I create a lot of custom brushes while
I'm working, and I would adjust that it's
| | 00:32 | helpful to give your brush a
distinctive name, so that you'll remember what it
| | 00:36 | does when you come back to it later.
| | 00:39 | As a starting point for this
custom brush, you can use either the
| | 00:43 | ChalkBrush from the set of custom
brushes included with the course
| | 00:46 | materials or use the brush titled
Chalk from the default brush set that
| | 00:52 | ships with every copy of Photoshop.
| | 00:54 | Select either of those brushes
and then start a new file for
| | 00:58 | some experimentation.
| | 00:59 | 500 pixels x 500 pixels is good.
| | 01:03 | Let's look with this ChalkBrush looks
like before we add any variation to it.
| | 01:08 | Make the brush large and then dab it
once. You can see it's a very irregular
| | 01:13 | shape, very organic, with no regular edges.
| | 01:16 | This should work really
well for painting the trees.
| | 01:18 | Now we're going to add some dynamics to
it to make it a more interesting mark.
| | 01:23 | If we just go ahead and paint with it
without any dynamics, it's sort of like
| | 01:28 | painting with a piece of
chalk, as the name implies.
| | 01:32 | Now open up the Brush panel and under
Brush Tip Shape, I am going to add some
| | 01:37 | spacing so there's a little bit of
distance between each dab of the brush.
| | 01:41 | If I don't do anything else, this
creates a brush that looks kind of like
| | 01:44 | confetti and not a very interesting mark.
| | 01:48 | So now let's add some additional
dynamics to make it more irregular.
| | 01:52 | Let's click into Transfer and open that up.
| | 01:56 | The opacity is controlled by the Pen
Pressure, and I want to set the minimum on
| | 02:01 | the brush to 30% so I can't make a
mark that's lighter than 30% opacity.
| | 02:07 | I also want to add some scattering.
This will make each dab go off in a slightly
| | 02:11 | different direction and it's
very good for randomizing a stroke.
| | 02:15 | This is really good for making
the brush look less patterned.
| | 02:18 | I would also like the brush to orient
slightly differently on each stroke.
| | 02:23 | Right now, you're always seeing
the same orientation on the mark.
| | 02:27 | To do that, I'm going to click into
Shape Dynamics and I'm going to adjust the
| | 02:30 | Size Jitter and also the Angle Jitter.
| | 02:36 | And then I'll add some Roundness
Jitter so that it's even more irregular.
| | 02:42 | Let's test it out in the file.
| | 02:44 | So now you can see the brush is looking
very organic and will work really well
| | 02:49 | for these trees on a hillside.
| | 02:51 | So with our custom brush created,
let's go ahead and close up the Brush panel
| | 02:55 | and return to our Chalet
file to paint the trees.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding snow to the background trees| 00:00 | Now the mountains are looking snowcapped,
but we still have these green trees in
| | 00:04 | the background, and we're going to
get rid of them with some painting.
| | 00:08 | With the custom brush that we created
in the previous lesson selected, let's
| | 00:12 | zoom in and take a look at these mountains.
| | 00:14 | While painting into the mountains,
we want to reinforce the direction of the light.
| | 00:19 | The light is coming from the left, so
the left side of the mountain should be
| | 00:22 | brighter and the right side
should have more of that shadow color.
| | 00:26 | Make sure white is loaded into the
foreground color picker, and let's scribble
| | 00:30 | some tone into these background trees.
| | 00:32 | I don't want to paint every individual tree;
| | 00:36 | I just want to break up the pattern
of the hillside so that it looks like
| | 00:39 | it's covered with snow.
| | 00:42 | You need to think about
how trees would capture snow.
| | 00:45 | The underside of the branches would
be showing through and it wouldn't be
| | 00:49 | a solid snow cover.
| | 00:51 | This sort of custom brush is really good
for painting this kind of textured surface.
| | 00:55 | It doesn't allow you to get really
nitpicky, but you just have to concentrate on
| | 00:59 | the overall look of the area.
| | 01:01 | I want to load in a selection to
contain my painting as I'm working, so
| | 01:07 | Command+Click or Ctrl+Click into the
layer icon preview for the Mountains layer.
| | 01:11 | I want to paint into this flat area on
the side of the mountain to give it more
| | 01:17 | of a broken-up snow-covered feeling.
| | 01:20 | Even are I'm working very fast and
loose, I'm paying attention to the form of
| | 01:24 | the mountain and how the snow would
fall down the sides of the mountain.
| | 01:28 | Wherever there are trees on the mountain,
I'm assuming they would catch a little
| | 01:31 | bit more snow than the bare hillside.
| | 01:34 | And the snow would probably be lighter
on the parts of the hill that have a more
| | 01:38 | extreme vertical angle. But even on a
vertical hillier side, wherever there's a
| | 01:43 | tree, the snow would still
be caught by the branches.
| | 01:47 | As I work, I'm constantly varying the
size of the brush on the fly to give
| | 01:51 | the form some variety.
| | 01:54 | At this point I also want to turn down the
Scatter so that I get a more solid line.
| | 01:58 | I'm going to go up here to Transfer and
raise the minimum Opacity on the brush.
| | 02:06 | That way the marks will
be darker and more solid.
| | 02:11 | Anywhere that I've got a big flat
area like this, I want to break it up.
| | 02:15 | I've got all of these trees on the
ridge line that I need to go over.
| | 02:19 | I want to be careful to follow the
growth pattern of these trees as I paint,
| | 02:24 | because I plan to cross dissolve between the
summer and winter versions in After Effects.
| | 02:30 | If I don't pay attention to the growth
pattern, when I cross dissolve between
| | 02:34 | the two versions, there will be a pop
and you'll know that there's a difference
| | 02:38 | between the two landscapes.
| | 02:40 | I'm just basically scribbling here,
and in fact, I find when you're painting
| | 02:46 | this sort of organic surface, if you
stop and think about it too much, the
| | 02:49 | painting well start to get
stiffer and less natural looking.
| | 02:53 | If you relax and just let this flow,
it will probably look more natural.
| | 02:59 | When I first made the transition from
being an analog to being a digital artist,
| | 03:04 | one of the things I didn't like about
Photoshop was that there was no inherent
| | 03:08 | texture in the brushes.
| | 03:09 | Fortunately, each new version of Photoshop
introduces better ways to get a textured mark.
| | 03:17 | These large flat areas tend to be kind
of problematic. As I'm scribbling, it
| | 03:21 | becomes apparent there's a pattern
of lines and I do want to avoid that.
| | 03:26 | Some of that distinctive patterning can
be avoided by continuously changing the
| | 03:31 | size of the brush as you work.
| | 03:35 | I do want to jump around and work on
different areas of the painting so that I
| | 03:38 | don't get too focused on any one section.
| | 03:44 | Custom brushes are a real boon to
the digital artist, and I pay a lot of
| | 03:48 | attention to designing new brushes for
each project that will handle specific tasks.
| | 03:53 | I'm fascinated by custom brushes
and I'll often check out other artists'
| | 03:57 | brushes on the Internet, when they
offer them, to see if they're doing
| | 04:00 | something I haven't thought of.
| | 04:03 | I think the brushes that are least
useful are the ones that contain large
| | 04:07 | images--for instance, brushes that consist of
large scanned images of insects or demon skulls.
| | 04:14 | I never find those particularly useful.
| | 04:17 | What I want is a brush that brings texture to
your painting, not introduces a large image.
| | 04:22 | Now I am going to sample the shadow
side of this mountain and start painting to
| | 04:29 | reinforce the direction of the light.
| | 04:31 | I definitely want the right side to be
darker and not have a white line on the edge.
| | 04:38 | Same on the top of this ridge line; it's
nice if this right side is a little bit darker.
| | 04:43 | And I am going to sample white again
and break up this slope, indicate a little
| | 04:50 | bit more snow falling down
the side of the mountain.
| | 04:55 | You can see I'm also constantly
sampling off of the painting to get a
| | 04:58 | slightly different tone.
| | 05:02 | It's important to keep slightly
varying the colors you work so that the tone
| | 05:06 | doesn't go dead in any area.
| | 05:08 | Now I'm basically copying all over the
place, fixing any little areas that jump
| | 05:14 | out at me as needing more
snow or little bit more shadow.
| | 05:20 | It's important to not constantly
work zoomed in on your painting and to
| | 05:24 | periodically zoom out to see the
overall effect that you're getting.
| | 05:28 | Working to close in gets you
concerned about the tiny details, but it's the
| | 05:32 | overall look and feel that you
really need to be concerned about.
| | 05:36 | That pretty much finishes
up the background mountains.
| | 05:39 | In the next lesson we'll do a little
bit more work on the foothills and then
| | 05:43 | we'll start winterizing the chalet.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding form to the foothills| 00:00 | So with my background mountains all
done, I want to address the top of this
| | 00:04 | tree line just a bit.
| | 00:06 | Since I used that layer-extraction
technique to separate these foothills from
| | 00:10 | the rest of the image, I've gotten a
very aliased edge, and it doesn't look like
| | 00:15 | a natural tree line.
| | 00:16 | Before I fix that, I want to
organize this painting a little bit better.
| | 00:20 | The snow would actually be in front of
the foothills and the foothills would be
| | 00:24 | in front of the mountains.
| | 00:25 | I don't have it that way right now.
And I'm going to move the snow up to the top
| | 00:30 | and the foothills into the middle and
then the mountains into the background
| | 00:34 | and the copy of my plate in the very back.
| | 00:36 | Now I'm going to return to my Painting
layer, and I saved that brush that I used
| | 00:42 | to paint all of the trees
and I called it Foliage.
| | 00:45 | I'm going to select that brush
because I liked how organic it was, and I'm
| | 00:50 | going to zoom in on the top of my tree line.
| | 00:52 | First I want to brighten the top of the
tree line and I also want to regularize
| | 00:57 | it so it looks more like a natural
tree line and not this jumpy aliased edge
| | 01:02 | that I have right now.
| | 01:03 | I am getting a bit of a visible line as
I paint, but like before, I'm going to
| | 01:09 | vary the size of the brush and also
vary the scattering to avoid a regularized
| | 01:14 | mark. But to get the top of this tree-
line firmly established, I'm going to keep
| | 01:19 | this scattering fairly low.
| | 01:23 | I'm happy with how the top of
this tree line is cleaning up.
| | 01:26 | I'd lots of little speckles and tonal
jumps that didn't look very natural before.
| | 01:36 | That looks better.
| | 01:38 | I'm going to open the Brush palette
and increase the spacing slightly.
| | 01:42 | That'll give me more
distance between dabs of the brush.
| | 01:46 | I'm also going to increase the scattering.
| | 01:49 | Now I can go in here and lighten the
top of the tree line, but without visible
| | 01:53 | lines being drawn by my hand.
| | 01:55 | I want to get the entire top of this
lightened, but I like how the scattered
| | 02:05 | brush is giving me the broken
look of trees covered with snow.
| | 02:09 | Let's go over to this side.
| | 02:17 | This looks too dark also, so I'm going
to lighten up the top of the hill quite a
| | 02:22 | bit. And in order to get the top of the
tree-line painted better, I'm going to
| | 02:27 | open up the Brush panel again, I'm going to
reduce the spacing between my brush dabs and
| | 02:32 | lower the scattering, and then I
can paint in a clearer tree line.
| | 02:37 | I have also got a telephone pole
over here that I don't think is very
| | 02:43 | attractive, so I'm just going to paint it out.
| | 02:47 | All the time while I'm working on
this, I'm thinking about the form.
| | 02:50 | I want the top of the hill to be
brighter and as it comes down the hill towards
| | 02:54 | the chalet, it needs to
give us a sense of rounding.
| | 03:02 | I'm going to adjust the brush one more
time to add more spacing and scattering
| | 03:06 | to really randomize the mark.
That'll help me finish this hill.
| | 03:13 | With that adjusted brush, I'll finish
the lightening the top of the ridgeline.
| | 03:18 | That's giving the hill a lot more form,
lightening it at the top and darkening
| | 03:22 | it as it curves towards us.
| | 03:25 | Next up, we're going to adjust the
color of the hill by painting through a
| | 03:28 | high-contrast mask.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Painting through a high-contrast matte | 00:00 | As I turn off the Foothills layer and
take a look at the trees on the original
| | 00:05 | plate, I see there's a lot of deep
blue-green in the shadows, and by using the
| | 00:11 | alpha channel to create the snow-covered hills,
| | 00:14 | I've lost some of the natural green
that would show up in the shadow areas.
| | 00:18 | I'm going to restore some of that
shadow color to the trees by using another
| | 00:23 | technique where I paint
through a high-contrast mask.
| | 00:26 | So I'm going to click into the layer
thumbnail preview for Foothills to load
| | 00:31 | that selection and then turn off the
Foothills and Painting layers and return to
| | 00:37 | my alpha channels again.
| | 00:40 | The green channel has a nice amount of
contrast and detail, and I would like to
| | 00:44 | be able to paint through those dark
areas to restore some of that deep blue
| | 00:47 | from the original plate.
| | 00:50 | Now I'll duplicate the green alpha
channel and apply a high-contrast curve.
| | 00:55 | Basically, the light side of the trees
need to go completely white so that it
| | 00:59 | clearly defines the texture of the
shadow areas. Then pull the black point to
| | 01:05 | the right so that the
shadow areas go completely black.
| | 01:09 | Now, invert the channel by pressing
Command+I or Ctrl+I. Then Command+Click or
| | 01:16 | Ctrl+Click into the layer icon
preview of the alpha channel.
| | 01:19 | That creates a selection based on the
alpha channel where white loads in as 100%
| | 01:25 | selection and black loads in as 0% selection.
| | 01:30 | This is loading in a selection that
contains only the shadow side of the hill.
| | 01:34 | I'm going to turn that off and
then return to my RGB channel.
| | 01:40 | I'm going to select some of the color
from the shadow side, and let me open it up
| | 01:46 | and we can see what color it is.
| | 01:47 | It's a very intense blue.
| | 01:49 | I'm going to darken it even a little more,
then return to the Painting layer and
| | 01:53 | turn it on, and turn on the Foothills layer also.
| | 01:57 | When you press Command+H or Ctrl+H to
reveal the selection, you can see that
| | 02:02 | only the shadow side is selected.
| | 02:05 | Now, open up the brushes and select a
big soft round brush. Then go through and
| | 02:11 | paint some of that intense
blue-green into the shadow area.
| | 02:16 | This also adds some additional contrast to
the deepest part of the hill shadow side.
| | 02:21 | Now I'm going to skip over to this
left-side hill. Pressing Command+H or Ctrl+H
| | 02:27 | to reveal the selection, I can see I can
do the same thing over on the left side
| | 02:31 | to add some more color and contrast.
| | 02:34 | So let's zoom out and take a look.
| | 02:36 | That's coming along nicely.
| | 02:37 | Next step, we're going to add some
snow to the top of the chalet and winterize it.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding snow to the rooftops| 00:00 | With the foothills adjusted, now
it's time to winterize the chalet.
| | 00:05 | Let's push in on it, and you can see the
chalet has a tiled roof we want to cover with snow.
| | 00:10 | I'm going to create a new layer and
call it Rooftop. Choosing my Lasso tool by
| | 00:16 | pressing M on the keyboard,
| | 00:17 | I'm going to marquee around
where snow would be on the roof.
| | 00:21 | The snow should have some dimension so
it should go above the top of the roof.
| | 00:26 | Now I'm going to fill the selection
with white, then I'm going to choose the
| | 00:29 | Brush tool, or press the B key, and
deselect that area, make the brush smaller,
| | 00:35 | and I'm just going to paint where
the snow would fall on this rooftop.
| | 00:39 | I want to add some dimensionality to
the snow by indicating an edge of shadow,
| | 00:45 | so I'm going to grab a shadow color
from down here in the snow and this will
| | 00:51 | show where the edge of the snow would
be on the roof. And same here: I want to
| | 00:58 | indicate that underside shadow for the snow.
| | 01:00 | My palette is set up for this project,
so I'm generally just selecting colors
| | 01:05 | right off the plate.
| | 01:06 | I also want to indicate the snow on
this back building going down the side.
| | 01:12 | Snow would fall on all flat horizontal
surfaces, so snow would have fallen on
| | 01:17 | the top of this railing.
| | 01:18 | This will also get rid of these flowers.
| | 01:20 | I'm sure they'd be gone
by this time in the winter.
| | 01:25 | Same thing with this railing on the front.
| | 01:27 | I want to restore the white
highlight on the peaked roof of the chalet.
| | 01:35 | I hope you will forgive the fact that
there are occasional silences in these videos.
| | 01:39 | I want to keep this project in real
time and show you the entire painting
| | 01:43 | process, so sometimes the
painting will have to speak for me.
| | 01:50 | I'm making sure I have a white highlight
on top of the shadowed edge of the snow
| | 01:54 | throughout the structure.
| | 01:55 | I need to resize my brush to
match the scale of these structures.
| | 02:04 | I can do that on the fly in Photoshop
4, 5, and 6 by Option+Ctrl+Right-Mouse-
| | 02:10 | Click and drag on the
Mac or Alt+Right-Mouse-Click and drag on the PC.
| | 02:23 | It looks like we've got a small structure right
back here that could use some snow on the roof.
| | 02:27 | I'm going to grab that shadowed color
from the top of the roof and then go
| | 02:33 | through and add that additional
dimensionality to the roofs throughout.
| | 02:42 | There's a little railing on this
background house that I want to add some snow to.
| | 02:48 | This looks like it's mostly in
shadow, so I'm going to knock it down.
| | 02:52 | Next up, we want to remove the hard
shadows on the structure, and we'll do
| | 02:56 | that in the next lesson.
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| Removing hard shadows| 00:01 | I still need to get rid of these hard
shadows on the side of the building, or at
| | 00:05 | least soften them up so it
doesn't look like hard bright sunshine.
| | 00:09 | I'll sample the color from the side of
the building and then open up my Brush
| | 00:13 | panel and select a soft brush.
| | 00:17 | In this case I want a soft brush
because I want to blend the shadow and
| | 00:21 | light sides together.
| | 00:23 | I plan to take this project from a
summertime version to a wintertime version
| | 00:27 | and then to dusk, and these hard shadows
would be a dead giveaway that the scene
| | 00:32 | was shot in hard sunlight. That looks better.
| | 00:41 | I still need to completely
paint out these flowers up top.
| | 00:44 | I'm going to grab a dark brown
color off the side of the chalet.
| | 00:48 | Right here I can be really loose.
| | 00:53 | To continuously vary the color while
using the Brush tool, press the Option or
| | 00:58 | Alt key while clicking in the plate to
bring up the color picker on the fly, and
| | 01:02 | select different colors right off the plate.
| | 01:05 | This will keep the painted areas lively,
not going dead like a single solid color will.
| | 01:10 | I'm going to select that hard round solid brush.
| | 01:15 | That way I can go through and restore some
of these structural details that I'm losing.
| | 01:20 | I'm going to restore little bit of this railing
which used to be in shadow from the flowers.
| | 01:27 | Since they're gone,
the balcony would have more light on it.
| | 01:38 | This big area of snow on the rooftop
doesn't look very convincing, so I'm
| | 01:43 | going to grab some of the snow on the
ground here that has a nice snow texture
| | 01:47 | on it. I'll use the Rectangular Marquee
to select an area that looks like it
| | 01:52 | might work for this. That looks good.
| | 01:55 | Now, Command+Shift+C or Ctrl+Shift+C
to Copy Merge the area out. And then
| | 02:05 | I'll use the Magic Wand tool to select just
the top of that chalet where all the white is.
| | 02:12 | Now I'll go up to Edit > Paste Special >
Paste Into, or use the keyboard command
| | 02:17 | of Command+Shift+V or Ctrl+Shift+V to
paste the photo reference into a layer
| | 02:22 | mask based on the selection.
| | 02:24 | Now I can move the material around and see
if I can find an area that I really like.
| | 02:29 | It looks too dark because I chose a
shadow area, so I'm going to curve it up.
| | 02:34 | And I'm getting some very convincing snow
texture from this that looks a lot more
| | 02:39 | like realistic snow.
| | 02:42 | With the snow positioned and color
corrected, merge it into the rooftop layer by
| | 02:47 | selecting the new layer, layer 1, and
pressing Command+E or Ctrl+E. Now I want to
| | 02:55 | go through and add some smaller details,
like the snow on top of this chimney, and
| | 03:00 | add a little shadow to that.
| | 03:03 | I still got some hard shadows on this
upper floor of the chalet, so I'll take
| | 03:10 | care of that with a soft round brush.
| | 03:12 | I want to keep an indication that this
left wall is curving away from us, so I'm
| | 03:19 | going to restore a little bit of that
edge. And I'm going to attend to some more
| | 03:25 | small details, like snow on
top of these little fence posts.
| | 03:29 | I've missed this building on the left side.
| | 03:37 | I'm going to add some snow to the
rooftop, and on the right side of the roof, and
| | 03:42 | again, on top of the chimney.
| | 03:45 | Next up, we're going to paint some
icicles on the chalet using a custom brush.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Painting icicles with a custom brush| 00:00 | One of the prettiest and most
distinctive parts of a winter landscape are the
| | 00:06 | icicles, and I'd like to add some
of those to break up this roof line.
| | 00:09 | I'm going to make another
custom brush just to create icicles.
| | 00:12 | I'm going to open up the Brush panel,
I'm going to use Shape Dynamics to paint
| | 00:16 | the icicle, and I'm going to set
the Size Jitter to Pen Pressure.
| | 00:21 | That way as I press harder, I'll get
a thicker mark, and as I pull up on
| | 00:25 | the pen, I'll get a thinner mark.
And I'm going to add some scatter to make
| | 00:29 | the icicle irregular.
| | 00:30 | That'll give me a reasonable
approximation of an icicle.
| | 00:34 | With white loaded into the color
picker, I'm going to press hard at the
| | 00:38 | beginning of my stroke and let up at the
end and I get a tapering irregular line
| | 00:43 | that's a nice approximation of an icicle.
| | 00:46 | As you can see, the time it took to
create that custom brush really paid off,
| | 00:51 | because I can add the icicles really quickly.
| | 00:54 | I'm holding down on the Shift
key to keep the icicles vertical.
| | 00:59 | The main thing I've got to avoid is the
temptation to go overboard on the icicles.
| | 01:04 | The icicles are also helping to
break up the edge of the shadows.
| | 01:08 | I've got too much of a sharp edge on my
first pass at painting this roofline.
| | 01:18 | So I keep hopping around from area
to area until I get a nice coverage of
| | 01:23 | the icicles all over the structure. And I need
to add some icicles on these back structures.
| | 01:34 | What's nice is these are on a separate
layer, so if I feel like I've gone too
| | 01:39 | far, I can just go in and erase a little bit.
| | 01:42 | Let's zoom out and take a good look at it.
| | 01:50 | That looks pretty wintry now.
| | 01:52 | In our next video, we will continue in
our march towards a completely convincing
| | 01:56 | wintry scene by adding snow to all of
the shrubs and greenery around the chalet.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Covering greenery with snow| 00:00 | There's still a lot of green showing at
the front of the house. Part of this was
| | 00:05 | taken care by the snow layer, but it
still looks like there's not enough snow on
| | 00:09 | these foreground shrubs.
| | 00:11 | I want to see the shrubs more clearly,
so I'm going to turn off my Snow layer,
| | 00:16 | and I'm going to loosely marquee around
all of this greenery in the foreground.
| | 00:22 | I want to be loose about this.
| | 00:26 | I know I'm going to have to paint a lot
of this stuff, so I don't need to get a
| | 00:31 | terribly detailed selection.
| | 00:32 | Now I'll press Command+Shift+C or
Ctrl+Shift+C to Copy Merge and copy
| | 00:43 | that selected area out.
| | 00:47 | This should be placed on a painting
layer, so Command+Shift+V or Ctrl+Shift+V
| | 00:50 | to paste it in place exactly
where it was copied out of.
| | 00:55 | Then press Command+U or Ctrl+U to
open up the Hue/Saturation dialog and
| | 01:00 | desaturate the area.
| | 01:01 | Then I'm going to add a curve to it and
pull the white point way in and raise
| | 01:07 | the midpoint, and now it looks a lot
more wintry, just from the get-go.
| | 01:11 | Let's turn the snow back on.
And I think I can even curve that more.
| | 01:16 | I want to merge that into the
rooftop layer, so that I don't get too many
| | 01:21 | layers going at once.
| | 01:24 | Press Command+E or Ctrl+E and then
hit B to get the brush and I'm going to
| | 01:30 | select that Foliage brush that I
used to paint the mountain side.
| | 01:33 | That seems to work really well for
painting organic things like this.
| | 01:37 | And with white loaded in, I'm going
to go through and paint in some of
| | 01:41 | these tree branches.
| | 01:42 | I'm paying attention to how the snow
would stick to the tree. And I'm going in
| | 01:54 | and adding snow to the top of the shrubs.
| | 01:57 | I am back to scribbling, but I am paying
attention to the form of the shrubs and trees.
| | 02:02 | I'm looking at the top of this tree and it
looks like it's got a big blob of snow on it.
| | 02:08 | I'm going to take the Eraser tool, or
hit E on the keyboard, and erase into the
| | 02:14 | layer to give me a more realistic tree profile.
| | 02:20 | Press B to get back to the Brush tool
and continue to add snow to the branches.
| | 02:29 | This is in real time,
so forgive the occasional silences.
| | 02:43 | I'm going to add some additional spacing to
this to give myself more texture as I paint.
| | 02:47 | I want the brush to be a little bit
larger, so I'm going to hit the right
| | 02:51 | bracket key to raise the
size in one-pixel increments.
| | 02:54 | Now I can go into this lower area
and paint a heavily textured shrub.
| | 02:59 | The great thing about Photoshop's
custom brush is is it allows you to produce a
| | 03:05 | brush with a lot more character and
roughness to it than the default soft round brush.
| | 03:11 | When I was a young artist still working
entirely in analog media, I only wanted
| | 03:16 | to work with pristine brushes.
| | 03:18 | My favorite at the time was a brand-
new Winsor & Newton #3 red sable brush.
| | 03:24 | When I started working at Walt Disney
Studios, I had a chance to observe the
| | 03:27 | working habits of Peter Ellenshaw, the
great matte artist, and the father of my
| | 03:31 | mentor in matte painting, Harrison Ellenshaw.
| | 03:34 | I was surprise to find that
Peter didn't favor pristine brushes.
| | 03:38 | In fact, some of his favorite
brushes were, to my mind, rather ratty.
| | 03:43 | He often used brushes with uneven edges
and bristles that stuck out to the side
| | 03:48 | and were well past their premium shelf life.
| | 03:51 | When I asked him about it, he told me
he preferred them because they offered
| | 03:55 | more character to the brushstroke,
more texture. And that's what a properly
| | 03:59 | constructed custom brush can give you
a brush with lots of character that can
| | 04:04 | produce happy accidents as you work.
| | 04:06 | I want to paint more of a join at the
base of these shrubs so I don't get this
| | 04:11 | hard broken-up edge.
| | 04:13 | I'm grabbing some of the snow
shadow color to add to the base.
| | 04:18 | That smoothes out the join
between the plants and the ground.
| | 04:20 | I've to got to do the same on all of
these left-side shrubs, so I'm going to
| | 04:26 | grab some of that bright snow color.
And it's easiest to just hand paint these.
| | 04:31 | It will go very quickly.
Again, you've got to stay loose on this stuff.
| | 04:36 | If you think too much about it, you'll
get a much less natural organic look
| | 04:41 | than if you just let your hand flow.
| | 04:52 | I have a little tree to deal with down here.
| | 05:00 | With the foreground plants completely
covered with snow, it's time to work on
| | 05:03 | the background trees, and
we'll do that in the next lesson.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Painting the background trees| 00:00 | These background trees still need some
additional snow, so we'll do that next.
| | 00:05 | I want to keep some of the contrast
that separates these trees from the
| | 00:09 | foothills, so I'm not going to
cover them up entirely with snow.
| | 00:14 | I just want to show that the top branches
are getting as much snow as you might expect.
| | 00:24 | This little tree is more in the
foreground, so I'm going to give it more snow.
| | 00:35 | Sorry for the long silences, but in
this part of the project I am repeatedly
| | 00:39 | painting the same sort of thing, and
although it's important to put the time in
| | 00:44 | to get this looking right, there isn't
much I can say about it, or more details
| | 00:49 | that I can add about my process.
| | 00:53 | You just need to go through and do it,
wherever this landscape needs additional snow.
| | 00:59 | Again, since this is in real time,
there will be some sections with
| | 01:02 | just extended painting.
| | 01:04 | I'm going to use that Foliage brush
again to break up the edges on this roof.
| | 01:32 | And I'm going to add some more snow to
the top of these shrubs to give them a
| | 01:36 | little bit more form.
| | 01:58 | I still need to add snow
to these trees back here.
| | 02:01 | Once again, I'm following
the pattern of the branches.
| | 02:07 | I don't want to knock out all of the
contrast in these trees because that's
| | 02:10 | what's keeping them
closer to us in the foreground.
| | 02:34 | Same with these trees on the right.
| | 03:14 | You can see I'm constantly sampling color
off the plate and varying it a little bit.
| | 03:27 | Let's zoom out and see how that's going.
| | 03:31 | It looks like I've got a good coverage of snow.
| | 03:34 | I still need a little bit
more on these background trees.
| | 03:41 | I want to raise the size of my brush.
| | 03:43 | I want to get these trees more thickly covered.
| | 04:02 | It seems like I've got a lot of
red on the side of this building.
| | 04:05 | I think I'm just going to paint
some pure white into the side.
| | 04:10 | Get rid of that red cast.
| | 04:19 | Now I'm using white in a big soft
round brush to glaze over these foreground
| | 04:24 | trees and hedges to unify the tones
and take down some of the contrast.
| | 04:31 | We're close to finishing
the foreground plant life.
| | 04:34 | Let's zoom out and really examine it.
| | 04:37 | The trees and shrubbery around
the chalet now look pretty good.
| | 04:41 | Next up, we're going to add some
finishing touches to the chalet and add snow to
| | 04:45 | any uncovered horizontal surfaces.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding snow to horizontal surfaces| 00:00 | There are still some details
that need to be attended to.
| | 00:04 | I think the residents of this chalet
would have brought in their summertime
| | 00:07 | umbrella by now, so I'm going to paint that out.
| | 00:11 | You can see by this time in the process,
I no longer have to mix colors, so that
| | 00:15 | I can pull almost my entire
palette right off the painting.
| | 00:18 | As you look at the snowy landscape,
you'll notice that most horizontal surfaces
| | 00:24 | have collected snow on them.
| | 00:26 | So I want to go through and find any
horizontal surface, like this fence, and add
| | 00:30 | a layer of snow to it.
| | 00:33 | Also, all of these windowsills would have snow.
| | 00:35 | I always want to add an underside
shadow to these layers of snow to give them
| | 00:43 | some dimensionality.
| | 00:46 | So again, I'm grabbing my shadow color
right off the plate, skipping around my
| | 00:53 | painting, looking for any
horizontal surface to add a layer of snow to.
| | 00:59 | All of these little details will
work together to produce a convincing
| | 01:03 | wintertime scene and a
believable snow-covered structure.
| | 01:06 | I want to break up this edge
where the snow turns to shadow.
| | 01:13 | I don't think the sharp
edge is particularly snow-like.
| | 01:16 | I'm going to do the same on these windowsills.
| | 01:19 | Maybe I will even add a little snow
dripping down to make the edge more organic.
| | 01:28 | I failed to save that Icicle brush;
I want to save that right now.
| | 01:32 | I'm going to save it as a
new brush preset, Icicle.
| | 01:35 | I want to make sure I get the top of this
back wall covered and all of these fences.
| | 01:48 | Also the top surfaces of all of this
railing detail would be a nice place to add
| | 01:53 | a little bit of snow.
| | 01:54 | I'm sure it would collect there.
| | 01:59 | I notice I missed the backside of this roof.
| | 02:02 | I want to add some snow on top of
that and a little additional shadow,
| | 02:11 | since it's falling away.
| | 02:13 | I need to define the back edge of this roof.
| | 02:19 | I'd like to firm up some of
these hard edges on top of the roof.
| | 02:27 | I'm going to return to a hard solid
brush and add just a bit of irregularity.
| | 02:33 | To add some lumpiness to this line,
I'm going to increase the Size Jitter.
| | 02:38 | That will make it look more like snow.
| | 02:43 | That way I can still draw with the line,
but it gives me some nice irregularity
| | 02:47 | that keeps the snow looking organic.
| | 02:50 | Just scribbling in some snow on these
top railings. As I zoomed in closer, I
| | 02:56 | noticed that I'd failed to paint out
some of these flowers, so I want to take
| | 02:59 | the time to do that.
| | 03:01 | I can be very loose;
this is all pretty much in shadow.
| | 03:07 | You can see I've got some roughness
and scattering on this, so that I'm not
| | 03:10 | laying down a flat tone.
| | 03:16 | I'm skipping from area to area,
looking for anything that bothers me that
| | 03:20 | doesn't look quite right.
| | 03:21 | It's the top of this railing
detail on the front side of the chalet.
| | 03:25 | I'm going to very quickly knock
that in. And cover a few more horizontal
| | 03:32 | surfaces as I see them.
| | 03:33 | I still don't like the shape of the
top of this tree, so I'm going to take
| | 03:38 | another pass at that.
| | 03:40 | I'm going to zoom out, see
if anything jumps out at me.
| | 03:46 | I'm looking at the overall
adjustment on the background mountains, and I
| | 03:49 | think they're too blue.
| | 03:51 | So I'm going to open up the curves.
| | 03:53 | I'm going to pull some of the blue out by
pulling down on the midtones of the blue channel.
| | 03:59 | I'm going to pull a little green out.
| | 04:01 | Now the blue of the background
mountains more closely matches the shadow color
| | 04:07 | of the foreground snow.
| | 04:09 | Next up, I want to replace the sky.
| | 04:12 | I want a sky that's larger than my
original plate, so I can move it in my
| | 04:16 | animation in After Effects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Replacing the SkyPreparing the sky for cloud replacement| 00:00 | Now that we've finished winterizing
the mountains and the chalet, I want
| | 00:03 | to replace the sky.
| | 00:05 | The sky in the plate doesn't
silhouette the mountains very well, and I want a
| | 00:09 | larger sky, so I can move it
during my After Effects animation.
| | 00:13 | I have some beautiful skies in my
library that I shot while I was on vacation in
| | 00:18 | the Virgin Islands, and I'm
going to use a couple of them here.
| | 00:22 | Both of these skies were
shot in the Camera Raw format.
| | 00:25 | Camera Raw is an amazingly flexible
format that keeps all of the data the
| | 00:29 | camera records at the moment a picture is taken.
| | 00:32 | I recommend to anyone interested in
matte painting that they invest in a camera
| | 00:36 | capable of taking pictures in that format.
| | 00:39 | This sky is lit from the correct
direction for my scene, and I'm going to make a
| | 00:43 | couple of adjustments before I open it.
| | 00:46 | First I am going to raise the highlight
and darken the exposure a slight amount.
| | 00:50 | I'm going to raise the contrast a
couple of points and go ahead and open it.
| | 00:56 | First, I want to get rid of the
clouds that I already have on the plate.
| | 01:00 | So I'm going to go ahead and make a new
layer, and I want to return to that sky
| | 01:05 | that I just opened and do a
little color correction on it.
| | 01:09 | Looking at the chalet scene, I think
this Caribbean scene has a little bit
| | 01:13 | too much red in it,
| | 01:14 | so I want to take some of that out.
| | 01:16 | I'd also like to increase the contrast,
so I get some pure whites in the cloud,
| | 01:20 | so I'm going to pull in that white point.
| | 01:22 | So now I'm going to raise the midtones to
lighten the sky overall and accept that.
| | 01:28 | I want to select some blues off of
this sky to use on my chalet plate.
| | 01:33 | I'm going to select the Gradient tool,
set the foreground to transparent, and
| | 01:38 | then drag straight down to use
that color from my sky plate.
| | 01:41 | I am going to return to the sky and
choose a lighter color near the horizon,
| | 01:47 | then return to the chalet and gradient up to
get that lighter color behind the mountains.
| | 01:53 | I'm going to select that intense blue
off of my clouds one more time and then
| | 01:59 | return to my plate and gradient down again.
| | 02:02 | The sky is now obviously bleeding
through and covering the areas of the plate
| | 02:07 | that are still showing through, something I
don't want, so I need to prepare a layer mask.
| | 02:12 | Now, Command+Click or Ctrl+Click into
the layer icon preview for the Mountains
| | 02:18 | layer and then Shift+Command+Ctrl+Click on
the Painting layer to add it to the selection.
| | 02:25 | Then holding down the Shift key,
I'm going to lasso around the bottom of the
| | 02:29 | plate to add that part to the selection.
| | 02:32 | Now I've selected the opposite of
what I need for this mask, so I need to
| | 02:36 | invert the selection.
| | 02:37 | I'm going to go up to Select > Inverse,
then click on the Add Layer Mask icon at
| | 02:43 | the bottom that looks like a
card with a dark circle on it.
| | 02:46 | Now the sky only show through
where there is white in the layer mask.
| | 02:51 | Next up, we're going to extract some
clouds that we can use to create a new
| | 02:55 | sky for our plate.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Extracting clouds| 00:00 | With the sky prepared, I want to
return to that shot from the Virgin Islands,
| | 00:04 | and I'm going to extract the clouds.
| | 00:06 | I want to go to the top
menu to select Color Range.
| | 00:10 | I want to get rid of some of these
wispy clouds and keep just the cloud bodies,
| | 00:14 | so I'm going to select an
area of blue sky up top.
| | 00:17 | I need to raise the Fuzziness level
so that will include more tones.
| | 00:22 | And then I'm going to click into some
lighter shades of blue to add them to the
| | 00:26 | selection, and then adjust the level
of fuzziness again until I seem to be
| | 00:31 | getting a clean mask on the clouds.
| | 00:33 | I'm going to add a little bit of that
gray in the clouds of the selection and
| | 00:38 | then adjust the fuzziness one more time
and then click OK to make the selection.
| | 00:43 | It loads the selection in,
but it's the inverse of what I want.
| | 00:47 | So I need to select Inverse again.
| | 00:50 | I don't need the landscape, so holding
down on the Option or Alt key, I'm going
| | 00:55 | to remove that from the
selection and then copy the clouds out.
| | 00:59 | This is a very large file and the
clouds are going to come in much larger than
| | 01:03 | I need them. And I'm going to paste them
in just above the blue sky gradient layer.
| | 01:08 | I'm going to zoom out and turn off the mask.
| | 01:11 | It's good to be able to see the
edges of the file you just pasted in.
| | 01:15 | Now I'm going to scale the clouds
and put them in a good position.
| | 01:20 | As I scale the clouds, I need to
remember that this needs to be large enough
| | 01:24 | that it will have extra room on the
edges to move the clouds in my animation.
| | 01:28 | I'm going to squish the clouds down
and then visualize them moving across the
| | 01:33 | sky behind my mountains.
| | 01:35 | I am going to accept that
transformation and turn my mask back on.
| | 01:40 | Now I can see exactly how much room I've
got on the edges, and that looks pretty good.
| | 01:45 | I want to add a second layer of
smaller clouds behind this big cloud mask,
| | 01:49 | so I'm going to open up another photo I took.
| | 01:52 | I like these little wispy clouds on
the right. And again, I'm going to make a
| | 01:57 | few tweaks to the exposure before
I open it, then press Open Image.
| | 02:03 | I'm going to use that same
Color Range extraction technique.
| | 02:07 | I am going to select several blues from
the sky, holding down the Shift key so
| | 02:11 | that it adds the new tone to the selection.
| | 02:14 | I'm watching that preview in the
Color Range dialog to tell when I've got
| | 02:18 | these clouds separated.
| | 02:20 | And since I've selected the sky,
I again need to invert the selection.
| | 02:24 | I don't want that big cloud mask,
just those little side clouds.
| | 02:29 | I'm going to set my Feather to 5 pixels,
then Option+Alt+Shift+Marquee-select to
| | 02:35 | intersect with just the area needed.
| | 02:37 | I'm going to copy that out and return to
the chalet plate and paste that section in.
| | 02:42 | I'm going to move it up where I can see it.
| | 02:45 | I clearly need to do some
color correction on this.
| | 02:47 | I'm going to open up Curves
and go to the red channel.
| | 02:50 | I'm going to use the eyedropper to see
where that color resides in the body of
| | 02:54 | the cloud, and I just want to
pull the red out of that part.
| | 02:58 | Then returning to the RGB, I'm going to
brighten the cloud body up a bit and add
| | 03:03 | some more contrast on the blacks.
| | 03:04 | I'm going to accept that correction,
| | 03:08 | move it down, and then change the
location so that it's behind the
| | 03:12 | large foreground cloud.
| | 03:16 | Now I want to distort it into the shape I need.
| | 03:19 | I want it to be a wispy long
cloud, the kind that hugs the horizon.
| | 03:24 | With the clouds in position, I'm going
to open up the Curves again. It looks like I
| | 03:28 | need to reduce the contrast, and I am
going to pull down on the white point and
| | 03:33 | then add a little bit of yellow.
| | 03:35 | I am going to pull down on the blue
midtones since yellow is the opposite
| | 03:39 | of blue in RGB space.
| | 03:41 | I am going to turn that back layer
off for a minute, and then I want a solo
| | 03:46 | that main cloud layer by Option+Clicking or
Alt+Clicking into the eyeball next to the layer.
| | 03:52 | And I want to marquee select some of
these low wispy clouds on this big cloud bank.
| | 03:56 | I have a 5-pixel feather on
this, so it won't be a hard edge.
| | 04:01 | And I'm going to cut those wispy
clouds off of the layer by pressing
| | 04:06 | Command+Shift+J or Ctrl+Shift+J. I don't like
this hard edge on the left side of the cloud.
| | 04:12 | I want to bring this more into the
center of the picture, so I am going to go in
| | 04:15 | with the Eraser tool and just soften that edge.
| | 04:18 | Now I am going to turn on all of the
layers again and move those wispy clouds
| | 04:23 | behind those other background clouds.
| | 04:25 | I think those two layers of wispy
clouds will work pretty good for a
| | 04:29 | background cloud layer.
| | 04:32 | I'm going to merge them together,
Command+E or Ctrl+E, and then name them
| | 04:37 | BackClouds. And the front clouds
I'm going to call ForegroundClouds.
| | 04:42 | I'll name that blue gradient layer Sky.
| | 04:47 | Now I can test out moving my ForegroundClouds.
| | 04:51 | One last detail: I'd like the sky where
it meets the mountains slightly lighter,
| | 04:56 | so I'm going to select that color
near the horizon and lighten it using the
| | 05:00 | color picker, and then I'm going to
gradient up some of that light tone.
| | 05:04 | Next up, we're going to prepare a
dusk version of this scene and create yet
| | 05:09 | another sky so that we can cross
dissolve between the daytime sky and a
| | 05:13 | dramatic sunset sky.
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|
|
4. Creating a Dusk Version of the SceneAdding a blue Multiply layer| 00:00 | With my new sky added, I want to turn
this into a dusk scene, and I'm going
| | 00:05 | to do that by applying a layer of blue, in
Multiply mode, over the top of the landscape.
| | 00:10 | I want to isolate the blue to only the
area of the landscape, so I am going to
| | 00:15 | load in that layer mask I already
created for the sky. And I'm going to need to
| | 00:19 | select the inverse of the selection, so I
have the landscape selected instead of the sky.
| | 00:24 | I'm going to cleanup the selection by
subtracting the mask layer, so I'm going
| | 00:28 | to Command+Option+Click,
Ctrl+Alt+Click into the layer icon preview.
| | 00:33 | I want to start a new layer above all
the other painted layers but below the
| | 00:38 | mask layer, and then fill it
with a dark but neutral blue.
| | 00:43 | I'm going to name the layer
BlueMultiply and fill it full of that color, and
| | 00:49 | then set the Layer Transfer mode to Multiply.
| | 00:52 | I am going to dial back the Opacity
of this layer to 80% so I can see it
| | 00:57 | a little bit better.
| | 00:59 | Now I want to add a dusk sky, because this
bright cloudy sky won't work on the dusk version.
| | 01:05 | This is also from the Corel stock
photo library and it's included with the
| | 01:09 | course materials, so you
can open it up and follow along.
| | 01:12 | I'm going to open up the Curves to make
this sky a little bit more dramatic, and
| | 01:18 | I'm going to pull the black point in to
add more contrast and the white point in
| | 01:22 | to lighten it and add a little
bit more intensity and saturation.
| | 01:25 | So now I'm going to pull down on the
midtones to darken it and add some more
| | 01:30 | intensity, and now we've
got a nice intense dusky sky.
| | 01:34 | I'm going to select All, copy it out,
and paste it in just above all those
| | 01:39 | daytime sky layer elements.
| | 01:42 | And I'll move it into position.
| | 01:44 | I need to scale it up, because I also
plan to move this sky in the animation.
| | 01:48 | I want to make sure I've got enough
room to move the sky around and then hit
| | 01:53 | Return to accept the transformation.
| | 01:55 | I want to select that orange right at
the base of the sky and choose a big
| | 02:00 | soft round brush, then solo that
layer, and then go in there and paint over
| | 02:05 | that existing landscape.
| | 02:07 | I don't want that suddenly
showing up behind my mountains.
| | 02:09 | I want to patch this edge just a
bit to give myself some extra room.
| | 02:15 | Now I'll press Command+J or Ctrl+J to
copy that little section onto a new
| | 02:19 | layer and stretch it out. Then merge those
two layers together and call this layer DuskSky.
| | 02:25 | Now I'll press Option+Click or
Alt+Click and click onto the eyeball next to the
| | 02:31 | DuskSky layer to unsolo it
and turn on the other layers.
| | 02:35 | I need a layer mask for this layer and
I'm going to use that same layer mask I
| | 02:40 | created for the daytime sky.
| | 02:42 | So I'm going to Command+Click or
Ctrl+Click into the preview for the daytime sky
| | 02:46 | mask and with the selection
visible, I'll apply a layer mask to it.
| | 02:52 | Next up, we're going to light
some windows inside the chalet.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Lighting windows| 00:00 | Now it's time to light up some windows
inside the chalet as dusk falls on the scene.
| | 00:06 | First, turn off the BlueMultiply
layer and zoom in on the chalet so you
| | 00:10 | can select the windows.
| | 00:12 | Let's first work with the Magic Wand
tool and see if we can select the window-
| | 00:16 | panes without getting the window supports.
| | 00:19 | I'm holding down the Shift key each
time I make a selection so that I add to
| | 00:24 | the selection rather than starting a new one.
| | 00:26 | I'm going to need to do some cleanup on these
windows, but this is giving me a good start.
| | 00:32 | With the Lasso tool still selected,
I'm going to set the Feather down to 1 so I
| | 00:36 | get a little bit of a soft edge and go
in and clean up all of these borders.
| | 00:42 | I'm using the Freehand Lasso tool
right now, but I'm going to want to switch
| | 00:47 | to the Rectangular Marquee tool to clean up
the horizontal and vertical edges of the windows.
| | 00:53 | And again, I want to make sure that
the Feather is set to 1 pixel and then go
| | 00:57 | through and clean up all of
these window edges and supports.
| | 01:00 | I've done a random selection of the
windows throughout the house, and I plan to
| | 01:05 | bring these on one at a time, so it
will look like different parts of the house
| | 01:09 | become illuminated at different times.
| | 01:11 | I also want to select these windows
down here, because I plan to show the light
| | 01:15 | shining out from them onto the snow.
| | 01:18 | This area is rather low contrast,
so I have to hand select it.
| | 01:22 | That's just about it.
| | 01:25 | I want to get these bottom partial windows.
| | 01:28 | Now I want to add a new layer, and this
needs to be on top of the BlueMultiply layer.
| | 01:34 | I'm going to call this layer Windows.
| | 01:36 | Then I'm going to turn on that
BlueMultiply layer because I need to know what
| | 01:41 | this scene will look like in its dusk state.
| | 01:43 | Then I'm going to choose a nice warm,
inviting color for the interior of the
| | 01:48 | chalet and with a big soft round brush,
I'm going to go with it and brush all of
| | 01:54 | these windows with color.
I want to vary the color.
| | 01:58 | If I leave it like this, it will look
like these windows are made out of frosted
| | 02:02 | glass, so let me choose a darker
orange and then go through and just add some
| | 02:07 | variation throughout.
| | 02:08 | And then I'm going to choose a nice
bright highlight color, like a bright
| | 02:14 | yellow, and dab that in.
| | 02:16 | That will show where lights are on in the room.
| | 02:24 | And then finally, I want to choose a
darker warm color and go through and turn
| | 02:28 | off the lights in various sections of the room.
| | 02:31 | It will look much more like people
are actually living in the structure.
| | 02:34 | Then I want to zoom out and
deselect all and take a good look at this.
| | 02:41 | It's looking pretty good.
| | 02:43 | I think I've got a few too many lights.
| | 02:46 | I'm going to go through with the
eraser and add even a little more variation.
| | 02:52 | With the illuminated windows added in,
the BlueMultiply layer now looks lighter
| | 02:56 | than it should be and a bit too bright.
| | 02:59 | Open up the Curves dialog and pull
down on the white point to both darken
| | 03:03 | and desaturate the layer. Then pull down on
the midtones a bit to darken it even more.
| | 03:09 | Now the scene looks very dusky.
| | 03:12 | However, it now looks too desaturated,
so open up the Saturation dialog and add
| | 03:17 | a few points of saturation.
| | 03:21 | Next, let's add an orange glow to the
hills and the top of the chalet to more
| | 03:25 | closely unify the sky and the landscape.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding an orange glow| 00:00 | My mountain chalet is starting to look
really dusky, but I'd like to add some
| | 00:04 | orange glow onto the top of the hills
and onto the top of the chalet to unify
| | 00:09 | this scene and blend the landscape in.
| | 00:12 | There would probably also be some glow on
this patch of snow in front of the chalet,
| | 00:16 | so I'm going to create another new
layer on top of the BlueMultiply layer and
| | 00:21 | then choose an orange from the sky.
| | 00:23 | I'm going to choose a slightly lighter
orange and then fill the entire new layer
| | 00:29 | full of that orange and set the
layer blending mode to Overlay.
| | 00:34 | I'm going to control where this
orange glow shows up by using a layer mask.
| | 00:40 | Select all and then fill the layer
mask with black. Then load in the layer
| | 00:46 | selection from the foothills.
| | 00:50 | Then choose a soft round brush, make it
nice and large, and then just brush white
| | 00:57 | into the layer mask where I
want the orange glow to show up.
| | 01:00 | I'd like to add some orange glow right
here where the most intense part of the
| | 01:06 | sky is showing through between the mountains.
| | 01:09 | I'm going to load in the selection from
the BlueMultiply layer and then paint
| | 01:14 | that orange glow in with
the big round soft brush.
| | 01:19 | If I go overboard with the glow, I can
always press X to load black into the
| | 01:23 | foreground color and then paint black into
the layer mask to remove some of the glow.
| | 01:29 | I'd like to add a little orange glow
onto this foreground patch of snow also, so
| | 01:34 | I'm going to load in the selection from
this Snow layer mask and paint white in
| | 01:39 | to the Orange Glow layer. And I'm going
to add the selection from the Rooftop
| | 01:45 | layer and add some of that
orange glow to the roof of the chalet.
| | 01:49 | I want to zoom in because I want to
add an orange glow to these windows that
| | 01:55 | are right down here near the snow.
| | 01:57 | I'm not going to add this to the
Orange Glow layer, but right onto the same
| | 02:01 | layer as the windows.
| | 02:04 | Still using that soft round brush,
I'm going to sample a color right from the
| | 02:08 | windows, then paint some
light shining out onto the snow.
| | 02:13 | It seems like a little too much.
| | 02:15 | I'm going to select the Eraser tool
and erase a little bit of what I did.
| | 02:18 | I want to zoom out and take
a good look at the windows.
| | 02:22 | Looking at the overall scene, I think
I'd like it a little darker, so I'm going
| | 02:26 | to go to my BlueMultiply layer and
change it from 80% to 90% opacity.
| | 02:33 | No winter scene like this would be
complete without some smoke coming out of the
| | 02:37 | smokestack, so let's add
that as a final detail.
| | 02:39 | I've got a photo of smoke already
separated out in a file and I'm going to open
| | 02:44 | that, Select All, and copy it.
| | 02:47 | Returning to my chalet file,
I'm going to paste it in and position it right
| | 02:52 | over the smokestack.
| | 02:53 | The smoke doesn't look dark enough here,
but rather than color correct it in
| | 02:57 | Photoshop, I'm going to handle
all of that in After Effects.
| | 03:00 | That will also allow me to have the
smoke be nice and bright in the summertime
| | 03:04 | version and then darken it as we go into dusk.
| | 03:07 | Name this layer Smoke. And that's it
for the painting part of this project.
| | 03:13 | If you've been following along and
want to compare your work to mine, and you
| | 03:17 | are a Premium member of lynda.com, you
can see my final painting in the exercise
| | 03:21 | files inside the Plate folder.
| | 03:25 | Next up, we'll prepare the file for
After Effects, where we'll turn it into
| | 03:29 | an animation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Animating Your Scene in After EffectsPreparing the file for After Effects| 00:00 | With our digital matte painting
finished, we're ready to take the finish into
| | 00:04 | After Effects and create an animation.
| | 00:06 | However, you don't want to bring
this multilayered work file into After
| | 00:10 | Effects. All these layers will make
the project larger that needs to be and
| | 00:15 | harder to deal with.
| | 00:17 | First, make sure you've saved this
work file with all of the layers before
| | 00:20 | you start this process.
| | 00:22 | We will reduce the number
of layers for After Effects,
| | 00:25 | but you may want to return to the
many-layered version to make corrections.
| | 00:30 | So go up to the top menu and save your
project. Then save it again under a new name.
| | 00:36 | I'm going to name it the same as the
original plate ~MountainChalet_671035, and
| | 00:45 | add "ForAE," or For After Effects, at the
end. Then save it as a layered Photoshop file.
| | 00:54 | Now you need to reduce the
number of layers in this new file.
| | 00:57 | What I need for After Effects is the
landscape separate, the sky separate,
| | 01:03 | and the Multiply and Overlay layer
is separate so I can fade them on.
| | 01:07 | Also, I'll want the smoke and the
illuminated windows on separate layers.
| | 01:13 | First off, I want to get rid of the mask.
I'm not going to bring that into After Effects.
| | 01:18 | Using the new version of the Crop
tool in Photoshop 6, Command+Click or
| | 01:23 | Ctrl+Click into the layer mask icon
preview to load the selection. Then go to
| | 01:28 | Select > Inverse and choose the
Crop tool, or press C on the keyboard.
| | 01:34 | Since this is Photoshop CS6, the crop
appears exactly the same size as the selection.
| | 01:39 | I want to double-check that I don't
have DeleteCroppedPixels checked at the
| | 01:44 | top of the interface.
| | 01:46 | If you have that checked, it will also
crop the clouds layer, which you don't want.
| | 01:51 | In older versions of Photoshop,
there will be two checkboxes: one for Delete
| | 01:55 | and the other for Hide.
| | 01:57 | Make sure you choose Hide. Hit Return
to confirm the crop and Photoshop crops
| | 02:02 | the file to the exact
dimension of the inner mask.
| | 02:06 | Next, I want to isolate the summer
version, so I'm going to solo this layer 0.
| | 02:10 | And you can see that's the summer
version, but I need to get rid of the sky.
| | 02:15 | I'm going to Command+Click or Ctrl+Click
into the icon Preview for the Sky layer
| | 02:19 | mask to load it in and then hit Delete
to delete the sky from that layer.
| | 02:25 | And now I'm going to name this layer Summer.
| | 02:29 | I'm going to rename this Sky layer SummerSky.
| | 02:33 | I'm going to move that and the foreground
and background clouds below the summer
| | 02:37 | version of the landscape so it
will act as a mask for the clouds.
| | 02:42 | With that done, I no longer need the
mask layer on the SummerSky, so I'm
| | 02:46 | going to delete it.
| | 02:49 | Now I need to prepare the
winter version of the landscape.
| | 02:52 | I am going to turn that on and I'm going
to Command+Click or Ctrl+Click into the
| | 02:57 | layer thumbnail preview for the
summer version to load the selection.
| | 03:01 | Select > Inverse and then delete
this sky out of the winter version.
| | 03:07 | I've still got all of these other layers
that make up the winter version, so I
| | 03:11 | am going to select them all and move them
right on top of the base of the winter version.
| | 03:17 | Then I am going to select them all
and press Command+E or Ctrl+E to merge
| | 03:23 | all layers together.
| | 03:25 | And I'll rename this layer Winter.
Then I'll move that DuskSky below the
| | 03:31 | winter landscape. And I no longer need the
layer mask, so I am going to delete that also.
| | 03:39 | I still want my BlueMultiply layer, I
still want my Orange Overlay layer, but
| | 03:48 | masks don't transfer over to After Effects,
| | 03:50 | so Command+Click or Ctrl+Click
into the layer mask preview to load the
| | 03:55 | selection. Then select the Inverse and
then delete the layer mask. Then press
| | 04:02 | Delete to remove the Orange Overlay
from everywhere that wasn't masked.
| | 04:08 | Then I can turn on the DuskSky to
confirm that everything has come again
| | 04:12 | as expected, then turn on the Windows
layer, and delete the remains of the Mask layer.
| | 04:20 | Save this again with a new layer structure.
| | 04:22 | If you've been following along and want
to compare your work with mine and you
| | 04:26 | are a lynda.com Premium member,
you can find my file in the 3_AfterEffects
| | 04:32 | folder in the exercise files.
| | 04:35 | This is the file we will use in the
next lesson to create an animation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating the scene| 00:00 | Now we're going to composite and
animate our digital matte painting.
| | 00:04 | I'm going to locate that special
reduced file I prepared for After Effects.
| | 00:09 | For those of you who are lynda.com
Premium members, you can check out what my
| | 00:13 | final file looks like inside the
After Effects Course Material Folder.
| | 00:19 | Now just drag that Photoshop file
into the After Effects project window.
| | 00:25 | Under Import Kind, make sure
Composition - Retain Layer Sizes is chosen.
| | 00:30 | That crops each layer to as small as it can be.
| | 00:34 | If you choose Composition, it brings
everything in the same size as the entire
| | 00:39 | comp, and that can make the
project harder to deal with.
| | 00:43 | With that chosen, press OK.
| | 00:45 | You'll notice that all of layers have
been brought in and After Effects has been
| | 00:49 | nice enough to create a comp for you.
| | 00:52 | Double-click on that comp to open it up
in the viewer and then zoom out so you
| | 00:56 | can see the entire composition.
| | 00:57 | I wan to choose Fit up to
100% so it will interactively resize.
| | 01:04 | Let's start with the summer version,
and we will do an animated version of that.
| | 01:10 | Scroll down the little arrow to the
left of the ForegroundClouds layer
| | 01:14 | and click the watch icon
next to Position to set a position keyframe.
| | 01:18 | Then I am going to select the
BackClouds and set a keyframe on them all so.
| | 01:25 | Then move in the Timeline to the end of
the animation, select both cloud layers,
| | 01:30 | and move them to the left together.
| | 01:33 | The background clouds should move less,
since they are further away, so pull
| | 01:37 | them back to the right a little bit.
| | 01:39 | Now the foreground clouds move faster and
we have a nice subtle animated cloud bank.
| | 01:46 | This move goes across all 500
frames, so it's fairly slow.
| | 01:49 | Now I want to animate the
transition to the wintertime version.
| | 01:54 | So I need to locate and turn on the
Winter layer and set a 100% opacity keyframe
| | 02:00 | at around frame 150. And then let's
move to a round frame 100 and set a 0% opacity keyframe.
| | 02:11 | By animating the opacity of the
Winter layer, it reveals the wintertime
| | 02:15 | version over 50 frames.
| | 02:19 | I think that's a little too fast,
I am going to move the opacity keyframe
| | 02:23 | to around frame 200.
| | 02:25 | Now you have a little longer to
watch the snowy landscape appear.
| | 02:29 | Next, we're going to add snow to
the scene using a built-in effect in
| | 02:33 | After Effects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding snow using CC Snow| 00:00 | No wintertime scene is complete without
falling snow, so let's add that using an effect.
| | 00:06 | First let's create a mew solid, so I go
up to Layer > New > Solid. Then choose a
| | 00:12 | completely black color.
| | 00:15 | Now add an effect to this new solid.
| | 00:18 | In the top menu, choose Effect >
Simulation. Then choose CC Snow, a standard
| | 00:24 | effect in After Effects CS5.
| | 00:27 | In CS6, the effect has been renamed CC SnowFall.
| | 00:32 | As you can see, it added
little particles of snow.
| | 00:34 | It also blocked out the entire scene, so
you need to set the Transfer mode to Screen.
| | 00:41 | If mode isn't showing up in your
Timeline, go to the upper-right corner of the
| | 00:45 | Timeline and click on the dropdown menu.
| | 00:47 | Then choose Columns and
make sure Modes is checked.
| | 00:52 | Now you have animated snow falling on the scene.
| | 00:57 | I think the size of the flake should be
larger, so raise Flake Size to around 3.
| | 01:05 | That's starting to work.
| | 01:06 | The speed of the flakes looks about right;
| | 01:08 | however, it shouldn't start
snowing until around frame 100.
| | 01:14 | You control how much snow as
appearing by changing the Amount setting.
| | 01:18 | So about frame 100, I am
going to keyframe the Amount to 0.
| | 01:23 | And then at frame 150,
let's really have it snow.
| | 01:26 | I'm going to dial this up to around 2000,
so now it starts to snow and then the
| | 01:32 | Winter landscape slowly appears.
| | 01:36 | Next, let's locate and turn on the
BlueMultiply layer and the DuskSky to match.
| | 01:44 | I want both the dusk version and
the sky to start appearing together.
| | 01:49 | Select the DuskSky layer, hit T for
Transparency to solo the Opacity property.
| | 01:56 | Set a 0% keyframe around frame 250 and
then set a 100% keyframe around frame 300.
| | 02:04 | Now the DuskSky animates on over 50 frames.
| | 02:09 | Select the BlueMultiply layer and solo
the Opacity, set a 0% opacity keyframe
| | 02:17 | around frame 250, move 100
frames forward to around frame 350.
| | 02:24 | That automatically sets a new keyframe for you.
| | 02:28 | On that frame, I am going to
dial the Opacity up to 80%.
| | 02:34 | Looking at it now, I think I want the
DuskSky to fade on at the same rate as the
| | 02:39 | BlueMultiply layer,
| | 02:40 | so I am going to move that
100% opacity keyframe to frame 350.
| | 02:47 | Now the sky fades on over 100 frames.
| | 02:50 | The DuskSky still needs to be
animated, so I'm going to set up a position
| | 02:55 | keyframe for where the sky first
clears the left side, and then move that
| | 03:00 | keyframe to the place on the Timeline
where the sky first appears, and where
| | 03:04 | it's set to 0 Opacity.
| | 03:07 | And then move to frame 500
and move the sky to the left.
| | 03:11 | Now I am going to scrub through it,
and I want to see that the motion of the
| | 03:16 | dusk sky fairly closely matches
the motion of the daytime sky.
| | 03:21 | That looks pretty good.
| | 03:22 | It would be nice if the snow stopped
falling as dusk falls on the chalet.
| | 03:27 | That will allow us to concentrate on the
lights coming on and the glow on the landscape.
| | 03:33 | So I'm going to click on that black
solid that has the Snow filter on it. Then I
| | 03:38 | am going to open up the properties for
the CC Snow effect and set a keyframe for
| | 03:43 | Amount around frame 300,
| | 03:47 | and then a very low-amount keyframe at
around frame 350, then find and turn on
| | 03:54 | the Orange Overlay layer.
| | 03:56 | I want what the Orange Overlay layer
to appear as dusk starts to fall but
| | 04:01 | obviously not in the daytime version.
| | 04:04 | Now press T to solo the Opacity property.
| | 04:08 | Set a 0% opacity keyframe at around frame
300 and a 100% opacity keyframe at around
| | 04:15 | frame 400 so that the orange
glow fades on over 100 frames.
| | 04:21 | Then move to frame 500, since we want
the orange glow to disappear as the sun
| | 04:26 | sets, and set a 0% opacity keyframe
there so that it completely fades away.
| | 04:34 | We need to set two more
keyframes for the BlueMultiply layer.
| | 04:38 | One goes at frame 400, so we'll remain at
80% Opacity, and then at frame 500, it
| | 04:44 | should be at 100% Opacity,
as night falls on the chalet.
| | 04:50 | Next up, we're going to light the
windows one at a time, then animate the smoke
| | 04:55 | using a displacement map.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Lighting the windows sequentially| 00:00 | With the animated transition from
summer to winter and from daytime to dusk
| | 00:04 | completed, let's turn on the
windows in the chalet sequentially as
| | 00:09 | nighttime falls on the scene.
| | 00:12 | So first off, locate and turn on the
Windows layer, and then open up the
| | 00:16 | Properties panel. Then set an
opacity keyframe at around frame 400.
| | 00:21 | I'm going to scoot the keyframe back a
bit to maybe 375 and then move forward
| | 00:28 | and set a 100% keyframe.
| | 00:31 | Lights in houses don't usually fade on;
| | 00:33 | they snap on as people turn on
their lights, so let's move those two
| | 00:37 | keyframes together.
| | 00:39 | Let's preview that.
| | 00:42 | That's good, but I don't like
how these lights come on together.
| | 00:46 | So let's set up some masks on the windows
and have them come on at different times.
| | 00:51 | In the top toolbar, I'm going to
select the Rectangle tool to create
| | 00:56 | some rectangular masks.
| | 00:58 | Make sure that you have the Windows
layer selected and draw right around
| | 01:02 | that bottom window.
| | 01:03 | Now click on the Windows layer itself,
not the mask, and duplicate the layer,
| | 01:08 | which is Command+D or Ctrl+D. Select the
mask and then move it up so that it's
| | 01:13 | around a different window.
| | 01:16 | Duplicate that windows layer again,
select the mask, and move it up around yet
| | 01:22 | another set of windows. And resize it,
Then duplicate the windows layer again,
| | 01:30 | select the mask, and move it
over another set of windows.
| | 01:34 | Than duplicate the windows one last time,
select the mask, and move it over the
| | 01:41 | last set of windows.
| | 01:42 | Now I'm going to select all of the
windows layers and then hit T, so it will
| | 01:48 | reveal the opacity
properties for all the windows.
| | 01:52 | Then offset the Opacity property
for all of the layers so they're all
| | 01:56 | slightly different.
| | 01:58 | That way all the windows
will come on at different times.
| | 02:03 | Next up, we're going to animate the
smoke using a displacement map, and we'll do
| | 02:07 | that in the next lesson.
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| Animating smoke using displacement| 00:00 | So everything is looking good, but I
still haven't dealt with the smoke coming
| | 00:04 | up from the chimney.
| | 00:05 | I'm going to find and turn on the
Smoke layer, and let's zoom in on it.
| | 00:11 | Let's scrub through the Timeline.
| | 00:13 | I would like the smoke to
start when it starts snowing.
| | 00:16 | I'm going to open the Property panel
for the Smoke layer and then press T to
| | 00:21 | solo the opacity and set a 0%
keyframe at about frame 160.
| | 00:29 | Right around frame 200,
I want the smoke to be 100%.
| | 00:34 | The smoke doesn't look very good there;
| | 00:36 | it's too dark. But we're going to
color correct it in After Effects.
| | 00:40 | So go up to the top menu, Effect >
Color Correction > Curves.
| | 00:45 | With Curves open, I'm going to curve
up the midtones so that it lightens
| | 00:49 | the smoke considerably.
| | 00:51 | The curve has added a lot of
saturation to the smoke, so I'm going to go to
| | 00:55 | Color Correction > Hue/Saturation and
desaturate it so that it looks grayer.
| | 01:00 | Now I'll scrub through and see
how the smoke looks later on.
| | 01:04 | Now it looks too light.
| | 01:06 | I need to keyframe both the
Hue/Saturation property and the curve I just applied.
| | 01:11 | I'm going to scrub to around frame
320 and then darken the smoke down.
| | 01:18 | That looks about right. Then I
can restore some of that saturation.
| | 01:21 | I'd like a little bit of that blue color back.
| | 01:24 | Then I'll scrub to frame 500, to where
night has really fallen. And it looks like
| | 01:31 | the smoke needs to be
curved a little darker again.
| | 01:34 | Maybe I'll pull down on the
white point and scrub through.
| | 01:39 | Now the color balance on
the smoke looks pretty good.
| | 01:43 | However, the smoke still looks
really lame, because it doesn't move.
| | 01:47 | You might think that you'd have to use
some video footage of smoke here, but I
| | 01:51 | want to show you a technique using
displacement maps that will make terrific-
| | 01:55 | looking smoke without the overhead of video.
| | 01:59 | To create the displacement map,
I'm going to create a new solid, and I'm going
| | 02:04 | to make it black, and on this black
solid I'm going to go up to Effect > Noise &
| | 02:10 | Grain > Fractal Noise.
| | 02:13 | That loads a fractal noise
pattern over the black solid.
| | 02:16 | Now we need to resize the fractal
noise pattern so that it looks like the
| | 02:21 | smoke in our picture.
| | 02:23 | I think in this case the fractal noise
is too large, so I'm going to go up to
| | 02:27 | the Fractal Noise Control, open up
Transform, and then scale the noise down.
| | 02:33 | I want the particles of fractal noise
to resemble the puffs of smoke coming out
| | 02:38 | of the chimney.
Somewhere around 40 works really well.
| | 02:43 | I need to animate the fractal noise.
And the smoke is going to be rising, so I'm
| | 02:48 | going to go to frame 1, scroll down on
the black solid transform properties,
| | 02:53 | then pull down on the black
solid to move the fractal noise.
| | 02:57 | Then zoom out so you can
clearly see how much coverage there is.
| | 03:03 | The gap at the top isn't a problem;
| | 03:05 | you just need to make sure that
the smoke is entirely covered.
| | 03:10 | Now set a position keyframe for the
black solid and then move to frame 500 and
| | 03:16 | scoot the fractal noise pattern up in the frame.
| | 03:20 | The smoke doesn't appear until frame
150, so move that position keyframe to
| | 03:25 | where it first appears.
Then check the motion of the fractal noise.
| | 03:30 | That's starting to look like the motion we need.
| | 03:33 | I know that right about now you're
probably thinking "wow, that doesn't look
| | 03:37 | very much like smoke."
| | 03:38 | Well, we haven't used it as a
displacement map yet, and we need to do that.
| | 03:44 | First, you can't use fractal
noise as a displacement map directly;
| | 03:48 | you have to pre-compose the layer.
| | 03:51 | So we're going to go up
here to Layer > Pre-compose.
| | 03:54 | We'll name the pre-composition
SmokeDisplacement and be sure that Move all
| | 04:00 | attributes into the new composition is checked.
| | 04:04 | Turn on the new SmokeDisplacement
pre-comp. And then just to stay organized in
| | 04:09 | this project, move the
smokeDisplacementmap over the smoke.
| | 04:14 | With the Smoke layer selected, go up to
Effect > Distort > Displacement Map, and
| | 04:21 | for the displacement map, use SmokeDisplacement.
| | 04:26 | Now turn off the visibility of the
SmokeDisplacement map and then zoom in on the
| | 04:31 | smoke, so we can see it.
| | 04:33 | And if you watch it closely, you can
see there's a little bit of motion in the
| | 04:37 | smoke, but not enough.
| | 04:39 | We need to adjust the settings on it.
| | 04:42 | Turn up Maximum Horizontal Displacement.
Put it some where around 20--and the same
| | 04:48 | with Vertical Displacement.
| | 04:50 | Now as we scrub to it again,
we're getting a nice amount of motion in the smoke
| | 04:54 | and really quite a realistic effect.
| | 04:57 | Let's zoom out again.
| | 04:59 | Let's do a RAM preview on the whole scene.
| | 05:02 | It's hard to judge smoke displacement
unless you actually see it in real time.
| | 05:07 | Watching it in real time,
I think that works pretty well.
| | 05:10 | The effect is subtle on the smoke
but quite convincing. And now the lights
| | 05:15 | come on in the chalet.
| | 05:17 | Let's look at it one more time to double-check.
| | 05:19 | I think that's looking good.
| | 05:22 | So we're almost done. All we need to do
now is to reformat it and render it out
| | 05:28 | so we can admire our handiwork, and
we'll do that in the next, and final, lesson.
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| Reformatting and rendering the scene| 00:00 | I'm almost ready to render this out,
but in order to put plenty of detail in
| | 00:04 | this piece, I painted it a lot larger
than I needed it for the final render.
| | 00:09 | So, I want to reformat this to a more
traditional cinematic dimension, and at the
| | 00:14 | same time, I can add a nice camera move to it.
| | 00:17 | I want to go to the top menu and
choose Composition > New Composition. And for
| | 00:23 | this composition, I want to choose
HDV 1080 29.97. Press OK to accept it.
| | 00:31 | I want to drag the comp that I set up
all of my animation into the new comp.
| | 00:36 | And you can see it's too big, so I'm
going to scale it down and then position it
| | 00:41 | in the frame and then open up all of
the Transform properties for the layer.
| | 00:47 | Set both the Position and Scale
keyframe at frame 0 and then move to frame 500
| | 00:54 | and scale it up a little bit and
center the chalet in the frame.
| | 00:59 | Let's scrub through it. That looks good.
| | 01:01 | I still want to set an ease-in and
ease-out on the camera move, so select all of
| | 01:08 | the keyframes and right-click on one of
them, scroll down to Keyframe Assistant
| | 01:13 | and choose Easy Ease.
| | 01:14 | As you can see, this changed the shape
of the keyframes and this will make for a
| | 01:19 | much smoother camera move.
| | 01:22 | The camera will start slow, accelerate
through the middle of the move, and then
| | 01:26 | slow down at the end.
| | 01:29 | Let's zoom in one more time
and do a quick RAM preview.
| | 01:33 | The reformatting has given us an
effective push-in on the scene.
| | 01:38 | Now it's time to render.
| | 01:39 | You can either add the composition to
the Render Queue by going up to the top
| | 01:43 | menu and choosing Composition and
then Add to Render Queue, or press
| | 01:48 | Command+Ctrl+M on the Mac or Ctrl+M on Windows.
| | 01:53 | The Render Queue will automatically
open. Click on the word to the right of
| | 01:57 | Output Module to open the Output Module
Settings. Then click on Format Options
| | 02:03 | to open the QuickTime options.
| | 02:06 | Render out your preferred codec.
| | 02:08 | I'm going to use the default animation
codec with a keyframe every 20 frames
| | 02:13 | for excellent quality.
| | 02:15 | Then choose a name for your animation.
| | 02:17 | I'm going to name it
4_Finalrender.mov. Then press Render.
| | 02:24 | If you're a Premium member of
lynda.com and want to compare your work with
| | 02:28 | mine, there is a copy of the final
render in the exercise files, along with my
| | 02:33 | final After Effects project in the
After Effects folder. And let's take a look
| | 02:39 | at the final render.
| | 02:41 | In this tutorial, you learned how to
take a plate from summer to winter, a basic
| | 02:45 | skill for a digital matte artist.
And hopefully you've picked up some tricks and
| | 02:50 | tips that you can use on any matte
painting project, including how to make
| | 02:55 | selections using alpha channels, how
to use the Color Range command to select
| | 03:00 | areas of color, and how to use and
create custom brushes that will speed up the
| | 03:05 | creation of your digital matte paintings.
| | 03:08 | This is David Mattingly. Thanks for watching!
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