aeilkema posted at 11:45PM Tue, 01 December 2015 - #4241847

One thing I've noticed, while most props and such look really convincing, the majority of figures do not at all. It's like everyone is rendering a bit fake looking mannequins in a realistic enviroment, it's kind of surreal.

For a realistic humanoid figure, you need high quality textures, sophisticated (read more than 5 nodes ;-)) shaders, realistic posing and expressions; a realistic prop needs neither posing nor expressions and can go with simple shaders. It is just a question of complexity: humans are among the most complex things you can render. Personally, when I start with something very new, I begin with (at most) the Cornell box. First crawl, then walk, then run.