DIGITAL MATTE PAINTING - Weekly Journal
Digital Matte Painting - Weekly Journal
NAME: Miao Xinjun
STUDENT
I.D: 0379525
MODULE: Digital Matte Painting DST60904
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Instruction
2. Weekly Journal
3. Reflection
1. INSTRUCTION
2. WEEKLY JOURNAL
WEEK 1:
The first week's lectures were about the module introduction and learning objectives. After explaining the module's content and course requirements, Mr. Ahmad began by explaining what Digital Matte Painting is and showing us examples of Digital Matte Painting work.
WEEK 2:
In the second week, we gradually moved into the formal learning of the Digital Matte Painting module. This lecture focused on 'perspective'. After explaining the basics of perspective, the lecturer began guiding us to analyze perspective in photographs.
I realized that perspective is one of the essential foundations of Digital Matte Painting because only by understanding its principles can we combine image elements from different photographs to create a visually appealing and natural scene.
Self-practice is a good way to further master knowledge. We were asked to select at least two photos from our own photos and draw the perspective in the photos.
At first, I tried to take some photos at school for this week's practice, but I couldn't find any scenes I liked, so I chose two scenes that I took during my trip to Penang.
- Week 2 - Exercise 1:
This photo was taken from the Clan Jetties in Penang. The scenery in the photo is presented in two-point perspective, with these perspective lines clearly visible in the boats beside the bridge and the huts by the sea. A row of houses in the distance lies on the horizon line, which is also the line between the two visual points.
- Week 2 - Exercise 2:
Based on the analysis of the results, I believe the perspective in the second photograph is one-point perspective. The diagonal lines formed by the stone pillars and walls on either side of the visual center, intersecting the floor and ceiling, extend towards the center of the image and eventually converge at a single point.
WEEK 3:
In the third week of lectures, we began to learn about composition and value. Of course, this week's exercises are also based on the knowledge about perspective we learned in the second week.
WEEK 4:
The fourth week's lesson focuses on sky displacement. This is a common technique in Digital Patte Painting that helps us change the time and season of a scene to create a unified color scheme and atmosphere. Designers typically use Photoshop to perform this technique.
In the lecture exercises, we needed to use pre-prepared movie screenshots and practice sky replacement using Photoshop. Photoshop already has a built-in sky replacement function, but during practice, I realized I couldn't rely on it entirely. To make the scene more natural and harmonious, and to make the boundary between the original image elements and the sky blend better, I also needed to manually adjust values such as saturation, brightness, and hue, and use the selection tool to refine the edges.
Some students used one photo to create a variety of different effects, while I chose to practice with two photos separately.
- In-class Exercise 1：
The first screenshot is from the movie *Titanic*. I first used Photoshop's sky replacement function to replace the blue sky with a built-in sunset background image, and then used the 'Select and Mask' function to refine the edges. At this point, the overall effect already looked relatively harmonious, but I still adjusted the hue and contrast to make the sunset atmosphere even more harmonious and pleasant.
- In-class Exercise 2：
The second screenshot is from a movie I haven't seen. It's a daytime scene, and I wanted to try replacing the sky with a nighttime starry sky I had downloaded beforehand. This exercise took me relatively longer because after replacing the sky, I found there were too many values to adjust. First, of course, was the brightness, and then the overall color tone, etc., because the starry sky background was blue, while the original screenshot was warmer in tone. In the feedback, Mr. Ahmad also pointed out that the image brightness was still too high and didn't look like 'nighttime'.
Fortunately, after several attempts, I successfully merged the night sky and the original screenshot into a new scene. I also made progress in this exercise, which I believe will be very helpful for my future studies.
WEEK 5:
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