[JCAddy]

I don't have anything valuable to input here but I will say this is a great thread and has lots of good stuff so far. So keep it coming!

BUT, I must say that Mikes comments are quite harsh. 90% of renders are shit? Come on man, not everyone strives for realism and realism isn't what makes a great render. Like Gianni's renderings he posts here on the forums. The great thing about those are all of the color that he incorporates into his shots. To be honest, realistic images are fairly boring. I only strive for realism if that is what a client wants. Otherwise they'll get deep colors and lots of contrast from me. Hopefully I understood your post correctly and wasn't rambling about just anything

[hyltom]

It is much, much easier to make your productshot photoreal as a fully cramped 400m² apartment with exterior view.

I'm not really agree with this statement. Have you ever tried to make a product shot looking photoreal...it's really a pain...well, for me!
I would love to see a product shoot from you and see how it come out. As your architectural background is very impressive and some have really this amazing photoreal look, i would expect something near from perfect ...for reference http://www.buyking.com/topics/reviews/expert

[Mike Scola]

Excellent thread! I would much rather spend my time reading this than some of the rants.

Bottom line. aren't we talking about making compelling images.

An image doesn't have to be flawlessly realistic to be compelling, however that being said, we also need to be honest about the reason many of us are attracted to maxwell. For me, it's because of the images I've seen it cabable of producing. Those images, for the most part posess a sense of realism, however the best images also tell a narrative. They communicate much more than just visual information. The harsh reality is that this Added dimension is not something that maxwell can create for us. The software users are responsible for making the images truely remarkable. I hope that as with the previous software releases we begin to see a increasing stream of compelling images. It's what keeps me coming back for more!

By the way, IMO, product shots can be just as challenging to do well than any other kind of subject matter.

[Tora_2097]

@hyltom: I wasn't ment to say they are easy, it is however just my shallow impression that they might be easier to become photorealistic as there are fewer things to consider such as: fewer objects (means less modeling issues can be visible) or fewer texturing, seldom need a seemless integration of background images. But I want under no circumstances imply that they are easy to do or that I value these works less.
As a matter of fact I have not done many of them so I gladly take your offering and shall do a productviz soon.

regards,

Benjamin

[andrebaros]

To add something to the post debate... it is a tool and in the wrong hands it's dangerous. There is a professional photographer we work with often who made the transition from film to digital over the last few years... and his work has suffered. He still hasn't come to terms with post in photoshop and tends, I dare say, to ruin his good photos in post. Having seen his work before and after, I can see how the crutch of Photoshop as hurt is original work.

Personally, all I do is in house design renderings, the photoreal is a demand of accurately presenting material and lighting design choices to clients... so for me, even though post is essential, I have to keep it down for practical reasons. It's hard to consistently edit a series of images to the same place in the time allowed. If one has a stone floor and the other wood, there is no action you can record for one image which will also help the other image. The joy of the 3D rendering is that you can adjust this variable before you hit the render button and then let the renderer work out the interactions.

Luckily, I only need to be "photoreal enough" to tell the story.

[JCAddy]

It is much, much easier to make your productshot photoreal as a fully cramped 400m² apartment with exterior view.

I'm not really agree with this statement. Have you ever tried to make a product shot looking photoreal...it's really a pain...well, for me!
I would love to see a product shoot from you and see how it come out. As your architectural background is very impressive and some have really this amazing photoreal look, i would expect something near from perfect ...for reference http://www.buyking.com/topics/reviews/expert

The reason I think those images are so great in that link you posted is because of all the color and contrast the images have. Which is number one in my eyes in photo realism.

[simmsimaging]

"Compelling" is a great way to put it - thanks Mike. I agree: this is what we're all really after in the main, and I think the unbelievable realism of MW can help us with that, but it can hurt also if you get too caught up in that alone. I truly see this as something that could really be holding back a lot of MW users, and probably Next Limit too. Just my opinion of course

I really believe Maxwell users could really produce a lot more amazing and compelling images simply by broadening their conception of what counts as "real" and exploring what sort of visual tools/techniques you can use to improve upon their work.

Andrebaros - don't take this the wrong way please, but I am personally not interested in an ongoing debate about post - I think we can all agree that if you don't use it well it won't work very well, and that seems to sum up the counter arguments. Why not leave it at that and keep the thread moving forward?

Hyperballad: There were some nice shots on that http://www.buyking.com/topics/reviews/expert link, here's another to a site for a studio I work with quite a bit. These guys all produce some really compelling imagery - some more "real", some very stylized. There's a range of photographers that work there, and all are pretty damn good. For product vis type work check out Ian Campbell and Shanghoon's stuff, but all are worth a look.

http://www.westsidestudio.com/

b

[mverta]

Brett -

I'm certainly not in the "anti-post" camp in any way; that would be silly - it's just another tool. But I think you're grossly underestimating your own abilities... you have an extremely well-developed and experienced photographer's eye, and this makes all the difference. Your experience and sensitivities allow you to reign in the nearly limitless power of post to hone an image without diverging from its essence. This is something the vast majority of users struggle with, because they don't have that strong of a base.

Most CG artists have spent little or no time as photographers. What's more, their tools have never returned accurate results before. "Photoreal" has always been an illusive goal, which because of limitations in the engine, required tons of post to get anywhere near. After enough time, the expectation is such that post is necessary, and their eyes/sensibilities are adjusted, relatively, within the bounds of already-inaccurate CG imagery. I see this every day with new artists I hire; a disturbing number of them look at painfully CG images and buy it as photoreal. It's an interesting phenomenon, but not particularly good for production, and their eyes have to be reset/retrained. The best way to do this - at least, what I usually do - is get them filming/taking photos asap; getting them to re-see the world as it really is. Maxwell does very much the same thing. If they attack a Maxwell image like a VRay image, it turns - of course - into a VRay image. We have more than a few examples of that on this forum.

So my point isn't that post is "bad," but that absent a lifetime of experience establishing a baseline for sensibilities, it's best to allow the engine to do what it does best, and work within that as far as possible, to develop that eye/sensibility. THEN go to post.

_Mike

[glebe digital]

The reason I bought into Maxwell was the ability to create materials from real-world principles, thus separating any aesthetic from the equation.
Rather than conceptualising textures I could finally research a material and translate that into [hopefully] a more photoreal representation.

I don't always use it that way, but it's become an essential component of my work and I feel fortunate to have it in the arsenal.

[rusteberg]

A thread which enters dangerous territory is always a good one.

I have thought about this for sometime now. in my opinion, the release of Maxwell Render is closely related to the release of the Kodak #1 camera in the late 1800's. This was the invention of the "personal camera". caused a great deal of commotion in the world of photography and for probable reason. A great book to have is Photography in Print: Writings from 1816 to the Present there is a great essay in the book which discusses this topic at length, amongst other essays which readers of this thread may find provocative. original writings from Stieglitz, Nadar, to Westin, Thurbur and so on.

Come to think of it, after reading some of the Fry vs. Maxwell Render threads, those discussions relate closely to the debate over who invented photography, the Britain vs. France episode.

The greatest "artist" (a word i hate using. mostly because it has become so abused by our society) is one who is most observant. the more you are able to see into the real world, the more you are able to produce from your own world, or imagination. some people have more imagination than others and not everyone interprets the world the same. like andrebaros stated, the key is in telling the story. It is up to the story teller to decide which medium best describes his or her vision. Most successful "art" subconciously communicates with the viewer, sharing with them a glimpse of the unreachable truth everyone searches for in life. some works create a glimpse, some a stare, and some just slide right underneath the table.

i know each and every one of you flip through this forum glancing through images, waiting to find that one that you just can't stop looking at. you may visit it 10 times in a day and it still shows you something different each time. Then there are other times when you get upset after opening a thread to find that you've lost your satisfaction, and wish you hadn't spent the time to wait for an image to download. personal tastes aside.

funny how history seems to repeat itself. sorry for the rant. work is slow.

mike, you have quite an impressive portfolio and client base. mind sharing how you were lead into the field?

[simmsimaging]

Hey Mike - thanks for the clarification.

Setting aside methodology we use to get there, I feel there is room to broaden the definition of "photo-real". I understand it is key - I wouldn't be here otherwise. You noted that you like your people to re-see the world as it really is - fair enough - what I am suggesting is:

a) what visual reality "really is" is open to a broader range of interpretation than seems to be prevalent and;

b) we need to make very selective choices about what looks both real *and* compelling. The two are not automatically synonymous - that seems to be the key point here really. My impression is that thinking so holds many MW users back. That in turn holds MW and Next Limit back too.

MW is very, very good at giving (with good materials and even half-assed lighting) results that are highly realistic, and yet still often very dull looking without some help (post, or pre-render). Off-the-cuff, non-staged photos tend to look pretty crap, equally as crap as overly fake looking renders, just in a different way. That's why there are pro photographers and why the really good ones make a lot of money. Making a photo look great *and* fairly natural is exceedingly tough. You know this as well as I do. Natural looking is not always that important, but looking great almost always is.

You are right: not all of us have a background for that distinction - but this thread was hopefully going to help by providing a space for those that do have the background to share some thoughts and tips. I've seen tons of good stuff on this forum: there are many who could contribute in this sense - if they want to.

Hope that clarifies where I'm coming from: it's not about using post or not - I don't care how you get there in the end

b

[Hervé]

very good Rusteberg... the key is indeed to tell a story.... that will make an image interesting to watch.. I am afraid the rest is just industrial representation..

-h-

[mverta]

I think we're in danger of muddying the waters by crossing concepts...

We can't quite yet take "photoreal" for granted, in any context. One day, perhaps, but we are still in an infancy where we need to keep a close eye on achieving even dull "realistic" images; that proves difficult in and of itself. (We'll get to "compelling" in a moment.) The truth is, Maxwell - especially near-photoreal renders - actually creates a sort of perceptual Schwarzchild radius, where the closer we get, the harder the brain scrutinizes the image to reveal its nature. Because we can't instantly categorize the image as fake or photo, it requires that the base image adhere that much more rigorously to reality to tip the scale. In this case, post can actually work against the perception!

I know that in a couple of generations, this won't be as much of a problem, and I believe that post will assume the same place with renders as it does with traditional photography. But until then, I still believe that success in photorealism relies disproportionally on allowing the natural render characteristics to dominate. I personally haven't seen an inherently flawed CG render made photoreal by post, which is why I endorse the garbage in/garbage out philosophy for renders; at least, for now.


As for compelling... I think that's an impossible target to define. Some people consider the charge of being challenged by a CG image such that they think it is real very compelling; even if the render isn't artistically all that hot. On another front, commercial work has evolved/devolved to the point where virtually every image we are presented with is a stylized reality - whether it's flawless skin on a person, or impossibly saturated and clean objects, etc. Is the ceaseless, brainwashing-like redefinition of reality around us compelling? Sure, for some. Not, for others. And I don't think it matters. We know that we can always stylize our renders - Maxwell was created to do something we couldn't do, which was accurately mimic the physics of light propagation. To be sure, Maxwell isn't recreating reality, it's recreating photographed reality; before post.

I'm all for supporting the process -any process- for artistically "compelling" imagery; I just haven't seen the majority of renders casually demonstrating photorealism yet, such that they're ready for the next step. And I think leaning on those post tools to get there doesn't usually work.

But as you suggest, the road to progress is paved with images, tips, and discussions by users and artists, collectively learning the tools, and refining their baseline sensibilities.

_Mike

[mverta]

mike, you have quite an impressive portfolio and client base. mind sharing how you were lead into the field?

I'm a film composer, actually; a composer whose visual effects hobby accidentally became a second career many years ago. To be honest, I approach creating visuals the same way I do composing music; the parallels between the two processes are nearly 1:1, in my mind. And in both disciplines, I began by trying to recreate work of someone I admired - one hopes we get lucky in who we choose to learn from But both music and visual effects have something near mass approval/absolute quality. While it's easy to just throw out quality as totally subjective, my work in film requires that I can tap into a nearly universal sensitivity which crosses all gender, age and ethnicity lines. And I've found there really is an 80-90% that virtually everyone agrees on as to what is emotionally powerful music. I think the same is true for imagery, at least when it comes to finding the "photoreal" hot button.

_Mike

[simmsimaging]

Hey Mike -
I'll put it simply: I care about producing visually interesting work, because that's what I get paid to do, and that's what I like to do (I don't always pull it off, but that's the goal). Something that looks real simply isn't enough, but it is definitely an essential beginning because I'm working with photography 99.9% of the time. That said, at the end of the day we often sacrifice realism for interest with photos, and I will happily do the same with CG when needed, but it's usually best to have a real *and good* image.

I get you loud and clear: at no time do you want to risk realism in your renders. I just don't agree and I don't even see how this has become such an either/or subject. In any case we'll have to leave it at that I think because this isn't really what I'm interested in discussing.

If whatever someone gets out of MW already is good enough for your purpose then you don't need a thread like this, fair enough. For those that find they want/need something more than just barebones realism then this thread could be useful. If not, no one has to bother with it

I'm thinking it would be good to post some images to explore the subject with specifics in mind. Anyone want to post either a render they want feedback on specifically about aesthetic/impact factors, or one they think is a good example of a "great" or "perfect" image for us to look at why it is? Maybe a before/after to show what they did and why?

Anyone interested in this subject at all anymore?

b