i think it goes further, and into your definition of realistic, in another thread some people were saying they wanted realistic shaders to use in surreal style renders, so i think it depends on your defintion of real.

Is it,

a) realistic likeness to real people in real situations, with life like faces, expressions, poses, surroundings, clothing, etc

b) realistic likeness to only certain elements, eg a lifelike skin on the barbie doll fighting the dragon.

It's really in the defintion I guess, and whether or not you are viewing the final render in comparison to other forms of producing lifelike images, eg photography. IMHO it's whatever makes you happy. I think that the moment we try and use the tag line realistic or lifelike in a gallery summary, we open ourselves to sort of critique we wouldn't get if we just rendered what we considered to be lifelike and said nuttin lol.

 

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