Honest opinion - just watched Solstice and Migrants back-to-back, and this was the first time I’ve seen either of them.
Neither looks photoreal to me (which is not a criticism; they look like nice CG), but between the two I prefer Solstice.
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Cool, very tricky. 
I think that not only does it show our bias (given that we thought that at least one of them is fake), but I think it also shows that you can make reality look fake. It brings to mind this Primus video here…
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P.S. I will never trust you again.
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I have mad respect for you Joseph, and I get the bias aspect which so often makes these conversations so challenging to have (especially online), but IMHO the jury is still very much out. As I keep saying, Cycles is a very capable render engine which is wonderfully integrated into Blender in a way that is considerably more efficient then, say Karma for Houdini. There are pros and cons, and of course for individuals who are not necessarily working in film, the quest for photorealism isn’t really an issue at all.
Going back to my original point, I guess I was hoping to see a more drastic difference between pre-4.x Cycles and post renders. With a redesigned Principled shader with more correct physical properties, and the benefit of AgX for a smoother color space translation to sRGB/rec709, my wish is that suddenly issues that I perceived as being problematic would vanish.
I feel that looking at spheres and cubes in geometric spaces, while perhaps being more “scientific” of an approach, doesn’t tell the whole story. I am particularly interested in large-scale CG videos, as I feel that I have yet to see a Cycles render that accurately conveys the sense of distance and space in a way that I have seen other render engines do.
The irony in all of this, is that, for these types of large-scale renders, I think that EEVEE is actually the winner here (and I can’t wait to see what EEVEE Next has in store).
Here is a short film that I think uses EEVEE quite extensively (except for VDB’s and some other additional elements) and which I think begins to approximate some of the sense of scale that IMHO remains so elusive in Cycles: https://youtu.be/T4qDhlgFYv4?si=odO_xW4RU9gSCrBb
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To me the render are good, but in those clips the problem is composition, the render are to clean, when you put several passes like lens flare, chromatic aberration, lends distortion, etc makes the feeling that we are looking through a camera lens. If you see all the fx breakdowns all starts with a similar clean render and then build on top of it.
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Just exactly how many large-scale CG videos did you expect the Blender community to produce between the release of 4.0 and now (two and a half month)?
I know that was not exactly what you said, but still.
greetings, Kologe
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2, exactly that number. Not any more than 2, but 2…yes 2, 2 videos. 
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Ok, in all seriousness…these have just been published in the past week. Not videos, but people are obviously doing large scale work with Blender on a regular basis:
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Even a tutorial has been published today about it:
Eevee does volumetric fog really well. Maybe this is the reason? In Eevee, you can adjust and tweak your fog much quicker (and people are less hesitant to use fog in the first place).
Also, Eevee has nice bloom which can be finely adjusted in real time, while Cycles is stuck with the compositor’s ancient glare node.
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Don’t get too attached to the Eevee bloom; unless something changed, it’s headed to the trash bin in favor of the glare node.
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When talking about the “differences” and good or bad points of any render engine it might be an interesting idea to know something about the “history” of that engine and also the “intercommunication” between the “producers” of them and the userbase.. i mean even before PBR there where amazing work in any cinematic FX areas and also some weird things.. but anyway: some artists can do amazing things.. and some not.
So do have this artist have to have a graduation in optophysics ( ← it seems to that i inventated that ) ..or more in psychology.. ?? Someone may know some other experts about color management systems and the biological computer or heap of synapses which tell us that some image is “beautyfull”.
I remember those article about the first black and white images from steam locomotives which were praised as awesomely realistic.. but in fact they where mutliple exposed with several different lamps and flash lights.. ( but of course i can find it anymore.. 
).
So the question is: which kind of image quality do we speak of ? Obviously not the CGI-like ones.. even if some may do not see this.. because they are differently “trained” (educated) about this special field.
Real ? Or best weal looking ? And can we measure this in any kind of values.. ( some argue that values aren’t good enough to compare.. but then waht else ??)
Even if doing some contest with other artists from other forums.. what should be the reference ?? Photos from somekind of object, place.. but then in RAW data format with what camera type and what extra lighting.. or special info about the light, and additional HDRI image of the environment at the same time.. with what camera settings.. maybe even analog cameras and digitized negatives ?? (And then with what kind of scanner..)
Okay okay i’m exagerating now.. 
..or in short:
What should be the next Cornell box ?
from wikipedia:
..computer scientists often use the scene just for its visual properties without comparing it to test data from a physical model.
Or is there already ?? And/Or can (maybe) we start this contest.. ??
A photo with additonal env-HDRI seems to be a start..
At least i would be happy to learn something about that.. because some comments are not easy to follow just because i do not know enough about this and ever expert tells somethign differetn because of the different experiences and differetn clientele.
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I’ve been working in film for a while now. With the latest releases of blender I can say that cycles is definitely worthy of photorealistic work. Every renderer is a bit different and always needs compositing love for the final optical adjustments.
Honestly in my opinion, Blender has almost all the tools I need for feature film work as an environment generalist. The aov output and not having a “deep” render is a bummer but it’s how we used to work 15 years ago in renderman or mental ray haha.
This beats working in Houdini 100% for what I do… and saves a ton of time.
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I suspected that ! not from the images, but from you !
@woodengun what about the AOV output, can you elaborate?
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I knew you would pull off such a trick,
Reply to @thorn
While terms like ‘style’ or ‘realism’ carry subjective elements, we cannot ignore the objective differences. Moreover, when AGX was still in the experimental phase, even if I was given two less extreme images processed with Filmic and AGX, I couldn’t pinpoint the specific differences. The same goes for Principled v2. Perception requires training. If you don’t know, you can’t see. Sadly, I don’t know and can’t see the specific differences between Cycles and other renderers. My knowledge is still too limited.
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I think it’s more like… sometimes i see a difference… but i do not know why one of them is referred as “more realistic”… i only see: one might have a little more light in the corners… or the some transparent part is showing a little more light… but why one might be more realsitic… IDK 
( Of course there are some which are… off… but i can’t everytime tell why. )
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Hi Hadriscus.
Yeah, I’m still learning the ins and outs of the cycles aov system. The beauty image is nested in the channels (combined) and the rgba is blank so there’s some reshuffling and renaming in nuke to make them predictable for compositors (they are always wanting the same aov setup as renderman or Arnold). Having light paths and light groups is necessary (I think they have this now)…
Deep exrs are becoming the new standard when delivering shots to compositing now… but I understand that takes time to implement and vfx for film might not be blenders main priority.
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I find this discussion very interesting and I’m nervous to contribute to it because I have very little technical knowledge about what people are talking about and any views I have on the artistic side are likely to be no more than instinct or feel or ‘hand wavey’. But…
To me, it does seem like when doing big outdoor landscape scenes something is missing that makes them look less ‘real’ than some renders I’ve seen. Saying that, many get a lot closer to it than my attempts, which I put down to better materials, composition, lighting etc, none of which I currently excel at. But for me it’s something in the light and ‘atmosphere’ of a cycles render that it missing. Not sure sticking a volume cube over things or adding mist really sorts it either. Has anybody come across Terragen as a tool? Purpose built for landscapes and environments and I’ve seen some very realistic renders (https://www.artstation.com/search?sort_by=relevance&query=Terragen). I think some of these look very realistic and for a long time I’ve wondered what the difference might be ‘under the hood’ between whatever Terragen uses and Cycles. Again, I can’t pin it down technically, but the Terragen renders just seem to have some atmospheric quality which makes the scenes appear more ‘real’. Maybe it’s materials, maybe it’s because they’re mostly distant mountains with less detail to make it more obvious they’re CG. Maybe they all look fake to you guys as well! But if anybody agrees, what do you think the difference might be but, more to the point, what would I need to do to get my cycles renders to have the same look? (Other than the obvious… buy Terragen - which would be reasonable albeit expensive answer 
)
Pardon me for gatecrashing the thread in this way, but tips from those in the know on what to do to optimise a cycles scene to appear more realistic would be great to see.
EDIT: I think that there is also a difference to my mind between things like interior shots, products, cars, characters and things where I see a lot of cycles renders that look amazingly ‘real’ ( acknowledging that is subjective). But for larger environments I think it’s more rare. Could it be nothing technical at all and just that our brains can immediately tell that this massive environment is only using 7 types of tree and there is nowhere enough stuff and mess and randomness about bigger scenes? Harder to trick the viewer than for something more confined and controlled (I realise that wouldn’t be a renderer specific issue but perhaps demonstrates how hard it is to pull off anyway). Apologies for the random stream of consciousness!
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Watching this video i clearly saw what is the point that @Midphase is making. And that video just reinforces his position.
The video he posted instead, to my eyes shows exactly what he means.
IMHO the thing that mostly lacks in the let’s call’em bad environmental clips is aerial perspective and overall volumetrics. Another thing that you see in good ones is the predominance of diffuse lighting (as oppposed to harsh sunlight). So, again, volumetrics play their role, in the form of clouds in scene, and not just as sky texture.
This two aspects heavily affect how you perceive the image, yet at the same time are subtle, as you don’t spot them as clearly as you do with mounts shape, or woods textures, sky color, etc…
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While the video shows what the artist is aiming for(obviously), it doesn’t necessarily reflect the limitations of the render engine. Like everyone’s saying, realism is subjective, right? And artistic impressions play significant role.
For instance, purple night skies might not be common everywhere, like in Africa. I can’t really relate to super clear blue skies either. So renders that have such foreign elements makes it harder to be convincing.
Also, perception plays a big role too. People can be biased by popular opinion, like the idea that “Vray is realistic”.
No render engine comes with magic buttons.
Ultimately, the best render engine depends on your skill set, workflow and what you’re trying to achieve.
To compare apples to apples, maybe looking at the raw renders, without all the editing, would be a fairer way to judge. That way, we can maybe see the engine’s true potential without the influence of artistic choices.
Cheers
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