Environment Reconstruction: Hilton India
Role: Digital Matte Painter | Client: Hilton
The Goal
The campaign required several high-end interventions across multiple takes to ensure a flawless visual presentation. The primary objective was to perform a seamless "night-to-day" conversion for a key hallway sequence and to clean up distracting reflections throughout the footage to maintain the premium feel of the Hilton environment.
The Workflow
To achieve the night-to-day conversion, I used a frame from the same footage that featured the internal environment of a room/hallway during the day as my technical base. Working in Photoshop, I meticulously hand-painted the walls and floor reflections to ensure the light direction and intensity felt natural for a daytime scene. For the exterior shots, I integrated subtle sky details, to enhance the atmosphere and ensure visual consistency across the entire commercial.
The Real Challenges
Night-to-Day Light Continuity: The biggest hurdle was the internal lighting. Since the original plate was shot at night, I had to "re-light" the entire architectural space through matte painting, using the daytime reference to guide the color temperature and the soft falloff of light on the surfaces.
Reflection Management: High-end hospitality environments often feature glass and polished surfaces that pick up unwanted crew or equipment reflections. I spent a significant amount of time isolating and removing these distractions while reconstructing the underlying textures to keep the images perfectly clean.
Invisible Clean Integration: I delivered the assets with precise edges to ensure the new river sat naturally behind the foreground elements of the plate. My focus was on the "invisible" side of the craft—making sure the perspective of the flowing water perfectly matched the camera's angle on the set.
Tools Used
Adobe Photoshop
Production Note: Delivered as high-fidelity assets and master frames focused on architectural reconstruction, reflection cleanup, and sky enhancement.
Watch the commercial
