What Program?

[ths-acid]

Hello,

Recently I have become fascinated with matte painting. I have been looking around at all of the wonderful paintings, there are some very very talented people here. But I have a quick question. I know most if not all use Photoshop, but what do you use when it comes to making cities? I love the look of a high aerial shot over a vast city, and I was just wondering what program most people use to create such magnificent cities? Also where could I find this program, I would really like to try my hand at making some 3D cities.

These are basically the kind of cities I am thinking of. But not as advanced.
http://jjasso.deviantart.com/art/Jed...t-01-125522014

So thanks for reading and sorry if it was a little long.

-tHs-Acid

[Alex Jenyon]

Jaime Jasso works at Blur, who primarily use 3DS Max, as far as I'm aware.

Your image link didn't work, but I guess you were talking about the 'Jedi temple 02' shot, which looks very much like a 3DS wireframe to me.

That doesn't mean, though, that you should definitely use 3DS Max because it will 'make good 3D cities' - ANY 3D package will allow you to do this, given enough time and effort.

If you are starting from scratch, then all of the major packages have personal learning editions or demos, all have decent learning materials, and all of them would be fine for teaching you the principles. You can therefore try them all out for yourself and decide.

If you don't know which one to try first, then find a job ad for a job you would like, and see what 3D package it asks for. That's as good a suggestion as any other, without any flamewars or fanboyism occuring... :-)

Hope that helps

AJ

[ths-acid]

Thanks for the help. I found Blender which actually gets the job done perfectly. It has an awesome city script. Now my problem is when I render something in it, it has an atmosphere in it already. I have looked around, but so far no luck.

This is basically how mine looks when it is rendered.
http://pitel.deviantart.com/art/Polluted-Future-33793039

This is how I want mine to look so I can edit it in photoshop.
http://jjasso.deviantart.com/art/Jedi-Temple-Coruscant-01-125522014

[Alex Jenyon]

I think you're probably now guilty of running before you can walk - you seem to be wanting a 'make great matte painting' button, which I'm sad to say doesn't exist. Even though this script will get you some of the way there, you will still need a LOT of lighting and shader knowledge to get close to what blur are capable of doing. You will probably need to render in passes for later compositing, too, which blender is certainly capable of doing (though I have no idea how).

This isn't really the right forum to be asking for blender support - there are lots of better places for that. I'm glad you've found something to get you inspired, but you don't get to bypass the hard work, unfortunately. (Look at like this: If everyone could do it immediately, it wouldn't be impressive)

Good luck with your future work.

AJ

[ths-acid]

Thanks for the reply. I am completely aware of how hard matte paintings can be and the work they require. I will admit, I am very eager to start messing around with my city render in photoshop, but this is actually my problem, getting the render into photoshop so I can actually use it in a matte.

I have been working with people on some Blender forums, so I am slowly but surely learning. Once again thatnks for the reply, and the help.