Renders that Look like Photos? Forget it!
Fauvist
Posts: 2,219
As content and renders approach looking exactly like photographs I'd like to suggest that making your art look indistinguishable from photography is a guarentee that almost nobody in the world will want to look at it.
There are currently about a hundred trillion photographs viewable for free on the Interent - photographs of every conceivable subject pictured in every conceivable way. Stock photo agencies online offer hundreds of thousands of professionally created photographs for a couple of dollars each - to use for advertising and/or editorial purposes. You want a photograph of a grizzly bear dressed like Alice in Wonderland standing on it's head eating an ice-cream cone? No problem.
It's possible, on the Tumblr website alone, to look at photographs every second of every day for the rest of your life. People, now, look at a photograph for about half a second before their eyes move on to another photograph, or to something else. We ar bombarded with photographs in the media and online.
I went to one of those giant international art expos last weekend - the kind with art dealers from all over the world. Out of the thousands of artworks for sale, there were about 20 photographs - and those were mid-20th century and by very famous photographers.
The art value of a 3D render is that it does not look like a photograph.
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Well... True... To some extent... But I've never been much of a fan of most photography... Most of it is rather boring and I really don't see why one guy's ends up on the wall of a snazzy gallery or museum and the other guy is deemed amateurish and pedestrian... Pffft... Okay, one is lemon on a table in front of a window on a cloudy day, the other is a lime... Everything is more or less the same, they are both black and white... One window has slightly more condensation... Okay... Maybe that's it... But still... They both bore me...
Portraits... Maybe they bore the hell out of me because my mom used to be a photo retoucher (back when Photoshop was a place you visited to buy film) and I saw so many portraits I got got sick of them... I get that an interesting face can tell a life's story... But that's what they make buses and subways for... Staring at interesting faces and in your mind making up a story of how the hell they ended up looking so damn interesting... Actually it's probably more about transportation, but still, there is way more to look at there and sometime the face will want to talk to you too... Even tell you it's life story... Let's see a stupid portrait do that...
Sorry if I'm seeming somewhat of a philistine or uncaring of the arts... But I was woken up early by some evil telescammarketers and everything is on my poop list today...
By the way, all I could find was a picture of a small brown bear dress as Alice Cooper sucking a lollipop and doing a handstand... Now I really want a picture of a Grizzy bear dressed as Alice in wonderland and standing on its head while eating an ice cream cone (waffle cone, none of that wafer cone nonsense)... I don't know why, but I do believe you that there is one out there and now I must find it... I know a friend who if I just said that, even if I made everything on the list up, he'd say, "oh, that just cause you don't know how to look... " and proceed to spend hours looking for it just to prove I'm inept...
but I digress.
I think it's okay for a render to look like a photo... Especially if it's something you put a lot of work into... Not everything is available stock and many times the person making the render goes through a lot to make their scene, even their boring scene look the way they want or envision... To be honest, with 3D you can get far closer to the artistic vision, than with photography... With photography, at some point someone is gonna have to compromise... Alice Cooper was looking for work and there were no licenced Alice in wonderland costumes available... Brown bears are cheaper per pound than grizzly bears... Not an issue in 3D... You have the skill, you have the money... You can have what you envision... With a lower point of compromise...
The look... Well... That's personal taste... I love the look of some of those images where someone takes a render and post works it into something that looks like an oil painting... I even saw an article where some guy was making renders that matched the look of the old masters... No post work. That's impressive... If I didn't find their work so dark, depressing and creepy looking, I probably would have loved his efforts. I think if the render can grab your attention, tell a story... Make you feel something or even make you laugh... Then does it really matter what it's render mode is... PBR, toon, ray traced electro-realistic photon simulation?
The art value is ultimately in the eye of the beholder... Or some other D&D monster... But in many cases it's the viewer who determines its worth... If it's to go on a gallery wall...well,all bets are off there... How crazy is the artist and how marketable is his/her story about their art is really the bottom line... Selling your work to individuals though a market place... That comes down to what they find appealing and are willing to pay... Commercial work... Well, you have to wow them with your portfolio, but ultimately they tell you what to make... School... You have to build your work around what you teachers interpret as art, so all bets are off there... It's a big crazy world, with a lot of crazy people with different tastes (just don't go around licking too many of them) and diffent ideas...
For me... Personally, I'd be thrilled out of my skin if I could make my renders look like a photo the exactly way I envision a scene... Thats what I ultimately wish to be able to do in order to illustrate some very old stories I've made...
Either way... It's all good and I'm crazy anyway.
photos, meh. onion dancing men, memes and lolz cats, BRING IT
I do photoreal renders just for the challenge. Lately, however, I have been coming to the same conclusion you outlined here. I am working harder and harder to learn Photoshop and hoping to get fantasy scenes done that look more like paintings from many of the fantasy artists whose work I enjoy. Renders like Stonemason's are an inspiration to where I want to get to.
I created a new site I called CGI Babes. I started with rendering photoreal images of woman in lingerie and bikinis and quickly moved to women in fantasy.
women only?
hmm, gives me idea, gonna make a dedicated gianni pinup gallery on my site.
I tend to look at image manipulated photographs, something made to look "unreal" or ones that will have you scratching your head wondering how they made it look like it does. I don't care really for the regular stuff of photography, those are indeed boring and not very artistic.
I like photos and renders seamlessly combined so you do not know what is real or polygons but you know it cannot be real as so fantastical
is difficult to follow rules of composition in photography, no trans parameters lol
I think a good reason to do photorealistic renders is using subjects which just aren't possible in real life. Many people here use DS for book covers, etc. If the day comes when a model agency opens for vampires, ogres and other mythical creatures, these folks may pick up a camera. Until then, they'll probably stick with 3D.
I'm not defending photorealism in renders. I think everyone should do whatever they feel is right for them. I'm just saying that reproducing reality isn't neccesarily the goal. As you rightly point out, there are plenty of real pics out there already. So we're now at the stage where it's either a technical challenge, or more likely, doing renders of figures/situations that can't be done any other way. And there are plenty of those to tackle.
mac
Personally I like to try to get as close to photoreal as possible (which isn't very close with me) because I want scenes to look real. But the scene content I tend to use is stuff you can't take a real photo of, for instance monsters, unless you go to the trouble and expense of building a highly detailed life-sized model of them in your home and hiring actors to interact with them (which for most people is highly unrealistic).
I can see the OP's point in terms of - whats the point in rendering a photoreal 3D image of a standard studio portrait, or a glamour shot, or a still life shot of a bowl of fruit in a room etc. To me there is no point in that because photography handles that stuff much better than 3D ever can, so I always think that people who focus on that kind of 3D art are in the wrong game. They're striving to achieve something that they could manage in a couple of hours with a camera and someone to pose for them.
However, I can think of 2 good reasons why you would want to be able to create photoreal 3D art:
1) If you want an image of something that does not exist in real life and, thus, you cannot take a photo of it (eg monsters, space ships etc) but you still want it to look very "real".
2) If you want to create a series of realistic images to tell a story, such as a webcomic, but you can't afford to pay models/actors or hire studios and props (like most of us can't).
Edit: Darn! Beaten to the punch by maclean!
The tools like Iray and Octane were originally meant for architects and people making product mock ups. The more real, the better for those pursuits. For me, their appeal is in getting lighting results quickly with minimum fuss and bother, and if the shaders look real, that's a bonus. There are some products that will do similar in 3Delight (wowie's lights with Omnifreaker's stuff for example), but it can take longer and be as noisy as Iray or Octane. With Iray and Octane you can throw more CUDA cores at it and not have to build a render farm, which you couldn't do with our version of 3Delight anyway, and it's much more affordable than putting together a multi-core workstation that could take advantage of unlimited cores with a couple very expensive Xeon processors.
If you want to merge CG with live action, Iray and Octane are the way to go for better, more realistic results. With DAZ offering more realistic looking products, you can make something look real which never existed. Photos can be art if they capture a mood, or emotion, unique lighting, or something you don't see everyday. Realistic CG is a great way to envision worlds and characters that do not exist but look like they could.
But what many miss is you can do more surreal/typical CG kind of art in Iray with much more control over light, and you have more predictable results with shaders. So it's the best of both worlds.
It's important to remember DAZ has both 3Delight along with Iray, and you can combine the two for speedy results if you composite.
Well, it runs several sides! It is a visual universe.
There are those who will want renders like the picture, the more possible next;
Some work on photos to make them look less photos;
Some work on renders to make them look 2D drawings;
and some people paint their designs until the appearance of renders (transforming drawings appearance 3d)
It's often a good idea to learn photorealism to help develop skills that will serve you in NOT doing photorealism. Classic example -- early Picasso tends toward realism.
Also, sometimes people want to express themselves.
I mean, sure, there's photorealistic images throughout the internet. There are also artworks of every conceivable style. By that argument nobody should ever make more art and give it up and go home. Um, no, no thanks.
I agree there are utilitarian uses for photorealistic 3D renders - as with architectural models, scenery for movies etc.
There are not artworks of every conceivalbe style on the Internet (or anywhere else) - which explains why several artists in every generation becomes world famous - because they conceive of a style of art that didn't exist before. And non-photorealistic art is always unique to the artist - which is why you can tell impressionistic paintings by Monet and Seurat and Van Gogh and Gaugan and Pissaro - apart.
But like the poem goes, so too photography a "rose is a rose is a rose is a rose". If you collected1000 photographs of roses from the internet it would be impossible to tell that each of them was taken by a different person. If you collected 1000 paintings of roses from the Interent it would be easy to tell that they were all by different artists.
Only for the site I stated. I do all kinds of renders.
Mac and tl155180 touched on one of the reasons for photorealism. Book covers. While book covers run the gamut from photos to abstract blobs, what you put on the cover needs to reflect the expectations of the audience of the genre. So if you're looking to create a cover for your book, look at the best-selling books in your genre, then mimic the predominant style you find. For some of us, that means photoreal.
Sure, you can pick up stock photos for a couple of bucks, and you might even be able to find exactly what you want, (though not likely,) but so can anyone else. It's not fun seeing your "image" on someone else's book cover. I speak from experience!
You still have to make compromises with 3D. Every realistic hand gun I've seen on DAZ, for example, comes with a long barrel. The only short barrel gun I found is from an old product and looks like a very unrealistic children's toy. (I ended up going a different direction for the cover.) But you're far more likely to get what you envisioned for your cover if you do it yourself in 3D. Or have a 3D artist do it for you, if you don't think your skills are good enough.
If you're interested in seeing a before and after—the first cover conceived before Iray and converted, the second cover created after Iray and after perusing covers in the genre—I posted examples in another thread some time back: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/835891/#Comment_835891 (opens in a new window.)
There's also the surrealist element.
I'm very proud of : http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/In-Memoriam-Poster-final-569419739
It's photorealistic, but everything in the image isn't, well, real stuff.
I want to clarify, that if you are setting up sites for traffic and your renders look like typical photographs, or bad photographs, don't expect to keep an audience. Now if you do art work that looks great and you can work a unique style, you can attract and hold an audience. That's where I am coming from.
I find myself in some disagreement with the OP; but then again, I produce my artwork - which is a very remarkable and generous statement about its quality - just to see how close I can get it.
Being real doesn't stop it being art; photography, like any art-form must tell a story. There are many works of art out there, that are not photographs - that didn't even get as far as saying, "Once upon a time...". If the propsed art, makes me pause, think, wonder or speculate or simply enjoy, it just might have fulfilled it's purpose.
The skill in rendering real, is all about light and shadows - not exclusively I know.
Photography too relies on the skilled use of light and shadow. A skilled photographer could make that rose look like a work of art, which it is; that for me would make it a work of art, the ability to portray something in such a way. The other 999 photographs of roses, well they'd pass us by in less than a second.
Not being able to appreciate an art form, doesn't stop it being an artform; if it did, then modern art would cease to be an art form. Art just like beauty, is in the eye of some mythical beasty. or another.
I am going to disagree. While I can't say what the average viewer thinks, I can say what artwork I find of value to look at, and often that is renders that are or approach photorealistic quality (although subject matter may not be real, for example I like sci-fi and fantasy, for which there are often no actual photos). So I know that there is art value for this for at least one viewer out there... and I would suspect there are more given the available art I see on a regular basis.
However, I do clearly see your point about the volume of available photos and how photorealistic quality could make 3D art indistiguishable from actual photos, and certainly agree that a percentage of the population would not be interested in those, and would prefer a unique visual style.
One thing which has to be said is that most photographs are also bad pictures. They are "real", they are documentary, they will impart accurate information about superficial aspects of an object, but as pictures, let alone art, they don't cut the mustard. Of course, there are also photographs which are great pictures, but they are great despite being photographs.
A great picture is about composition, colour, lighting and meaning. You can get those things in photographs, in paintings and in 3D art, but I would regard 3D art as more akin to painting. It has a similar artifice and element of deliberation.
I call those, "snapshots" ...
I'd argue that one could find meaning in absolutely any photo, image or painting. All it requires is the right level of pretentiousness on the part of the viewer
If I leave the lens cap on or render without any lights I can produce a perfect Rothko.
How very dare you! That man's art really speaks to me about the curvyness of potatoes and the meaning of squirrels. He's a genius.
Given the choice of photorealism and "artistic" realism, I'll take the artistic side. I've been a fan of artist/illustrator Michael Whelan since the mid '90s. I'd take any of his art over a photoreal render of the same subject any day. Just my humble opinion, that's all.
http://www.michaelwhelan.com/
I use photoreal images for three things: aforementioned mockups, isolated objects for use in compositing with other art, and as accurate shadow and tone references for digital re-drawing.
For mockups and product shots it tends to be much cheaper to do it as 3D than hire a photographer, arrange for the photoshoot, get model releases, and so on. There are other applications that do this much better than D|S though. 3ds Max and a few other high end applications are more typical for this. With a skilled artist, the renders can look fairly indistinquishable from photographs, even when they include people.
If you will not do photo-like renders, you cannot properly illustrate http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/pm.aspx
Not everyone is rendering for Art - there are a host of motivations.
Not everyone who is aiming to make Art is approaching it the same way.
Art, for those who are aiming for that, is not a matter of predefined rules of what does and doesn't count nor is it something that needs approval from without.
Not sure how I feel about the OP telling me what the art value of a 3D render is, but I'll get over it.
for me it is all about the process of what needs to get done to the render engine and the material surfaces to get it to look like a photograph, not so much the final result. kinda like how a photographer sets up the shot, the right lighting, the right outfit, the right makeup, etc, but with 3d you have to go beyond that, to the right surface settings, the right textures, the right effects so the light reacts as it should, etc.
Anyone here can plug and play all kids of content and effects to get good results, I want to do most of these myself. It's probably why I am in disbeliefe when users complain about iray over 3DLight, because I always have to edit surface values.
I think the cental premise is not quite accurate so I will leave this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperrealism_(visual_arts)