Island Temple Matte Painting

Island Temple Matte Painting, originally uploaded by gordontarpley.
This is my entry and runner up for www.CGTantra.com May,2009 matte painting challenge titled The Ancient Temple

Created using 3d studio max, vray, mudbox and photoshop. Entry and runner up for www.cgtantra.com "Temple" matte painting challenge for May, 2009

skull model, started in 3d studio max (top) and detailed in mudbox (bottom)
I put more time into areas that would be visible in the final image so my apologies for not ironing out all the details towards the back and top. ;)

Test render of the skull model, modeled with 3ds max and mudbox, rendered with vray


A wireframe view of the 3d modeled elements


closeup of ambient occlusion pass


I've been asked to write a tutorial on how I put this together. That tutorial is here...

This is an earlier concept for the same challenge. I figured if I were an ant a temple might be a place that fed many generations of my family, hence the discarded gumball machine. I still really like the idea but at the time the island temple really caught my interest which kept me more motivated. I'd like to do a "finished" version of this someday.