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Easier, Faster, Cheaper- Set Extensions. The work-horse of the matte painting world.- Briar Lee Mitchell

Practically every TV show or film produced these days uses set extensions. Sets that

would be impossible to create due to time or budgetary restraints can be created digitallyduring post production, and if done right, most of us can’t spot them.

Mark Kolpack, Visual Effects Supervisor from Stargate Digital for NBC’s hit series Heroes talks about the importance of this work-horse skill:

“On Heroes (a show about a world-wide group of people who discover they have super powers and must learn how to deal with them), we often use set extensions on a

downtown LA street to help it look more like Manhattan. A lot of Los Angeles doubles

well for NY but with just the addition of a row of tall NY buildings running along oneside of the LA street it then completely helps to sell the illusion of being on the east

coast.”

This scene from Heroes was shot in downtown Los Angeles. Stargate Digital added the buildings in thedistance from the New York skyline to make the location look more like Manhattan where this part of the

story takes place.

“With today's talent and software, it has become a staple to our VFX arsenal when

designing a shot to have the ability to extend or manipulate an environment. On the show,

I work closely with the entire producing staff and Ruth Ammon the Production Designer.I'll do my own concepts in PhotoShop and then submit them for comment. I find most

times that they are all blown away with what can be created. When the background platescome in I go over the design with the Matte Painters who take it to the next level. When

they have completed the painting, it then goes up to 2D for compositing where all the

final tweaks and touches are added such as atmosphere, people elements if needed, color,grain and so on. It's the little things that the compositors add that help to bring the whole

thing to life when it is joined with the production footage.”

“Because of set extensions, we can build smaller or minimal sets that don't drain production dollars.”

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Location shots from Heroes made to look more like India with the use of set extensions. The first was shot

on a beach here in Los Angeles. the second scene shows a minimal set construction, also created in Los

Angeles.

A good set extension artist can remove wires, tall construction cranes, storys from buildings or add them. They can also swap out texture - like making a wooden building

appear as if it is made of marble - change street and building signs, add skylines (or

remove them), take people, cars or anything out of a shot that shouldn’t be there or addanything that should. It truly is a work-horse skill.

Global Dynamics is headquarters for the hi-tech/mysterious agency where the scientists in Eureka work .The live action set, an office building in British Columbia, has been enhanced through the addition of some

fantastic elements more suited to the building’s purpose.

Wendy Wallace, Post Producer for the phenomenal SciFi Channel show Eureka gives us

more insight into the importance of set extensions:

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“Even if we had the budget to shoot all over the world and create fantastical sets, on a TV

schedule it’s just impossible to get all of the people and equipment to those locations andmassive sets built in such a short amount of time. We use set extensions on a regular

basis to complete the requirements for many scenes—sci fi or otherwise—when there

isn’t enough time or it is too impractical to build the actual set. On our show, Eureka (a

show about a strange but brilliant group of scientists living and working in a small Pacific Northwest town) many of our exteriors are shot in actual towns in British Columbia.”

This town in British Columbia doubles for the town of Eureka. Notice the practical street sign that has been

added. Matte artists later removed the crane suspension wires so it looked like the character was hovering

up and down in his “jet crane”. (c) Sci Fi Channel/Liane Hentscher

“The addition of props and set design helps give aunique “Eureka” atmosphere to the city streets

and buildings, but we can’t do anything too

permanent because people actually live and workhere, so more elaborate, over-the-top changes to

the town are added through set extensions.”

Wallace points out that, although we are used toseeing set extensions for sci-fi shows, they aren’t

used there exclusively anymore. Today’saudiences are more sophisticated and regardless

of a show’s genre, if the sets are not convincing

enough, the show may not succeed as well as itcould. As she explains, “…because of time or

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budget constraints, the ‘Better, Faster, Cheaper’ mantra really put our VFX producer

Matt Gore and his team to the test, and they came up with some truly amazing setextensions that really captured the flavor of our show.”

In the Eureka episode “Alienated,” the character Spencer is apparently abducted by aliens

then returned to Eureka the next day, appearing in the middle of a crop circle. Crews onlocation were able to create part of the circle for the live action footage in a small field,

however the scene required a dramatic moving shot pulling out of the circle showing how

large and elaborate the design was. Zoic Studios created the final shot, extending theexisting set and then compositing the live action with the art.

A shot from “Alienated” with temp art in place showing the size and design of the crop circle. Only thecenter spiral was shot practically, the rest of the field and crop design were extended digitally.

Final shot for “Alienated”

Matt Gore from Zoic Studios explains how the shots for “Alienated” were created.

“We were certain in pre-production that when we shot the plate for the crop circle that wewould be able to get hi-rez stills of some real fields/crops which we would then use as a

canvas to embed our digital crop circle. Production provided us with about half of the

inner wall or what you see in the bottom of the original plate. We used other pieces of the

HD coverage and still photos to recreate the art department's approved design. As itturned out there wasn't any hi-rez stock footage of crops at the overhead angle we needed.

Fortunately we found and hired a photographer who had a photoblimp and went out and

shot some plates of vegetation that could stand in as the crops. Of course at that time ofyear the crops had all been harvested, but we had some grass and vegetation that looked

enough like crops to use as a starting point. Kevin Little, our lead cg artist, built a HD rez

cg field in lightwave that we could place around our HD production plate. We took those

elements into 2D and had our compositor, Aaron Brown, track and put the final toucheson the elements. Also in 2D, we had Aaron move some shadows across the crops to

simulate shadows being cast from offscreen, overhead clouds.”

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This is the original image (the canvas) of the field shot from a photoblimp for the crop circle scene in

“Alienated”.

Set extensions can be created in 2D using digital paint, textures, other photos or 3D

elements. Entire extensions can also be created completely in 3D for shots that change

perspective, like this shot from “Purple Haze” of a helicopter spraying a field of strange-looking plants.

In this shot, from “Purple Haze” (Eureka), a 3D set extension of a field was generated by Zoic Studios to

match the movement of the live-action helicopter as it flies toward the tilting camera and then out of the

shot from a reverse angle. All the plants had to be painted & tracked digitally into the empty field to matchthe camera action and blend with the practical plants in the foreground.

Matt Gore explains how the opening shot for “Purple Haze” was created:

“For the field in Purple Haze we had our artist Kathryn Capri, build in Maya a 3D model

of the existing production plant. The plant had 2 main components - the "pod" which

would open later in the episode and the spider branches. Kathryn based her model on

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several reference stills that were taken in the existing lighting during production. She also

built a fence in Maya to allow us to do a last minute fence extension in the shot. She thenmatch moved the crops and rendered out several passes of crops, each at different depths

in the scene. Lane Jolly composited the extension with the live action footage.”

When I work with my students at the Art Institute, introducing them to set extensions,

they must physically extend an original image 1/3 either east or west, demonstrate an

understanding of reflections, remove wires or construction cranes and “nest” an imagethat will quickly orient the viewer to the location. For these extension projects we used

Photoshop.

I emphasize extending the images by harvesting textures and bit and pieces (pieces parts I

like to call it) from the original image to use as building materials for the finished

extensions. By harvesting as much as possible from the original image – texture,

windows, doors, lampposts, street signs etc. - you are guaranteed that the resolution, color

and textures will match. Chris Foster did an excellent job with this extension he createdof a water front scene in Paris.

Set extension painting created by Chris Foster, AICLA. In an actual production the shadows and

reflections in the water would be added by the compositor over moving water, however, as this was a class

exercise, I had Chris work them into the final scene.

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This is the original photo Chris started with - photo by Alecia Foster.

These are some of the extra images Chris used to harvest the bridge and Eiffel Tower. – photos by Alecia

Foster.

The truly unique trick that Chris pulled off with his extension is that dock you see down by the water. He found some images of the lampposts and benches in the other photos he

had, but he built the entire dock itself out of texture he harvested from the original

picture.

**NOTE TO CHERI** - if this demo p iece labeled A, B, C & D showing how to make thepylon piece is too dinky or ineffective for this print piece, then delete from the article.

A) Select an area to harvest the texture from. B) Isolate the texture and sketch in the shape of the

pylon C) Duplicate the texture layer and move to the right. Using the transform tool “distort”,

match the shape of the side of the pylon. D) Trim the edges of the pylon to give it a worn rounded

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look on top and paint in a shadow. Levels were used, pumping some black and white into the

image through “input levels” to give more definition to the texture and make the right side of the

pylon lighter.

Dennis Tan demonstrates extremely well in this extension how he used photos from

different sources, buildings and road, to create an effective piece.

Set extension created by Dennis Tan, built using three different source photos. Dennis also harvested

pieces of the image to paint out (cover up) the person standing on the corner in the original shot.

photos by Dennis Tan

In this demo piece, I took a photo of the entrance to the Art Institute. Originally, I shot

this picture to get a sample of the concrete texture, so I wasn’t concerned that my camerawasn’t held straight.

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The green area indicates where I plan to extend the set. Using the existing buildings for reference, I sketch

in lines indicating where I need to add to the structures. Photo by Briar Lee Mitchell

After cutting away the building in the distance and the remnants of the asphalt road, I placed a new sky

into the image, added some road from another photo I took in the parking lot and added the photos of the

satellite dishes. I harvested sections of grass and shrubbery to replace the missing foliage from the photo.

Be careful when you harvest and place the textures very close to their source. Repeating patterns will draw

too much attention, so I subtly use the stamp tool to clone out obvious repeating patterns. The sign I rebuilt

by sampling the colors from the original post and painting them in then adding a bit of noise to match the

original texture. Because I removed the building in the distance, I needed to paint out the reflection in the

windows. I did this by harvesting sections of the window where there wasn’t any reflection, and then using

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the distort tool, made them smaller to fit over the reflection. The satellite dishes are a bit too bright, so I

will need to adjust them to push them back into the distance.

To push objects like these dishes back into the distance, you can use levels to lighten them up, however I

find that placing a gel layer over top works better. Blurring a tiny bit is OK, however, blurring a great deal

does not work well – great for animation – but not for photorealism. I sampled the local color in the image

and settled on this dark bluish gray you see which I paint into it’s own layer and clipped to the layer that

has the picture of the dishes and mountains on it. I erased the gray away in the foreground where it meets

my new road then reduced the opacity of the layer, in this case to 42%. In nature, where dark objects like

buildings or mountains sit against a pale sky, an optical illusion occurs. That illusion is a glow which

appears above the dark objects, so I actually paint a glow along the horizon to create this effect.

Following the guides from my original sketch I paint in the missing pieces of the building and windows.

The windows, because they don’t have any reflections or details in them, were achieved just by sampling

the colors from the existing bits and then painting in the missing panels. I painted the metal frames the

same way and then added some noise or grain to match to the existing textures. The building’s walls

though are made of stucco, so I harvest from other areas of the building to clip to my new walls and cover

up the Art Institute sign.

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Now for the vanishing act. There had been three people in the original image. The woman who was

partially obscured by the palm was the easiest, so I made her go away first. Mask off the palm tree and then

clone her out with the stamp tool. The main sitting on the wall was also quite simple. I covered him up by

harvesting textures from the image (just like I did when I built the walls and covered up the Art Institute

sign). The man sitting on the steps took a bit more time. Because he is wedged in between such small areas

created by the steps and crisscrossing railings, I chose to paint him out instead of trying to harvest

textures. Use your lasso tool and mask off the tiny areas one at a time. Sample the local color and paint

him out, then on a layer over top, and using a texture type brush, paint in some of the texture you see. To

make the railings, I paint them all white then added the shadows, again sampling the rest of the railing to

get the right color. All three methods worked well in this situation.

I had these great photos of security cameras, but when I dropped them into the environment, they came in

too dark and contrasty.

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Using levels, I compress the contrast using the output levels. This helps reduce the contrast. A gel layer

overtop, again dropped down in opacity, completes the effect.

To complete my techy looking building I added the pipes and images on the sign post. I use pure black at

100% to paint in the new shadows but take my visual cues from the existing shadows in the image. Back the

opacity off of your new shadows until they match what is there.

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