Subject Says It All, after a whole day spent trying it finally has been done.. I faked a HDRI and realism has been acheived I think.. You be the judge..

Congratulations!! I saw your previous thread and some of your images, and I think you've done a preety good job! Nick

And they said it couldn't be done! Nice work VERY realistic. Keep up the effort. shoop

Could you please explain what HDRI is and what is the use of it. TIA, Nick

Nick1 heres a good link for ya.. It explains it more in detail than I ever could.. http://www.visualart.ro/tutorials/hdri/hdri_e.htm

That's not realism! That just a bunch of pixals on my computer monitor.:)

Noise is the answer. 3D programs today can render perfect object easily. But perfect object have a plastic fake quality to them. Think of the first Toy Story vs Final Fantasy. So a perfect metal need noise like rust, poc marks, scratches and smudges to have a more realistic feel. Although the pool ball are well rendered they're too perfect Real pool ball have subtle flaws on the surface that lend it self to appearing more realistic. The most realistic pictures I've seen with Vue have noise or distortion of the surface. And of course a good mesh helps.

I think you achieved a good result for that short period of time.Vue can be very realistic,even photorealistic,but it does not know it :))

Well, i am always questioning wether realism is a goal in 3d graphics. When i want realism i take my camera and go. Here i think the render is too grainy. You can even see the structure on the yellow ball. And the reflection of the camera man is missing as well. So i think realism isn't achieved here.

Me too Walther, I take a cam, if I want realisme. And many photographers uses a computer to take off realism of their photos or to take off the camera man (or the hole from where the hidden cam came) from the reflections:-). Guitta

Yeah,one of the reasons why im doing 3D.Taking a photo means to work with the things infront your lens to a certain amount.Doing it with a computer is for me more about construction and composition.Im doing sculpture as a fine artist and had a photografic education before.I also painted in my earlier years and im still giving sketching lessons. Every medium has its own style and is able to create its own reality :)

Well... the difference between photos and 3D-images are huge :) When photographing, you wan't catch something extraordinary, some special, almost unreal! In 3D it's a different story. You want to make it look as realistic (not always but often :)... Strange :) Well.. Ibaneze : You've managed to create HDRI, but to me, HDRI isn't the key to photorealism. Your image looks fantastic, but not photorealistic. Something's missing.. Well.. It still looks great! :)

So, this is your definition of realism, eh? OK. Congratulation to your success! :-) I like what Wabe wrote. Unfortunately I'm rich enough like he is, so I'll have to wait a while till I can buy me a SLR with an extra 300mm zoom! :-) And then I'll go catch my realism! :-)

hhmmmm! Yes, doing a photorealistic scene with just one ball has no interest : it's just a kind of technical scene, to test the parameters , it's not an artistical work. Even if it's not so easy to achieve photorealism, it has no real interest for the others to see a pic with just a ball. But seeing a complex scene which is photorealistic (C4D, 3Dsmax) is a real pleasure, and it's not possible to just take a photo to reproduce the scene (the scene does not exist in reality): this scene has been built in imagination, so its an artistic work What is important is the interest of the scene for the others. I think we could classify any art work in several styles : impressionism, surrealism, ... photorealism is one of this style, but it's digital art when you create something which does not really exist. Moreover, I rather agree with Thomas when he says "When photographing, you wan't catch something extraordinary, some special, almost unreal! In 3D it's a different story. You want to make it look as realistic (not always but often :)... " In fact I would say that 3d is like any other art as drawing, oil paint, ... the artist want to have a style !!! Sometimes to define a new style, his personal style, but at least a style. Most of the time we adopt realism as a style (but not photorealism as it's too hard with Vue) My 2 cent, Yves

For the problem of grainy pictures in Vue, try to render the scene with a higher resolution (for example 24001800) and then reduce the size to the final 800600 with a 2D soft. This could help. It is time consumming, but....

Totaly agree with Yves. The most important thing is to define/find your style. Faked HDRI as you show us is for me only an element that help increase the level of realism of a render.... but this is just an exercice. I use similar technique in some of my pictures. The original picture (Montepulciano) you can see in my gallery. Have a close look at reflection on the bottle. What can you see ? Yes a house and a tree. This objects are part of the whole scene even if we dont see them.... they are reflected by the bottle. So i have added something as a 'real world' only for that purpose. I'm not sure that peoples have seen it. But this is not my main goal... Some details like this you can see in my picture : Street. Look at the reflection on the Jaguar ...

Not going to write at length on this as the last two posts from YL and Pmermino sum up my opinion exactly.

I'm with Flycatcher, Yves and Patrick said what needs to be said. However, I disagree on what Yves and Thomas agreed on, "When photographing, you won't catch something extraordinary, some special, almost unreal!". Is it really a true fact? When I first saw a NASA image of a Start Birth, it was extremely extraordinary, very special and most unreal. But, now it doesn't hold much excitement to me, since I've seen so many pictures of them. This is human nature. Anything you present to the viewer for the first time holds special meaning, good or bad, extraordinary or ordinary, real or unreal. :-) Photoreal, Photorealism, Photorealistic ... anything you say, the key word here is "photo"! To me Photo is the true form of realism (in graphics), and Art (with all it's tools) follows through mixing the possible to impossible, real to unreal, ordinary to extraordinary. I really don't understand what's the point of spending hundreds of dollars and hundreds of hours behind creating a VoxWagon or few balls look realistic! If I need that, I would just take a photo and get on with my life. :-) When an art reached the realism, I think that looses it's artistic definition/value. By the way, Wabe when I wrote, "Unfortunately I'm rich enough..", I meant "NOT rich enough"! :-) Sorry, if I tried to brought you down to my level of 'wealthy'! :-)

On and on we go as humans to justify our opinions. The whole reason to be in the class room earth is to experience. If recreating reality is what you choose to experience bravo to you however, for the next person the experience maybe different. To over justify one view or another can really lead to missing the whole experience all together. Bruce Lee once said if you look only at the moon you may miss the heavenly stars. To be experienced in one program can only lead to more experiences in the next. Have fun and do more vueing IMHO. :) shoop

In fact photo can also be an art ; finally I don't know exactly what is art (something I would like to see in my house, maybe), to say "this is art, this is not art" is not easy. Difficult to find a frontier. Yes , "have fun, try to say something in your picture (the most difficult), try to do the highest quality, try do new things" could be a kind of definition for our art... ;=)

When taking in the attributes of a real photograph, there are SO many things that contibute to "realism". A lot of those attributes are actually an "incorrect-ness" with the photograph that we have seen so many times over our lives, that if we DON'T see them, it looks "strange" or it may look 3D, which in comparison to photo's look too "perfect" Real photo's can have; Soft shadows, a mix of crisp and blurry reflections, grain, bokeh effects, chromatic abberations, areas of desaturation, areas of oversaturation, color bleeding, barrel distortion, cautics, color radiation, etc. HDRI is just one attribute of realism. It's a BIG attribute, one I use a LOT these days, but ther are other parts to the realism puzzle. ;o) AgentSmith

Btw, Fantastic render of your billard balls! I ve tried making a similar scene, just was never happy with the surface texture of the balls. Congrats! AgentSmith

My one HDRI I've done in Vue so far, only real effects, other than hdri, is some dof. AgentSmith