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I really love my photorealistic images, but I honestly have to say that this topic is totally pointless. People like to render in non-photo-real, as well as photoreal, and that is great.
This post was originally much longer, but I deleted most of it because I voiced very strong opinions.
The internet is overblown with domestic, poorly made mobile phone pics which look nothing like Iray, or any unbiased renderer.
I think on the artistic scale, what Iray really gives you is COMPLEXITY. Shades, nuances, vividness. This is what matters, this is what catches the eye. I remember visiting Rome some years ago, and experiencing some works, like the Pope portrait by Velasquez, which is kept in private Pamphili museum (very recommended!!) and is striking for its vividness and character. This style is not for everyone, like a real art should be, but shot for extra detail and fine colors is natural for some artistic styles, oil painters etc.
I am saddened by the fact that many G8 promotional pics lack this extra "shick". I still believe that when G3 was launched, it has had better visuals to go with the figures,
I wish I had seen your strong opinions.
I don't mind them at all.
In fact, it's sort of the reason for the bringing up the topic. People do seem to have very strong opinions about this subject. Something I find interesting of itself. But, I didn't post it because I think everyone should make photorealistic images. The question the video brought up for me was whether or not understanding HOW to make photorealistic images was beneficial to creating other styles of 3D art.
I don't think I've read much disagreement in this thread.
Most people seemed to agree that understanding basic principles such as light and shadow, human physiology, etc. was useful for artists in any medium even if the end result was not to try to mimic a photograph.
To the extent there was any disagreement, it seemed to center on whether a sketch artist is practicing "photorealism" when the sketch artist studies basic principles such as light and shadow in a still life fruit bowl.
No one asserted that sketch artists would not benefit from an understanding of light and shadow. It just seems very odd to some of us to call a study of light and shadow photo realism when artists have been studying it for millenia, but cameras have only been around for a couple of centuries.
There was also a side issue that I brought up, but most people have ignored. This is the issue that what we see may not be real. The issue of cameras being used to intentionally distort reality. A project to make something look like a photograph may in fact be a purposeful distortion of reality. Check out most magazine covers. The famous example is Jamie Lee Curtis doing a cover without the enhancements. Good for you, Jamie Lee Curtis! Photo and realism are not the same, at least not to me.
Professional stage magicians use centuries-old techniques to manipulate what our brains interpret from our eyes. It is not always reality. Check out Teller's discussion for the Smithsonian.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/teller-reveals-his-secrets-100744801/
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Absolutely. You can make a stylised wooden table, but if you're completely ignoring how a a real table looks like, and the wood looks like plastic because screw realism, it's going to look bad. Same for caricatures. You need to first learn how to draw a face from reference before you can begin to abstract the likeness into something exaggerated.
..hmm spent many years in music. For piano it starts with scales and arpeggios (the foundation blocks of technique), the Bach Inventions, and sonatinas by Clementi and Mozart before heading to more involved works like Bach Fuges, Partitas, and Suites, Beethoven Sonatas, Chopin Preludes, Etudes, Nocturnes, Polonaises & Waltzes, Liszt Rhapsodies, Debussy Preludes and Suites, and Rachmaninoff Preludes. You're not going to sit down at the keyboard for the first time and embark on attempting learning a Scriabin Etude, or Beethoven's "Hammerklavier" sonata as you will quickly become lost and incapable of performing many of the difficult passages involved without first having the basics well under your fingers.
...nice photo or CGI render...
...not, it's a painting.
Photorealism in art has been around long before programmers created the first 3D mirrored balls on checkerboard floors. I rememeber having discussions about it's merits back in my college days decades ago.
Amazing!!!
For me persuing photorealism is how I learned to understand lighting and the surfaces pane. Without that I do not think I could have moved on to develop a better understanding of the rest - posing, framing, positive/negative space, etc. I decided that if I could not figure out how to stage a simple scene to make something from real life look how I know it should look 'in real life' then I was not comprehending how the daz lighting and materials worked together to produce the final render, and if I did not understand that then how could I go on to create my own 'art'? It just seemed like something I needed to understand as a fundamental to moving on and doing something interesting/my own. And Im stilll learning about it, by no means have I mastered photorealism, but I know enough now to go on and do things with a level of confidence and expectation about what I should see in my work. Before that I was the figurative chimp hammering away at the typewriter keys, hoping for the symphony to emerge.
That Andrew price video seems to be stressing the importance of being able to acheive photorealism
if you plan to do CG as a living and gain employment at VFX houses and similar.
It is mostly about the importance of physicly based lighting and shaders
It has nothing to do with "style"
It has more to do with the ability to create CG elements that can convincingly blend
with live shots for hollywood movies.
There is nothing to "debate" here IMHO
Of course CG professionals need "Photorealism" in their work
it is not some elitetist concept that seems to make people
here start posting van goh paintings
as a defensive counter argument.
It is not different than the general need for people with advance coding skils
to write and maintain software used in various industries.
....that's what I inferred in the opening part of my post on page 1.
Let's be honest...are these discussions more about ego or art?
We all want to have everyone think we're awesome artists. But in my case I know I'm not. And as some have said, the discussion of photorealism or not seems to be somewhat irrelevant for most of us.
Personally, when I do renders, I have one of 3 goals in mind:
If I'm goofing, photorealism is irrelevant. Unless it makes me happy. And if I'm trying to learn, photorealism is irrelevant, unless that's what I'm trying to learn about.
But if I'm trying to make something meaningful to myself and others, photorealism might be very important. Or "realism", or whatever you want to call it. The reason is that all of us are used to seeing a real world, 24/7, every day. And that's our reality. And that's why we like real movies, with real cameras and actors and sets, because it's real life but molded in a way we've never seen, and a way designed to impact us. And most of those movies, if they were non-photorealistic, or cartoons, probably wouldn't have nearly the impact.
Think of your favorite "real life" action or drama or romance movie as a cartoon. It would be totally different. Believing that the images we see are real is huge in how it will impact us. And if they're not photoreal, or believable as another world that is some sort of believable extension of the real world, it would probably fall flat. Some of us remember "2001, A Space Odyssey". A perfect example of how a photo-realistic and scientifically plausible world was absolutely necessary to convince us of this incredible world nobody had ever seen before.
And then there's cartoons. Totally different, and impact us differently. We know they're not real, so it requires a completely different art and science to make them work. Same with paintings.Nowhere near photorealistic, but still requiring a completely different skill and talent set to make them work.
But no matter what "medium" or whatever, if you're trying to make impactful stuff (#3) it's irrelevant how you do it, or what tools you use. What matters is the result, and whether it impacts you and others. Personally, I have no clue what it takes to make impactful stuff, other than I know it when I see it. I know I love 3D cartoon movies like Despicable Me. But exactly WHY I like it, or what they are doing to make me like it, are far beyond me. They know how to do correct color combinations to make me feel stuff, and excellent animation, and excellent, exaggerated character design, and music (I love Pharrell Williams) and a bunch of stuff I have no clue about. And while I'd love to be able to do stuff like that, even like the gif in Kyoto Kid's signature, there's no way I can come even close.
But if I take advantage of enough skilled and talented PA's, and the excellent Iray renderer and DAZ Studio, I can take the easy way out and generate images that are close enough to photorealistic to have a minor impact on me or others. Because I can place a person in a fake but very believeable environment and make this other world.
But I think what some people have issues with are those renders that are close to being photo-real, but not quite close enough, and are in this weird in-between world that isn't cartoon (with all of its special art and styles and so on), and clearly isn't an attempt at a real, believable world. Personally, that kind of stuff just looks awkward to me. And I think there's also a case to be made that cartoony, non photoreal stuff is even tougher to pull off than photorealistic. You have to worry about color combinations and how to design and exaggerate the characters, and even small stuff like what font to use in speech balloons so they're readable and not annoying. Just because stuff looks right and awesome to me doesn't mean it won't make the rest of the world want to vomit
But if you're just goofing for your own enjoyment, or to learn stuff, it's pretty much irrelevant what others might think.
I don't know, I'm nowhere near being an artist, but I am trying to get a basic understanding of what's required to make good renders. And it's not easy. Heck, until last week I didn't know that there are standard color schemes that most people think look good together (this Kuler thing). But I think at least understanding photorealism can be hugely beneficial if at any point you want to figure out what most people are expecting when they see images, and what would impact them. Unless somehow you can convince them otherwise.
Okay, we're all on the same page that understanding realisim is important.
Now... does this qualify as photoreal? Why or Why not? Is this a valid style for CG artists to aim for? Why or Why not? - removed because it's distracting from my point
Everything is valid for a CG artist to aim for. Why wouldn't it be? If you're doing it for yourself, then have fun. If you're doing it to learn, then have fun.
But if you're hoping to impact yourself and/or others, it may or may not be the best way to get your point across. Think of the average person looking at the image. What would they think? Would it affect them?
If your goal is to impact others, and that doesn't work, then the answer is clear. Try something else. Because most people probably don't care if someone spent one day or one month making that image, or what tools they used. They care about the result. And the result is a comic-type image of a girl in a forest.
Irrelevant. The argument has never been that only one style is valid.
...two of my top five films are Pixar's Brave and Princess Mononoke while The Iron Giant is among my top ten. All are animated. For myself the story being told is has an extremely important impact and all three had beautifully crafted animation that supported the story very well.
Well, yes and no.
No, no one has said it has to be. ... However there is a lot of insistance that Photorealism is "Better" And, for at least as long as I've been doing this, there seemed to be two camps. Either you are in pursuit of Photorealism, or you want to do Toons, complete with toon-ish deformations. There is very little interest or understanding for those looking for something in between.
All I'm seeing here is "you have to understand realism to do other styles." And then the video which was something like "you have to be able to do photorealistic renders for the industry to take you seriously." You can still do other styles. Realism is the stepping stone to other styles.
I'm trying to figure out where people see the lines between realism, photorealism and "toon." One of the problems with this discussion, repetedly, is a lack of common definitions. Even the video at the beginning conflates Realism (which this picture is, imo) with Photorealism (which this picture is not)
And tthe "average person" I know is going to see that she's well muscled and half naked before the proccess the artistic style of comic/painted. Then again, most of my friends and associates are geeks who would probably go "Oh, that's an Elmore" before proccessing much else.
(Darn quote thingy's not working....)
I think maybe that's the key. I think you probably need to really understand the real world and photorealism and what people are expecting in order to know how you can tweak that to move into the non-photorealistic world and succeed. People like certain colors and they like shadows and different face and body styles and exaggerations make us feel different things (like the little girls in Despicable Me with the big eyes). But you need to understand all of that first, and anatomy and motion and stuff that I have no clue about in order to exaggerate that into a cartoon. Successfully at least.
As DaWaterRat says, there's a couple different camps here. There's the general public who couldn't care less about anything other than what the image looks like and how it makes them feel. And the second camp is the artists and/or CG folks who KNOW what it took to make the image, and respect that work, independent of the results. Yeah, if someone did that by hand they did a nice job. Does that make it an impactful image that tells a story or emotion? Not at all.
So again, it depends on what you want to achieve with the image. Impress your friends, or impact the general public? Or just goof on your own?
All I'm trying to point out, which is, actually, counter to the video is that while I need to understand realism (I've never denied that), I don't actually need to be able to create images like this
Before I try for images like this:
@DaWaterRat "Now... does this qualify as photoreal? Why or Why not? Is this a valid style for CG artists to aim for? Why or Why not?"
Ok, I'll take a run at this. First the short answers, then my reasons.
1. No it's not photoreal. 2. Of course it's a valid style.
Re: Photoreal. I'm not sure exactly what this means to others. To me the key word is photo. It's a great image, but I don't confuse it with a photo. While I'm on the topic, I think too many people expect Studio to give them a render like they would see with their eyes. Common comment "Iray isn't realistic because a 60 watt bulb lights a whole room for me at home". Studio replicates a camera, not your eye/brain system. Any photographer will tell you that 60 watts isn't enough to light a whole room unless the ISO is extremely high or the exposure is very long. Your eyes are pretty good with dynamic range, and your brain is more than willing to lie to you about detail.
Re: Style: Frankly I can't think why any "style" would not be valid. Further, only a fool would believe they are the arbiter of style for others.
By the way, FWIW...
My reaction to the Bettie Page image that DaWaterRat posted is (in this order):
2 is why I turned to CG. I can't draw like that. And I agree it's just a pin up, which doesn't particularly excite me either. I just grabbed one from Elmore's site.
This is actually one of my favorites of his: (You'll note the ladies are mostly covered...)
Yeah, too bad.
Suddenly I'm no longer a fan of his
...I used to be able to draw and paint (pretty well too), but no longer can due to my disability so 3D CG has become my new medium,
This makes sense to me.
That's the part that confuses me...
Why are there two camps? It seems to me like there shouldn't be. Especially if, as the video implied, one is simply a "stepping stone" to understanding how to create all others. There now seems to be a debate of whether this is true. I don't really know for certain, but it certainly makes sense to me.
I guess when I started this, I didn't have a clear idea or "opinion", but as the conversation continues, I am definitely forming one in favor of learning what IS photoreal, so I can then break it or drift away from it the way I might want to.
So... Thank you, everyone! You have helped me sort out in my own mind, anyway.
Good example of none-photorealism that is nonetheless based in reality. There is lighting coming from the right, shadows, sword looks like metal, detailed vegetation, human anatomy, color palette, composition etc. The whole thing is artistically sound even if one may dislike the style or subject.