Set Extension: Police Department - Dona de Mim
Role: Digital Matte Painter | Client: Rede Globo
The Goal
For this precinct sequence, the practical location only provided a single-story building, which didn't quite capture the scale of a major city police department. My goal was to "complete the architecture" by adding a second floor, making the precinct feel more substantial and authoritative within the world of the story.
The Workflow
To ensure a perfect match, I used a library of photos taken on the same site but from different surrounding buildings. I scoured these references to find the best architectural "matches," isolating specific windows, textures, and cornices in Photoshop. By harvesting real elements from the same environment, I was able to build a second floor that already shared the exact same weathering and lighting as the practical set. I delivered the final result as a high-fidelity 16-bit TIF, with the new floors seamlessly integrated into the original plate.
The Real Challenges
The "Perspective Puzzle": Since the source photos were taken from different buildings and angles than the main camera, the biggest challenge was the re-alignment. I had to meticulously "warp" and adjust the perspective of each isolated part to ensure they sat perfectly on the new floor without breaking the camera's vanishing points.
Curation and Isolation: Not every building on site was a fit. I had to carefully choose which parts to "harvest" and spend a lot of time on the masks to ensure the edges where the new architecture met the sky and the original roofline were completely invisible.
16-bit Integration: Delivering a single TIF meant I was responsible for the final "look." I focused on matching the fine grain and the soft, atmospheric falloff of the original photography to make sure the added floor didn't look like a digital layer, but like a physical part of the precinct.
Tools Used
Adobe Photoshop
Production Note: Environment created by harvesting and isolating architectural elements from site-specific photography, delivered as a single 16-bit TIF.