Saturday, December 6th, 2025 Posted by Jim Thacker

Tutorial: Cinematic Matte Painting Techniques


The Gnomon Workshop has released Cinematic Matte Painting Techniques, a guide to professional VFX workflows recorded by Digital Matte Painter Liane Li.

The intermediate-level workshop provides over two and a half hours of video training in Photoshop, Nuke and Blender.

Discover industry-standard workflows for creating a cinematic matte painting shot
In the workshop, Li reveals how to create a cinematic matte painting shot for your portfolio, following industry-standard methods.

She begins by discussing core design and composition principles, analyzing photography and cinematography, before moving on to gather reference material for the project.

Li then creates concepts for the shot using a combination of sketching and photobashing in Photoshop, before beginning work on the final 2.5D matte painting.

She creates and renders 3D assets in Blender, painting over the raw renders to refine them, then projects the renders and matte painting inside Nuke to create a three-second cinematic shot.

As well as the tutorial videos, viewers of the workshop can download Li’s Photoshop files and her Nuke Indie file for the finished composition.

About the artist
Liane Xuelian Li is a freelance Digital Matte Painter with over a decade of experience in VFX.

She has worked with leading studios including DNEG and Framestore, on projects including How to Train Your Dragon, Dune: Part Two, Silo, and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.

Pricing and availability
Cinematic Matte Painting Techniques is available via a subscription to The Gnomon Workshop, which provides access to over 300 tutorials.

Subscriptions cost $57/month or $499/year. Free trials are available.

Read more about Cinematic Matte Painting Techniques on The Gnomon Workshop’s website


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