Matte Painting 101: Basic Destruction Techniques

Matte Painting 101: Basic Destruction Techniques

on May 27th 2011 with 27 comments
Tutorial Details
  • Program: Adobe Photoshop
  • Difficulty: Beginner
  • Estimated Completion Time: 1 Hour

Final Product What You'll Be Creating

Download Source Files

Matte painting is a technique that filmmakers use to create backgrounds for scenes that can’t or don’t exist in real life. In the early days, matte paintings were actually painted onto glass. Today, modern filmmakers use digital applications such as Photoshop to produce the backdrops that they need. We have published many matte painting tutorials on this site meant for intermediate and advanced users. This tutorial is part of a series of tutorials that we will be publishing on this meant for those of you who may be relatively new to Photoshop or matte painting in general.

Today’s tutorial, Matte Painting 101: Basic Destruction Techniques will teach you how to created a flooded city and destroy buildings and structures. This tutorial will focus on the destruction of New York, which seems to be a favorite amongst filmmakers. Let’s get started!

Tutorial Assets

The following assets were used during the production of this tutorial.

 
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Rollover to read this author's bio or click through to see a full list of posts by this author.

I was born in Mexico City, worked and studied photography at Eastman Kodak while training in minilab management and traditional darkroom techniques. Now I am steadily growing in the freelance world on matte painting, digital art/illustration and even some 3d modeling.  

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  • http://www.logandesigns.co.uk Mark

    I’ve wanted to do a tutorial like this for a while. Thanks for sharing

  • Tami

    Very nice tutorial. Good work with the bridge. Thank you!

  • Daniel

    How did you create a mask from the blackened out sky, what were the steps? That seems a great option for hard to select area’s, similar to Quick mask.

    • Daniel

      To answer my question, after much searching and playing in Alpha channels it dawned on me to create a new layer above, fill it with white, set the opacity to 15% and start selecting. Problem solved I hope.

  • oscar

    from where i can download destruction brush? cool tutorial, nice explained

  • Neil

    Why this move to video tutorials-your written tutorials are much clearer and easier to understand.

    Disappointing!

    • http://www.lileddesign.com ED
      Author

      Noted, we will consider all you guys preference.

      • http://www.youtube.com/ghap4a Judy

        I like videos more O.O

    • Harry

      Videos are easier because there’s probably less man hours involved than a written tutorial, but it’s a given, I do also prefer written tutorials as you can go at your own speed without having constantly pause and resume the video effectively doubling the completion time, but seeing a tutorial made in “real time” I supposed can give you a better understanding on how to do a certain technique than just seeing a before and after picture. at the end of it though, It’s just a matter of preference, but both methods have their pros and cons.

  • http://danielmorgan.co.uk/ Danny

    Very interesting to see how you work. One thing I feel I have to comment on is your use of the Lasso Tool for masking. I’ve found the Pen Tool to be much better as it creates a mask that can be easily editable. There’s just too much to go wrong on a painstaking masking process with the Lasso Tool. Unless there’s something I’m missing?

    • http://www.lileddesign.com ED
      Author

      Indeed, as for editable mask you are correct, as for making it quick, the polygonal lasso its my choice. I have done other tuts using the pen as you mention, yet I feel for straight lines its easily accomplished with this tool, and if there are adjustments to be made those are also easily done brushing on the mask. Yet if you are comfortable with the pen, that is perfect too. Thanks

  • FranklinVN

    I think you have to remember the laws of physics when deconstructng. For example, if the bridge has no middle, the weight will shift towards the start of the bridge and would sag; bringing the bridge tower backwards.
    And making the cut in the building at the top wouldn’t really work either, just cut it off as if the stress made it collapse. It’s samll things like that which make the photo even more realistic.

    • http://www.fragradio.co.uk/listen Rob

      @ FranklinVN

      If your going to get picky and knock someone for it, at least get your facts straight, the bridge is a cable stayed bridge so it can hold the weight up as long as the cables and central towers are still in tact, there is one section i can’t quite see if there is cables on but the small section could be kept straight by the way its fixed into the tower and the weight of the towers and the long heavy road behind it which is still cable stayed are counterbalancing it.

      Secondly just because the outside skin of a building has a hole in it doesnt mean the building will collapse, skyscrapers are not built the same as a house otherwise you would be relying on a sheet of glass n the ground floor holding up 57 floors? as long as the “thick” concrete cores in the centre of the building are still in tact it can hold the floors above, and i would assume most new york skyscrapers have more than one life, staircase in it which will be a central concrete core as well all taking the load of the building above, a rocket probably wouldn’t even be enough to collapse a skyscraper you need something bigger but i dont think i need to give an example…

      Even the older buildings that were constructed differently such as the empire state building, built primarily on thick steel as opposed to cores withstood a B52 Bomber flying into it around the time of the second world war, but you dont see it sheared in half or collapsed?!

      • http://www.rcdmk.com RCDMK

        @Rob: Nice

        Just two more words: Artistic freedom.

        And a lot more:
        Not all people a worried about how it may be in real life cause this tut teaches the basics of doing things, using the tools an so on. Don’t go shooting words at first sight just go get some attention.

      • http://www.youtube.com/ghap4a Judy

        You couldn’t be more RIGHT!!! and one more thing that many peopole forget is that besides the tutorial being so professional and well explanined, those people take time out of their valuable time to prepare a tutorial to teach us, and all this for FREE!!! I really appreciate greatly that just 2 days ago I found this page, and I can’t tell you since then how much I have learned, and all this from the confort of my house. The tutorials are amazing, very well explained and very professional like I said. I am amazed by him. I assumed his name is Ed if I am not wrong..

        Ed, I salute you!!!

        I cannot wait for the next one!

  • http://www.ofertas-emprego.net Emprego

    Nice tutorial. Very good techniques

  • Thyago

    Continue?
    Or there is!?

  • http://souravchakraborty.co.nr Sourav Chakraborty

    Very nice tutorial. Thank you!

  • Pol

    Here my image of NYC destructed, what do you think about ?

    http://www.elssons.com/2011/01/10/nyc-2/

    • http://www.lileddesign.com ED
      Author

      Good work man! glad to see some great results.

  • http://www.psd-dude.com PsdDude

    interesting result, I will try this tut!

  • http://www.parasuniversal.com Paras Universal

    Wow such a big improvement I feel bad for my comments on the previous tut. Great work and keep it up bro. I can’t wait to get some free time to try this out. All the best.

  • Daniel

    Is it possible to download this video???

    I want it offline

    • H3rmit

      thanks again! i can’t wait to try it out, even if the bridge picture was removed from the stock… we don’t want the same result afterall :D
      @ Daniel: there’s donloadhelper for firefox and it’s free ;)

  • http://www.youtube.com/ghap4a Judy

    Awesome! I can’t wait to try this tutorial!!!

  • mxl

    Thanks but where is the brush u used to paint the sea towards the end of the tutorial?

  • saermed

    this is awsome helped me so much