3 ms·

Why do we try to recreate reality instead of maintaining some amount of fantasy/imagination/unrealism? When does it make more sense to simply photograph a car

Why do we try to recreate reality instead of maintaining some amount of fantasy/imagination/unrealism? When does it make more sense to simply photograph a car than to try and make a digital image of a car look as real as possible?

RubenSandwich 9y ago
We wouldn't have VR/AR today unless we pushed our GPUs till they cried. We wouldn't even have deep neural networks today if we didn't push hyper-realism because most deep neural network training without today's GPUs would be too slow to be useful. The truth of the matter is that just because it seems trivial in one domain doesn't mean it won't benefit other domains, the problem is that we can't see the future so who knows what is going to pay dividends.
behringer 9y ago
There's plenty of things you can't photograph in reality, but are no problem digitally.
gpm 9y ago
If you're making a digital image of a car being crushed... only when it is, and will remain in future shots, cheaper to crush a physical car. (Note that in some domains, such as video games, the cost of actually crushing the car is effectively infinite. In others, such as movies with animated talking cars, it may only be ridiculously high.)
azernik 9y ago
> When does it make more sense to simply photograph a car than to try and make a digital image of a car look as real as possible? If you're making a movie? Not as often as you might think. With real cars you have to acquire them, transport them, close off streets to film them, in many shots rent out a helicopter to get a shot in, you're limited to certain times of day to get the right lighting... Animation became part of film and (especially) TV quite early, and it wasn't about some stylized unrealistic aesthetic; it's just plain cheaper. And then of course you're going to want to get around the limitations of the form, and put your anthropomorphizing eyes onto objects that are as realistic as possible.
dahart 9y ago
To your second question, it makes sense to photograph real cars when you want a movie of real cars doing normal & safe car things. If your car has eyes and a mouth and talks, then photography might not be an option. For non-Pixar movies, if the cars are racing and crashing, then for safety it often makes more sense to go digital. Digital is very often much cheaper than photography as well. It's extremely expensive to take a movie crew out into a city to film real cars, and it can get more expensive depending on the venue and the crew size and the number of shots. To your first question, why not is an equally valid question. Realism is a choice, and fantasy/unrealism is also a choice. People employ both choices all the time, so it's not one or the other, and Pixar's quest for realistic shading has no bearing on what other people choose. But in general, realism is good for believability, it makes things look tangible and can increase the viewer's emotional connection to a story. Sometimes non-photorealistic animation can break the viewer out of a story, and sometimes (depending on the story & the environment & details) non-photorealism can enhance a story. It all depends on what the story is, and how good it is.
glenstein 9y ago
Who says realism in particular details has to be contrary to the purposes of fantasy? You can still combine realistically expressed nuances in imaginative ways, or use the methods of realism to make "realistic" expressions of things that never existed before. If anything this elevates fantasy, opening up more possibilities to execute fantasy in a visually compelling way. If you still want to do fantasy that's deliberately less detailed than reality, you can still do that. But it ought to be a conscious choice of individual creators. The degree of detail can be an aesthetic preference selected from a range of available options, rather than something you have to default to because we refused on principle to develop alternative methods.
corysama 9y ago
As for realism vs fantasy, Disney did some great work in improving physical realism as part of making the highly fantastic Wreck It Ralph.[1] Once they had the knobs set up that accurately tune the physical properties of their materials, the artists were able to push certain properties beyond realistic values without having the result be completely fake looking. Multiple real time rendering systems, including the Unreal Engine, site this paper as a source for their new "Physically Based" material systems. [1] https://disney-animation.s3.amazonaws.com/library/s2012_pbs_disney_brdf_notes_v2.pdf https://disney-animation.s3.amazonaws.com/library/s2012_pbs_...

RubenSandwich 9y ago

We wouldn't have VR/AR today unless we pushed our GPUs till they cried. We wouldn't even have deep neural networks today if we didn't push hyper-realism because most deep neural network training without today's GPUs would be too slow to be useful. The truth of the matter is that just because it seems trivial in one domain doesn't mean it won't benefit other domains, the problem is that we can't see the future so who knows what is going to pay dividends.

behringer 9y ago

There's plenty of things you can't photograph in reality, but are no problem digitally.

gpm 9y ago

If you're making a digital image of a car being crushed... only when it is, and will remain in future shots, cheaper to crush a physical car. (Note that in some domains, such as video games, the cost of actually crushing the car is effectively infinite. In others, such as movies with animated talking cars, it may only be ridiculously high.)

azernik 9y ago

> When does it make more sense to simply photograph a car than to try and make a digital image of a car look as real as possible? If you're making a movie? Not as often as you might think. With real cars you have to acquire them, transport them, close off streets to film them, in many shots rent out a helicopter to get a shot in, you're limited to certain times of day to get the right lighting... Animation became part of film and (especially) TV quite early, and it wasn't about some stylized unrealistic aesthetic; it's just plain cheaper. And then of course you're going to want to get around the limitations of the form, and put your anthropomorphizing eyes onto objects that are as realistic as possible.

dahart 9y ago

To your second question, it makes sense to photograph real cars when you want a movie of real cars doing normal & safe car things. If your car has eyes and a mouth and talks, then photography might not be an option. For non-Pixar movies, if the cars are racing and crashing, then for safety it often makes more sense to go digital. Digital is very often much cheaper than photography as well. It's extremely expensive to take a movie crew out into a city to film real cars, and it can get more expensive depending on the venue and the crew size and the number of shots. To your first question, why not is an equally valid question. Realism is a choice, and fantasy/unrealism is also a choice. People employ both choices all the time, so it's not one or the other, and Pixar's quest for realistic shading has no bearing on what other people choose. But in general, realism is good for believability, it makes things look tangible and can increase the viewer's emotional connection to a story. Sometimes non-photorealistic animation can break the viewer out of a story, and sometimes (depending on the story & the environment & details) non-photorealism can enhance a story. It all depends on what the story is, and how good it is.

glenstein 9y ago

Who says realism in particular details has to be contrary to the purposes of fantasy? You can still combine realistically expressed nuances in imaginative ways, or use the methods of realism to make "realistic" expressions of things that never existed before. If anything this elevates fantasy, opening up more possibilities to execute fantasy in a visually compelling way. If you still want to do fantasy that's deliberately less detailed than reality, you can still do that. But it ought to be a conscious choice of individual creators. The degree of detail can be an aesthetic preference selected from a range of available options, rather than something you have to default to because we refused on principle to develop alternative methods.

corysama 9y ago

As for realism vs fantasy, Disney did some great work in improving physical realism as part of making the highly fantastic Wreck It Ralph.[1] Once they had the knobs set up that accurately tune the physical properties of their materials, the artists were able to push certain properties beyond realistic values without having the result be completely fake looking. Multiple real time rendering systems, including the Unreal Engine, site this paper as a source for their new "Physically Based" material systems. [1] https://disney-animation.s3.amazonaws.com/library/s2012_pbs_disney_brdf_notes_v2.pdf https://disney-animation.s3.amazonaws.com/library/s2012_pbs_...