The Last Samurai Matte Painting

[cstoski]

http://home.pacbell.net/cstoski/images/examples/samurai_breakdown_layout_01.jpg

Here is a 3D Matte Painting I did last year for "The Last Samurai". Tom Cruise and Billy Connolly walk out from an alley and down this street (matte painting) that was painted historically correct according to late 19th century photos.

Click here for the Quicktime movie:
http://home.pacbell.net/cstoski/samurai_movie_01.html

[B. Kachel]

I would jusy like to say that this is one of my favorite matte painings ever presented in film. Awsome work. Also I was wondering what 3D package you had used for this painting.

Hope to see more.

-Brandon Kachel

[homer]

I saw that in a smaller size before.
But it looks much more impressive in High resolution.

Thanks

[Aedilhum]

Awesome work Chris! I took a look at your website, pretty much every painting you have on there is one that I have looked to for insperation.
Cheers, Jared Simeth

[cstoski]

Thanks for the comments and kind words.

The software used was 3d Studio Max (Ver5). All models built, textured, lit and rendered in max. I've been very pleased with the Max renderer, especially in the past few years as they've been working on getting newer features in it and keeping competitive. As always, textures were created in Photoshop.

[ecsdesign]

Really nice work, great depth. Great to be able to have a good look at it. Was it mainly camera projections or was there a considerable amount of uv mapping?

I worked on a bunch of stuff from the Last Samurai and I think the place i was at pitched on that shot.

ev
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[Ross Forster]

Emotionally, The Last Samurai is one of my favourate pictures from last year and your work was expectional Chris.

If I remember correctly, you get high praise on the commentary. 8)

[P.Nagle]

Chris the work you do is amazing and i have had the last samurai painting from matte world in my inspiration folder since i first saw it in the film.

If you dont mind me asking...where did u get reference for the buildings and such? And how long did u spend on this particular matte painting?

cheers,
Patrick Nagle

[cstoski]

The 20 or 22 buildings closest to camera (with 2 exceptions) were mapped traditionally (UV - cubic mapping). This was necasary as early tests revealed that camera mapping all the buildings wouldn't work. If we cam mapped all the buildings the perpective would always be off in one part of the shot because the camera moves so dramatically both sideways and vertically. I always try and cam map 3D shots so I have the most painting freedom possbible, but it simply wasn't that easy with this camera move. Click the movie link to see the final shot in motion.

The items camera mapped are the sky, water, the upper right foreground building's second story, the left most building in the shot, the dirt streets and very far buildings.

I rendered out many individual building mattes and sometimes their parts with adjacent buildings as matte objects so I would have mattes to control whatever I wanted to tweak in my precomp. My precomp made up the entire CG scene and dictated the final lighting and color that was then sent to the compositor who added the extracted people.

The reference for this period was real San Francisco photos from the 1876-ish period. Some were sent to us from the production and some we found on the web. None the less, the Director wanted the scene to be historically accurate so the buildings that existed on California street in San Francisco look like what you see here and even the cable cars (just invented) are accurate in their design to the period (front car is open...no glass windows).

Once again, thanks for the compliments.

[Tchook]

Thx for sharing- very beautifull matte painting
Great stuff on your website too.

I m curious about one thing.
When you are talking about precomps, you mean you prerender the building to paint over them and adjust the lightning in a compositing software?

[cstoski]

What I mean by precomp is simply this: I create my own comp in a compositing software where I put together my own CG and matte painting work the way I intended it to be comped. Then, when all my work is together, like the 3D CG layers, cam map projections, etc, then I send it to the compositor so he can make a new final comp in a different file. That's where the greenscreen stuff is done.

I don't "paint" in the precomp, but the mattes I create allow me to tweak colors and things in this shot without re-rendering it all in 3D. For example, if the supervisor feels the sunlight hitting the buildings on the right side of the street needs to be more pink or brighter, I can tweak that in the comp with a custom matte (alpha channel) instead of changing the CG light and re-rendering all the frames in 3D. Remember, this is a moving shot, not just a still painting, the camera moves alot here. Re-rendering about 900 frames in 3D is painful especially at 1hour a frame.

I hope I'm making sense. Let me know if ytou have anymore questions.

PS: the time I spent on ths project including painting, CG, directing extras for the shoot, and precomps: about 6 weeks.

[cameo]

I've been catching up with my cinefex subs after spending a couple of years in Canada and I only recently read the article on MWD. I hadnt realised that this painting was your work Chris. It's stunning..totally believable.

How long were you working on this for?

[mu.gt-r]

Nice work! I love the atmosphere! :)