Where to learn creating matte paintings for VFX?

[DerMalt]

Hey Guys,

I’m currently trying to learn making matte paintings but run into problems:

Finding high quality images that fit my needs is very hard. I mainly use Pixabay and google images (I know this is not good for commercial projects) for images, but even though they often are very high res, (for example 8000 x 4000p), they do not even hold up for a 1920 x 1080p shot, due to blurriness and lots of noise/grain.
So I’m looking for some paid resource sites, with hopefully better quality.
I’ve heard a lot about envato elements, and was wondering if some of you have some experience with it? How good is the quality, and is there enough variation to choose from?

Until now I’ve used YouTube to learn making matte paintings. This worked fine for now, but there is a lot of uncommented speed art, which is quite hard to learn from.
Also, I want to mainly use the matte paintings in Nuke or general 3D, and combine them with my own 3D animations. There is not a lot of that on YouTube.
Do you guys maybe now some good paid/free courses, that are specifically for VFX?

[Myra Ferguson]

You could check the Free collection (filter by Free) or the regular collection on Adobe Stock for high-quality images.

For VFX instructional materials for matte painting, check

• No Film School
• Rocket Jump Film School

[davescm]

An alternative is to model, texture and render a 3D scene based on a low quaility image then render it at the required quality for your matte. Most 3D applications either include, or have add ons, for camera and perspective setting when doing that.

Dave