[Anthony]

Say we take Craig Mullins' snow mountain matte that appeared at the end of Final Fantasy. Now, it's pretty easy to project this onto some basic geometry to get a perspective scroll left/right. Can even do it with a few key warps in the compositor. Moving into the image can be more tricky, but same rules really apply. The difficulty comes in where, say, the mountain peaks are moving in front of each other as you fly through the scene. Does someone actually model the mountains to scale(more or less), projection map the matte onto the mountains, and then go in and paint over certain areas where the overlapping paint would show through to the rear mountain slope(so you'd have a peak's paint on the second's slope)? Just curious, I'm doing some stuff that's working well for me(just small side dollys, painting in layers in Photoshop and using some basic geometry on each layer to get perspective scrolling).

[Loki]

Well, if you're planning to do a perspective projection, you usually start out by modelling a proxy geometry. Rough mountains that'd be.
Then, to get the areas, that are revealed through the parallaxing, you also model proxy geo for the area that's behind the mountain - both are rendered seperately from an ideal camera pov and then taken into PS and layered accordingly.
After figuring out, what the revealed areas are, you switch the mountain off, and fill in wehat's missing in the bg. Both paitings are projected back onto the geometry, each with their own map of course and then you should be all up and running ...

[Anthony]

Great, thanks much Loki. It all makes sense in a confusing sort of way. At least, at first, conceptually. Gotta do it a couple times I think, think I'll get right on it! Thanks again,

[worthless_meat_sack]

Yes Loki covered it, I think.

But that shot was all 3-d, and if there was any painting back there, it was done by a painter named Richard Mahon. They were not happy with how I was doing in general so they gave the work to him. I am not really sure what ended up back there, I have not seen it.

[horstenpeter]

Hey, spooge, don't tell me they were dissatisfied with your work - it looked really fascinating in the movie.

Would be kinda strange.

[ November 14, 2001: Message edited by: horstenpeter ]

[General Confusion]

funny thing Craig, just picked up the Final Fantasy DVD, and there is a section that describes in the cheesy superficial DVD way, the use of matte painting in the flick. And there is an artist interviewed, who I assume must have been the head of mattes for Square (spoke with an accent) and he talked about how mattes were utilized, blah, blah... nothing substantial, mostly for layman in its description... But after his little talk, if I'm not mistaken the mattes shown were yours.

Now if I were an unaware viewer, I would believe that the paintings shown were his..... very deceiving, and kind of unprofessional.... IMO...

Now this is my perception, but I really think the mattes shown were indeed yours (not all of them, but yours I believe were included).. and yes I know in a work environment, there is the collaboration factor... (i.e. it was a team effort) but from knowing your work, your style is very apparent, and again I believe they did show your work (I don't want accuse, cause I watched it briefly, so not to go off half cocked, but thought this thread was appropriate to brign this up), and it's never clarified that there were more than one matte artist on the project.... sure you could find that out by watching the credits, but you see it when you watch a movie in the theater, most people don't care about the credits.....

Is my statement true Craig???? Was the work you did looked at as a buyout??? or do you maintain rights over the images you did???


but aside from all that great work, as usual...

[Anthony]

I see, that's a shame Craig. At least ya got paid, can't be disappointed about that. :] Here's a frame from the DVD of that scene. On second look it is different than your paint, although very similar.
http://www.antsin3d.com/images/FF-0259.jpg
I'm gonna contain my general thoughts on that film and its graphics, hehe, they're not on topic.

[Loki]

Craig, I met Richard here at DD a couple of weeks ago - he had the painting with him - looked pretty good - seemed like they stuck pretty closely to your concept.
He's a very nice guy btw.

G. Conf.: If you do mattes, you usually don't keep the copyright - since they paid you to do the image, they own it too.
But Square was so effed up in some instances that an interview like that doesn't surprise me.

[General Confusion]

really Loki?

then what dictates, as to how much or how little you can use your matte work... let's say for promotional uses, etc... are matte workers held to NDA's, if you're primarily a freelancer?? And does that mean that as a matte artist, you're always working in a buyout situation?? Or is a project open to any sort of negotiation, like an illustration job is?

and thanks for the previous info