to continue my comment above "photography in, photography out" and JRey's point of view also.... the proof is in the animation. when you kick up the photorealism in the textures and lighting like this, it puts heavier and heavier pressure on the verisimilitude of your ANIMATION. To phrase that another way, if you saw this character moving or emoting, the slightest false-step in the animation will stick out like a sore thumb and ruin the illusion. That's why this kind of photo-realism instantly calls for motion capture, not hand key-frame. Contrast that with the "gladly forgiving" viewer of semi-realistic, stylized or toon animation; the viewer does not expect perfect humanoid flow, he'd rather laugh, cry or get scared by the emotion conveyed from the movement. The same principles kick in with posed stills. These are, after all, simply a frame (snapshot) of implied prior and following action. So for a still, you've got to reach the audience AS IF it were one frame of an animation, and photorealism of and by itself will not do that. ::::: Opera :::::