Matte painting isn't something I do very often but things were not, apparently, working out too well with a couple of the matte paintings for Supernova and so I got the chance to replace them. The first shot I did was inside the main cave of the mining colony on the moon and it involved lots of gantries and equipment around a blue lit central column. I finished it but it was cut from the latest script revisions before the compositors had turned it into a final shot. Oh well.

The image here is the second matte painting that I did. I suppose it shouldn't really be called a matte painting because it isn't really painted, it's rendered. It isn't exactly set replacement either though and as there isn't any other accepted terminology for it then a matte painting it is. It was done, as ever, under fearsome time constraints. I had five days. In the end it took six days because I sneaked in on the Saturday to finish it. The Nightingale leaving dock in this image is a separate render, I didn't do that or the rainbow coloured engine wash. Everything else though... I did that. I know it's not utterly perfect but hey, it took less than a week and it is, undeniably, much better than what we had before.

This and the other (abandoned) matte painting are the only two things I ended up actually lighting and rendering in Supernova. I think it has a fair amount of detail for something that was modeled and textured so insanely quickly. Still, another few days would have really helped with this shot... there just weren't a few days to be had.

Click on the image to see a 1024 pixel wide version.