The “Advanced Matte Painting with Steven Cormann” workshop by DoubleJump Academy is a professional-level course designed for intermediate to advanced artists looking to master the art of digital matte painting (DMP) for film, television, and games.
Here is a summary of what the workshop covers:
Course Overview
- Instructor: Steven Cormann (a veteran industry artist).
- Focus: The course provides a hands-on, project-based approach to creating professional-grade matte paintings. It covers the entire workflow from initial concept and reference gathering to final compositing.
- Duration: 7.6 hours of content.
- Format: Hybrid (pre-recorded lectures, 24/7 Discord community access, and mentoring).
- Skill Level: Intermediate to Advanced.
Core Workflow & Topics
The workshop teaches you how to think and work like a professional, focusing on:
- Pre-production: Shot analysis, reference gathering, planning, and layout.
- Terrain Creation: Using Gaea to generate and carve high-detail landscape assets.
- Scene Assembly: Bringing assets into Houdini for scene building, lighting, and rendering with Redshift.
- Detailing: Leveraging Megascans for tertiary details.
- Finishing:
- Photoshop: Advanced painting, layers, masks, brushes, and filters to achieve the “final 10%” of polish.
- Nuke: Compositing elements, camera projections, and integrating visual effects (such as the flaming eye).
Key Learning Outcomes
- How to build a project from start to finish.
- Techniques for environment blocking, lighting, and atmosphere.
- Tips for integrating 3D renders with 2D elements.
- Instruction on how to approach complex problems with flexibility (the “sandbox” approach).
Important Notes
- Language: The primary tutorial is taught in Spanish, but English, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Hindi, and Arabic subtitles are available.
- Assets: Some textures and stock footage are not included; links are provided to purchase them separately, though students can often use their own.
- Software Used: Houdini, Gaea, Nuke, Redshift, and Photoshop.
- Certificate: A certificate is available upon successful completion of the workshop.
Note: The course page also details a “Legendary Edition” which includes extra project files and FX elements (such as tower destruction, shock waves, and specific VFX integrations) that may not be present in the base version.
