Everyone may be his : her own judge.

Now animate it :)  Change the lighting, move the camera, move the mesh.

Pay attention to what you wish for, I might do it..... ;-)

I realized early on that when I bought a character for any of my 3D models the texture was FAR more valuable than any morphs included. The mesh can be manuipulated by someone with no more ability than I have using the dials and magnets, but the texture is something I'm just not able to create and refine on my own!

Sure morph dials are easy to turn, but it takes a good eye to get all the settings right and mesh manipulation is another animal all together. I am good at texturing and decent at mesh creation but organic mesh modeling is a challenge. Then there are some that have trouble with textures but can model anything organic.

Worth noting that the initial post is a photo manipulation and has zero to do with 3D - turn the camera, move the mesh, change the lighting :)

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Sure morph dials are easy to turn, but it takes a good eye to get all the settings right and mesh manipulation is another animal all together. I am good at texturing and decent at mesh creation but organic mesh modeling is a challenge. Then there are some that have trouble with textures but can model anything organic.

ROFLMAO --- I happen to  know you can model just about anything! Which is what I was saying... those of us who really can't do either really need to take our hats off top those who can!

Quote (vilters from this thread www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php) -
*"A mesh is nothing more then a wire to hang a good texture on."

I assume this is a follow on from this quote in the thread I've linked to above.

*As I said in that thread, I think trying to attach greater importance to one or other element in 3d rendering is a mistake.

In the case of your photo manupulation (which is way creepy btw) were you to create this in 3d terms you'd have to make changes to the dog model as well as using the altered textures for it to hold up under different lighting conditions, as pjz99 is suggesting.
I'm not saying you couldn't achieve this at all with textures alone, but directional lightiing would break down the illusion somewhat.

More to the point, if you're placing all the emphasis on textures (e.g. you have a 100% projected texture) then any time you DO want to move the mesh, move the camera or change the lighting, you have to redo that work, which may not be practical in terms of time, or even possible if you don't have an endless set of reference photos from different angles and different lighting.

These arguments (what is most important in realism) always seem stupid to me.

Which wheel is the most important on a car? And I don't mean at 5 MPH. I mean which one is most important for driving at 65 MPH in rush hour? The answer is: That is an incredibly pointless and stupid question.

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Which wheel is the most important on a car? And I don't mean at 5 MPH. I mean which one is most important for driving at 65 MPH in rush hour?

The steering wheel :p