What Carolly said. Sometimes, you have to step away from the computer.

I remember back in the '70s or '80s, someone discovered that the "trick" to making computer graphics objects look real was to use colored highlights. Previously, they'd been using white highlights on everything. Finally someone started using colored highlights, and low and behold, bronze pots suddenly looked like bronze, instead of like plastic. This was such a big story it make Time Magazine. Of course, it was hardly news to old-fashioned artists. I suspect most of them thought it was hilarious that it took the computer graphics folks so long to figure it out.