Hmm... I have this particular feeling on most Vue pieces-  whether it has that extra touch of life, making it believable even if it isn't relatable in real life.
I'm still quite confused on what it takes to have that sensation (no, I ain't self-doubtful, not now :D), i.e. what does it takes to make a top notch scene?
I suspect that it's the POV and the extreme polish given, but does anyone have a clearer definition of attaining "realism" in Vue?
(Note: I hardly feel this way to Vue 4 scenes, however. Something's different, or hasn't been done then, as Vue is an experiment-as-you-go app IMO.)

IMHO realsim is achieved by a number of factors:

1. textures must be believable.  We have all seen realistic textures but they are the wrong color, too large, too small or don't fit the object they are applied to or fit with the overall scene.  A perfect example of this is often times when stone or marble buildings are built, the stone is quarried from deposits that exist locally.  There are exceptions to this of course, but a bright blue marble castle in the middle of a mountain scene with white chalky cliffs just doesn't work.  Nor does a bright red new brick material applied to a castle work.  The eye expects to see old rugged textures on objects of this sort and the artist must allow him/herself to be aware of this.

2.composition doesn't make a scene realistic, just more elegant and appealing to the eye.

1. diversity.  We have all seen images of trees or plants that look like they were rubber stamped throughout the image - there is no variation to them.  Realism is achieved by the diverse and random manner that nature itself takes.

2. details.  When constructing a scene one needs to consider what would exist there in real life.  If you are creating a river scene, then two sloping terrains with a river running through it isn't very conviencing.  Rocks and boulders along the waters edge, a broken tree trunk lying in the water, plant life growing along the shore and draping in the water,  maybe a broken down shack or house visible in the distance, a bird or two in the distance - or maybe a whole flock of em.  The details can be few or lots, but some must exist in the scene in order for it to be believable.  We have all seen various images of nature and as such we all have come to expect to see certain things in various environmental settings.  A cactus growing in a pine forest is just as taboo as a lush green fern growing in the middle of the Sahara desert.  The artist must strongly consider what naturally appears in various natural environments and then include them in their scene.  The details, while they may be small are essential in order to transport the viewer into the scene and make it believable.

5.  variety.  I hate seeing forest scenes of only ONE darn tree genus.  While there might actually be some forests containing only ONE specific tree, that is not the norm and therefore the average viewer wont find it believable.  Variety however will be more eagerly accepted by the eye as that is what is most frequently seen in the would around us.

1. flexibility.  I cannot count the number of times I have a really great model with cool textures and want to create a scene around it.  But as I get working I realize that either the model doesn't fit with the surroundings, or the surroundings don't fit with the model.  I try and try and try to make the two fit together but often fail.  The thing that works most often for me is to keep the surrounding environment and replace the model with one that fits more naturally.  I ultimately end up with an image completely different from what I initially wanted, but I try to allow myself to be open to change and not force a round peg in a square hole.  It is depressing that I cannot make all things work together in my images, but flexibility is the key when you can't do something and it must be applied when you run into composition problems.   Otherwise all of my images would just be shiny spheres hovering over water ;^)

I have a book at home that is a pictoral layout of numerous buildings in Italy.  It focuses on the interior as well as exterior of buildings and their decor.  The book emphasises the ideas that go into the style of much of Italy's architecture in that wood, stone and earth are all used and their corresponding colors all are various hues of their natural counterpart and local surroundings.  The pastel yellows on buildings reflect the often arid landscape, the peaches and reds mimic the red earth tones etc.  There is a lot to consider in order to create a realistic image but picture books are a huge aid in struggling through this hurdle as well as viewing the artist images in the photography gallery.

Hope this helps someone - 3d artistry is a difficult hobby, but if we didn't love it so much, we wouldn't keep working at it. 

G&C

A profound question, the-negative.

I'd turn this question around and ask what is it about reality that makes it seem real. When you know that, you know what to do to simulate it. My ideas are in my ebook and too much to repeat entirely here.

It's clear that trying to 're-create reality' is futile. What would be the point? Just use a camera, go see a movie or simply enjoy the real thing. Seems to me the trick is to suggest the essential features of reality (via the best methods of visual grammar, best models, textures, lighting, props, etc.) and let the viewer's mind supply the rest - as usual. Please remember that all we have to work with is a few million tiny glowing colored dots on a 2D surface.

So, it's a kind of high-quality caricature. As in previous media, the artists job is to pick out and express the essences.

Some convincing qualities of reality:

1. Chaos & randomness:
         -Irregularity (except in artifical constructs & artifacts)
2. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics
          -Wear & tear (e.g. 'rust never sleeps')
          -Evident birth/death/growth/decay
3. Immense diversity
4. Abundant life
5. Multiple levels of detail
6. Complex light effects:
        -Light absorbtion, reflection, refraction, refraction caustics, diffraction, particle scattering, etc.
7. 4 dimensions:
           -3 spatial dimensions + constant change through time (animation)
           -Means simulating depth effects is critical
8. Analog nature, not binary. Continuity and smooth transition from one micro-environment to the next in any scene. Sines, exponentials and such smooth functions are everywhere. Abrupt transitions are rare. No visible descrete steps or quanta (until you get to subatomic dimensions)
9. Gravity effects everywhere (in scenes on planetary surfaces and most air vehicles)
10. Defects & affects of human visual perception (simulating these helps with realism):
          -Depth of focus
          -Motion blur
          -Focal lengths
          -Visual dynamic range
          -Eyeball neural network and brain 'fingerprints'
              *Sensitivity to symmetry
              *Sensitvity to image edges and corners (in cropping and composition)
              *Optical illusion stuff
              *Color scheme effects     

...my 2 cents   :o)

Attached Link: From My Own Little Gallery

In addition to the above excellent advice, I'd add the simple, yet often enough overlooked by some,  importance of using a suitable rendering quality. This does not mean Vue's previewlike "final" setting.  My own attempts at realism, successful or not,  usually entail a great deal of time spent creating meshes, texture mapping them, etc., in addition of course, creating an interesting and hopefully creative composition. Given this, why in the hell would I insist on a quick render?

Most of my own work is rendered at a custom setting which is similar to, but a bit better than "broadcast." The images are rendered out very large - usually the width is in the 2000-2500 pixel range. This gives me the advantage of a rather good quality render at a size which allows very easy pixel level post-processing if needed.  (usually very small scale  softening or blending, or the repair of artifacts of bad vertices or something.) Residual depth of field graininess, soft shadow imperfections, and better quality antialiasing are neatly taken care of during resizing to a more managable display size of 800x600 or 1024. When using GI, HDR, (or God forbid, volumetric lighting, radiosity,  perhaps with DOF blurring thrown in to really put the brakes on things) this can result in very lengthy render times, sometimes several days, or even more, even when networking several machines. (I usually use 3 roughly similar machines). But why hurry? What's the point?

Hi. Well thought replies, everyone!
Hmm, I'm getting the idea now... but what about harmony? Like garyandcatherine said on model flexibility, the endproducts are gonna end up much differently than the envisioned scene, especially with Vue. I'm gonna try porting some 3DS MAX scenes into Vue, and try to get most objects harmonize in a scene that's definately gonna be more than reflective spheres with infinite water planes.
jc, great point on the pointlessness on recreating real worlds. Most artists would be on the aim on emulating it to an extent. One of the things I just discovered was how inflexible and "unreal" the 4:3 aspect  ratio was (when filled fully) it was way too narrow for the focus area of the eye, which I figured goes around at the aspect ratio of a 35mm full frame photograph.
Big_empty_brain, I render FAR higher than Broadcast. My settings normally are Superior+ with G-buffer rendering at 2000-3000px in width (4:3/36:24). It's a pain in the *** with less than 1G of RAM, but since Vue 5 does fully support resuming the render (didn't quite worked well with 4) it does help alot. Still, there's more to realism than the rendering.

Good poins about renders, big_empty_brain.

And, of course, we are all just claiming to be working in "3D". For more realism (and much easier mesh visualization) we should all be wearing stereo glasses and making stereo images. When the ultimate view is a 2D image, "3D" is a bit of a misnomer.

One of my pet peeves is purists who see the frame (aspect ratio) as some kind of law. I ALWAYS crop any image to dimensions defined by the visual dynamics of the image itself.

Why would anyone believe that a composition would just naturally happen to fit into some particular arbitrary frame? Sure, if you're making a hollywood movie or a TV show, it has to fit the screen, but not fine art stills.

My rule for cropping is:
"If visual material does not:
A. Contribute new visual info, or
B. leverage a dynamic balance
then it get cropped."

In other words, more of the same same texture, etc. which is just there to fit a frame, is weakening your composition. That is, unless it is needed (like a teeter-totter with an off-center fulcrum to balance a heavy weight with a light one) to balance a dynamic (asymetrical) composition.

_jc  'Art Head Start' e-book: Learn digital art skills $19.95
'Art Head Start.com Free chapter, Vue tutorials, models, Web Tutorials Directory.

Dittos again to the above comments.

Note that I was not implying that render quality was the only important variable, nor that my own commonly used solution was the ideal one. My comment was aimed, in a very general way, at addressing what I see often enough as a too common fault with a number of otherwise good pieces, both here and elsewhere - The artist is frustrated, or perhaps not - which is another topic altogether -  that his piece "doesn't look real enough." There may be any number of reasons for that, many of which have been discussed above in other posts,  but often enough the most striking fault, even at a quick glance, and aside from any other problems that  may exist, is the poor quality of the render itself. When it's suggested that perhaps a better quality render might improve the situation, it would seem that all too often the artist is unwilling to wait for the results of a high quality render. To this my question then is, "Then why even bother in the first place?"

This was certainly a discussion I've had with a friend of mine, quite artistically skilled and creative, non-digitally. He purchased Vue 4, based on some of my older work which he found interesting, and seemed rather angry and frustrated at the generally crappy results of his own efforts. The problems were many - including that his own creativity did not seem to translate well to this medium, but the primary thing was his own impatience. Hours spent on composing a piece meant nothing to him, but if the render could not be achieved in five minutes, well, he was done with it. Unsatisfied, of course, but done nonetheless. Oh well.

As far as the render quality used, I doubt that there is any single answer. It depends on what's needed, and it's hard to beat simple experience for that, but it's best to aim high.

Aspect ratio is interesting: I generally use a 4:3-ish ratio, not because it's "best," or anything else. (Quite the contrary)  My pre-digital background was in 35mm film photography, and I guess at some level, my attempts at photorealism kind of reflect this sort of ratio. Unless a particular subject absolutely, physically  demanded it, even heavily cropped stuff ended up with roughly this format. Damnable cement-headed rigidity! LOL

Not sure if I can add anything to this really.

To me, textures and the atmosphere are really important. You can change the mood of a scene completely with the light.

C.