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It's very important to avoid photos altogether when dealing with the question of realism. Our brains process videos differently than still-frames. It's why vide

It's very important to avoid photos altogether when dealing with the question of realism. Our brains process videos differently than still-frames. It's why video compression is very different from image compression. In other words, it's unfair to say that a given graphics technique looks real because it generates photorealistic still-frames. Our target is videorealism, not photorealism. I fell into this trap myself: it's so tempting to start with still frames and think that results are encouraging just because they look good. But string those still-frames together into a video and it'll be obvious why it's artificial, assuming it's a rendering of a fairly complex scene, which is equally important. But then you get into questions of whether the art assets were carefully prepared to match the properties of a real-life object, etc, which is why everybody starts with cubes and spheres, which also happen to be objects that you never see in real life. (When's the last time you were in a room composed of perfect cubes and spheres?)

coldtea 10y ago
>It's very important to avoid photos altogether when dealing with the question of realism. Our brains process videos differently than still-frames. It's why video compression is very different from image compression. That's a moot point though, as we do want to make 3D realistic photos too, not just videos.
danmaz74 10y ago
Just out of curiosity I did a quick search and this should be a SOTA real time path tracing engine example. Not photo-realistic, but nice. https://vimeo.com/124065358 https://vimeo.com/124065358
dahauns 10y ago
> It's why video compression is very different from image compression. Is it? I was under the impression that I-Frames in current video compression formats are encoded rather similarily to current still image formats. (JPG's comparable lack of sophistication notwithstanding, but c'mon, it's old. :) )
- willvarfar 10y ago
  Indeed! The current trend is to compress still images as single-frame movies, e.g. webp.
- sp332 10y ago
  Usually I-frames are a small minority of the frames. Most frames encode motion information. So the decoder takes picture data from previous frames and moves it according to the motion vectors. Then, if the result was deemed too inaccurate by the encoder, there will be a little more picture data for the current frame. Having accurate motion vectors is more important than having perfect color reproduction.

coldtea 10y ago

>It's very important to avoid photos altogether when dealing with the question of realism. Our brains process videos differently than still-frames. It's why video compression is very different from image compression. That's a moot point though, as we do want to make 3D realistic photos too, not just videos.

danmaz74 10y ago

Just out of curiosity I did a quick search and this should be a SOTA real time path tracing engine example. Not photo-realistic, but nice. https://vimeo.com/124065358 https://vimeo.com/124065358

dahauns 10y ago

> It's why video compression is very different from image compression. Is it? I was under the impression that I-Frames in current video compression formats are encoded rather similarily to current still image formats. (JPG's comparable lack of sophistication notwithstanding, but c'mon, it's old. :) )

willvarfar 10y ago
Indeed! The current trend is to compress still images as single-frame movies, e.g. webp.
sp332 10y ago
Usually I-frames are a small minority of the frames. Most frames encode motion information. So the decoder takes picture data from previous frames and moves it according to the motion vectors. Then, if the result was deemed too inaccurate by the encoder, there will be a little more picture data for the current frame. Having accurate motion vectors is more important than having perfect color reproduction.