Photorealism render - How to differentiate between real world and Pixar like images?

Support Lighting and Rendering
#1

Hello everyone, this is kinda general question actually, I’m not sure where to ask it but I think here (in Lighting and Rendering) seems suitable with my question.

I apologize if the title is a bit confusing but my question is that related to photorealism and not non-photorealism like the cell shading type. What differentiate a photorealism image quality that is true to the real world, and a photorealism image quality that is like Pixar or Disney animated movie? Is it by chance the lighting, shader, material or the rendering it self?

Let say i have the same model but want to render it into these two types of photorealism (the real world image and the Pixar like image). How can I achieve this in Blender? This question has been in my head for quiet sometime so I thought I should ask the community.

Thank you :slight_smile:

#2

your best answer would be to test yourself

pick a test scene from this place http://www.3drender.com/challenges/

render it in maxwell render then try in cycles (1 to max 4 bounces of light)

you will see a diference in how light behaves and rendertimes

#3

One thing I’ve noticed with Pixar is that they like color. Their final products seem to use photorealistic lighting, but then exaggerated. Monsters University is a good example of this, the lighting is pretty spectacular in this film, sunny and colorful. Indirect lighting seems pushed a little more though too.

The same with their materials and textures, but maybe even more stylized/exaggerated than the lighting. They use underlying realistic concepts with the skin, fur/hair (SSS, etc.), but exaggerated so it’s noticeable but not obnoxious.

reC is right, try rendering a basic scene, pushing to photorealistic, then experiment with exaggerating color, lighting, indirect lighting, SSS, etc.

#4

No, story, characters, and animation is the giveaway for me :slight_smile: Also, and I’m not speaking for all of them, when materials don’t attempt to look realistic, they often go to rather extreme use of color themes. Seem to extreme extent in the following Jimmy Neutron “clip”:


Although colors are strong, as they tend to be in cartoons, pretty much every shot has a narrow selection of (base) colors, but those colors are used for everything in that shot. Sometimes they even use a “white color in shade”, which looks pale blue, on something else, just to have that strong sense of deliberate color theming going on.

How to achieve this in Blender? Take some art classes, or read a lot on the subject. I’m not kidding, first you have to understand what is going on and why, before trying to recreate it :slight_smile: