Step 3 - Final Matte Painting

The first step of this stage was to block in the new ground. (Fig.27).


Next (Fig.28) is to refine the ground a little by adding new mixture of grass and stones from other photos and also a dirt layer for the front pillar set to overlay, just to suggest the ageing.


Next, I added some crosses from different pictures (Fig.29).


Note that the position of the crosses will change until the end. Next step was to expand the set more on the right, left and bottom (Fig.30). I also started to cut out parts of the building to open up the scene. This was made by painting the mask with a hard round brush with 100% opacity.


Added more crosses and some grass. Next was to make the sky (Fig.31). I imported a picture with a cloudy sky and since it was too bright, I had to play around with the hue/saturation until I managed to make it as I wanted to be.


Next I had to make the background buildings (Fig.32 - 35).



Imported some building - cathedrals images and crop them and distorted them to fit into place. And also cut out an ivy from another picture and put it on the front pillar (Fig.36).


At this stage I had the main elements blocked in, but on a second thought I started to make some changes (Fig.37) on the buildings on the back and also I refined some parts of the left side of the museum.



A fog layer was added between background buildings and the left side of the museum by painting with a white soft rounded brush with 10% opacity. Next (Fig.38) I used hue/saturation adjustment layer to desaturate the image and bring more blues into the image.