Alone Soldier matte painting

[B. Kachel]

http://stu.aii.edu/~bjk361/Soldier_Breakdown.jpg

Here is a low res quicktime. It may take a few moments.
http://stu.aii.edu/~bjk361/soldier.html

[Fredric]

Hello B. Kachel
Very good look!

the houses are they painting?
or of the cloning?
give us of the explanations please!
Thank...

[homer]

Good job.
looking forward to see the movie too.

[AJ]

That looks very nice indeed. Is there any chance you could share the finished moving sequence with us as well? I'd love to see it in motion.

[Luxo_Jr]

Great work! Im amazed at how well the roto was done. Looking forward to the film too.

[B. Kachel]

Thanks for your posts, and I will try to post a quicktime.

[B. Kachel]

I have posted a quicktme. You can view the quicktime by clicking on the Url located at the bottom of the breakdown. Hope you enjoy.

Thanks
-Brandon Kachel

[rrische]

You ROCK.

[homer]

Excellent.

[cstoski]

Great job! Nice work all around. The roto looks tight, the matte painting looks very believable and the comp work is good too. The camera movement however, is a bit hard to watch. It has a very documentary feel, like the Blair Witch Project. If this was your goal I think you've succeeded. However, if this were a typical Hollywood production, I think that a steadycam would've been used. It's a camera that stabilizes the harsh movement of a walking camerman and makes the film alot easier for the audience to watch without taking away that "Handheld Camera" feel. Personally, I'd prefer a smoother camera move so it was both easier to watch and we could better see all that hard work you've done in the matte painting.

Keep up the good work!

[B. Kachel]

Thanks for the feedback, I really appreciate it. When I had shot it, I was thinking documentary like, but when I viewed the footage I had wished I had access to a steady cam.

Again thank you for your comments.
-Brandon Kachel

[rrische]

I second everything Chris said, but KEEP THIS VERSION!
Show this in a job interview and watch jaws drop...."OHMYGOD!!
THE MATCHMOVE FROM HELL!!!!"

:lol:

[Aedilhum]

Hey Rick, thanks for the note about the matchmove. much appreciated ;).
Jared Simeth

[Muni]

I gotta say, thats a really goob...seamless. One comment though, I personaly would take the movie and color adjust to give it more of a film look. Now that may not be your intention, and if its not then forget my comment. Bu ti feel that you could really make this piece look like it was shot on film. Very good work.....


E

[tobiasth]

wow, this is very very good!
i like it so much!

[tide78]

Man, I have been to that area where that old farm is. Good job with the painting. Incredible camera match. Lookin Good. MAAAAAAAAAN!!!!!!

[rrische]

This reminds me of a shot we did on "Day After Tomorrow".
In the scene where the RAF choppers crash in Scotland, there
was one shot of the interior where one of the pilots looks up
at the ceiling to see it being covered in frost. The whole set
was shaking around violently, and the camera dollied backwards
and tilted up to see the ceiling. We replaced the entire ceiling
with a 3D matte painting and applied the frost growth effect in
the comp. Good 3D matchmovers and trackers RULE.

When I think about how much matte painting has changed over
the past several years, it makes my head spin. I remember on
"The Doors", ILM did a shot where the camera looks out through
the windshield of a moving car to see a matte painting by Mark
Sullivan of mountains and an approaching thunderstorm. I was
blown away! A cool, bouncing camera move in a matte shot!
Now we have people like Brandon and his friends putting together
stuff like this on PC's at school. SCHOOL, for Gawd's sake!

Truly unbelieveable.

[B. Kachel]

Thanks again for the positive feedback on this shot. A lot of work by myself, Jon Thunder and Jared Simeth went into this. With my matte painting, Jared's track, Jon's tracking of the caps onto the grenades, and all the roto work done by Jon and I, the shot became very affective, and better then I envisoned it. Originaly the shot was going to be locked down with a simple pan left and right. But I decided to tackle the hand held one. So I asked two of my friends at school to help.

Again thank you
-Brandon Kachel

[P.Nagle]

i can truly say that i saw alot of work go into this matte painting, roto and tracking and the shot came out awsome, i got to see it come along and i was pretty amazed how well the shot turned out in the end.


Good job brandon this is probley one of the best shots to come out of the school so far!!!

The camera match is awsome and the look of the shot overall is ggrreeat...

[rrische]

So, where exactly are you going to school, Brandon?

[B. Kachel]

I attend the Art Institutes International Minnesota. Have about a year left.

[Ross Forster]

Yeah, I have to agree with all those great comments. You guys have definatley pulled off some nice work there.

Excellent!

[wahookah]

hi, congrats it´s truly a great shot, high quality....

could you explain a bit about the matchmoving ang tracking you did, because it looks like hell to me with all the (moving) grass, the details and the panning camera...

one thing: maybe you could tweak the color of the background a little bit, it seems a little more yellowish than the foreground to me...or is ist me? ;)

anyways thats just a tiny thing

great piece...

[Aedilhum]

wahookah,
The tracking/matchmoving was done in shake using a couple of trackers loaded up into the stabalize node. It took a couple of tries to find the best points to track. I ended up using the offset track option with a little bit of manual keyframe adjustment to deal with the times when the helmet or a tree covers up the points being tracked and when they go off frame.
The tree line was used for tracking points, chosen because of the high contrast, and because they were covered up the least.
thanks for all your comments everyone.

cheers, Jared Simeth

[zu]

It's a real and amazing work.
The tracking is a killer, the matte works perfectly. Thumbs up !!
I wish I could do such things !

[stormeffex]

yo B this is some great work. this looks very good, the matte painting is great and the camera matching is awesome. great work. I'll have to know how you did it.

[Zantek]

great job! could you tell us more about your matte? it seem to be 2 different mattes as background? is there? the first with the houses and the second with mountains?

[B. Kachel]

The matte painting originally has many layers adn is one big painting. There were many differnet photos used and a lot of painted elements. I had painted the sky, most of the hills and the grassy plains. I also painted some of the forground grass, the top end of the foreground tree and the end of the middle shack.

I also took some photos and started with the photo shown in my posted breakdown. Then from there I had combined two differnt shack photos. and few different grass elements. Then from there, I started matching colors and lighting. Unfortunately all of the images I worked with, were from overcast lighting conditions, where my original plate was full of harsh shadows and bright light. It was a little tricky matching the two.

Then when it came time to composite I split the painting into three major layers. Foireground, mid and Background. I did this so I could simulate a parallax shift to add more realism. In the break down it shows this version of the painting.

Thanks for the positive feed back.

-Brandon Kachel