

Very realistic CGI - Muzza
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19765-is-this-the-most-realistic-cgi-youve-ever-seen.html

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michael_nielsen
The artist behind this, Alex Roman, has produced a 12-minute CG piece (the
"Third and the Seventh", briefly mentioned in the article) that is absolutely
amazing:

<http://vimeo.com/7809605>

He apparently quit his job and worked fulltime for a year to create it. It is,
I think, the most amazing work of art I've seen created by an artist in my
lifetime. I've watched it perhaps 20 times. (Sorry for the hype, I find it
impossible to talk about this any other way.)

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Cushman
_Kneale believes what makes Roman so good is "sheer, raw, talent". For
instance, he uses tricks such as reducing the depth of focus to draw attention
to certain details, which also reduces the need to carefully reproduce every
last blemish on each piece of fruit in view._

I don't think you know what the word "talent" means.

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baddox
It's difficult to formalize what "realistic CGI" or even "CGI" means. Most of
us probably have a loose definition that's something like "the rendered output
of 3D models that looks like something familiar in the real world," but that's
insufficient.

One could take 100 bitmap frames of video from a camcorder, then use a
computer to generate 100 identical or nearly identical bitmap frames. This
would be realistic by definition, but not very impressive. Even more absurdly,
one could use a computer to generate some abstract visualization, then
construct a nearly identical scene in the real world and claim the CGI is
realistic.

And yet, CGI that uses 3D scans of objects, motion capture, or
scanned/photographed textures probably fits our loose internal definition.

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Alexo
CG has always been and will always be a hack I think - debating the best CG is
kind of like debating the 'most realistic miniature'. The more real elements
you include (ie. real sunlight, real objects, photographed background plates)
the less there is to offend your eye.

To me, the tools are getting so good (GI, HDRI lighting, MoCap) that
'seamless/not seamless' is soon going to be the only judging criteria. Of
course along with visual aesthetic which will always occur in film whether
you're using a physical camera or virtual.

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grimoire
Somewhat disappointing. The subject matter was not a difficult one. Not to say
it wasn't well done, but it was not as challenging of a subject as a person or
animal would be.

I think Sofronis Efstathiou sums it up nicely in the article. Nice job, but
nothing groundbreaking.

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Keyframe
No. Most of the advancements in rendering today made possible even for
relatively normal users to achieve realism ( ie.
<http://www.maxwellrender.com/> ). Most realistic CGI is the one I haven't
seen.

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mattmanser
That looks nowhere near as good as Roman's work. It doesn't look real, most of
the renders they show are obviously CGI to my eye.

If you're still doubting, just checkout Third and Seventh, it's amazing.

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defdac
How do you feel about Vray then? <http://www.vray.com/>

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Keyframe
Or Indigo [http://www.indigorenderer.com/category/image-
galleries/best-...](http://www.indigorenderer.com/category/image-
galleries/best-indigo) and many others, you still need skill though.

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thehodge
I looked at the girl spinning around and was trying to look for errors but
then the sony logo appeared... and I was looking at an advert... well played
sony ;)

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ivanzhao
Reminds me of Photorealism paintings
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photorealism>).

Interesting how the most advanced shading algorithms are almost able to
describe the neurological bases of what we PERCEIVE as real.

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kachnuv_ocasek
I believe it would be cheaper if they just shot it live.

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jonknee
That's an odd thing to say without knowing how much they paid for the CGI
version.

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mattmanser
It says in the article, 10 weeks work of him and an assistant.

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jonknee
Which says nothing about what it cost.

