I always thought it purely had to do with actual painting but ofcourse with the advancement in CG why create a 2D matte when you can create a 3D matte. So here is my final for my Matte painting class. I modeled the basic structure and used camera projections to texture it. The temple is the Golden Temple that I had built last semester for my Maya 2 class final. The fog was created using Maya fluids, and the composite was done using After Effects. Just click on the MATTE PAINTING link to view the movie.

MATTE PAINTING