Indierover: Indie game development and more

Techniques like complex photo edition and matte painting are often really useful for multimedia purposes. For example I used 3d model integration in all the backgrounds of “Draco Mahjongg” game in order to show Draco (designed by Devilish Art) in several beautiful landscapes around the world, this was cheaper than buying flights for Draco to all this places (sorry Draco I have to save some money for parties).

To integrate Draco in each landscape was easier than I thought. These were the only two things I had at the beginning:

• 1) A render of Draco in a big size (1200×1200) with transparent background. It depends on the 3d packcage you use, I used 3d studio max and .png format with alpha channel activated in order to save the transparent background.
• 2) The photo of the landscape (1600×1200).

And these are the steps I followed in order to make the integration in photoshop:

• 1) Copy Draco into the landscape in a different layer (ctrl+c and ctrl+v). Change the size, orientation and move it to the place you want, you can use ctrl+t for the transformations.
• 2) Now we have to make some color and ilumination corrections in Draco in order it fits properly with the background. I played with hue/saturation, brightness/contrast and color balance until I was satisfied with the result.
• 3) The last thing is to improve little details in order to win some reality. I created a new layer and I drew a smooth shadow. I used the brush with black color, later I added some gaussian blur and finally I changed the transparency of the layer a bit (80%).

And thats all! Hope you will be able to put your 3d models around all the world