Which is a great reminder that ultimately it will be some layperson (with Zero knowledge of render engines) deciding if they liked your animated production/story enough to watch it on youtube or vote for it in the Awards Academy etc.
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EEVEE certainly works well here, particularly with the more modern materials and subject matter. I do get a little concerned about getting “too” realistic-looking lighting and materials, since I want to keep it somewhat stylized. I’ve seen some great photorealistic work, but I wouldn’t want that even if I could.
LOL–okay, I don’t feel so bad now. 
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Ah, got it–I think maybe my ignorance saved me from making the materials too different than before LOL
Overall, I’m happy to have moved to Redshift, and, since half of doing this thing is about learning and improving, and not only the “final product”, it gives me new stuff to learn and play with.
Indeed once you start down that(photorealism) road it becomes a never ending pursuit particularly if you animate people.
It does not matter if you have Redshift
Arnold,Cycles Vray or even the mighty Unreal engine.
The very fact that we here are using Iclone and or Daz people negates any hope of true realism which is why I prefer to stick to a more “styled” CG look.
unless you are using uber high quality custom Character rig with hundreds of facial bones,morphs and top industry a capture system like Blur studios used for shorts like this, you wont come close
to “realism”
Oops, wrong post
True. And this video looks great, but there’s a point where it’s like “why animate a completely convincing human?” Why not just film a real human, and place them in a CG environment?
Those CG characters in that Netflix anthology series are 100 percent motion captured so technically they did “use” a real life human actor. 
And with everything else being CG including nonhuman characters is probably is easier to make the humans CG and fully immersed in the environments as well.
Even hobbyists at our level can do photorealistic environments/props at this point.
But truly realistic animated humans are just not possible with the figures from Daz, CC4 and frankly not even the UE5 “Metahumans” who look like creepy animated corpses even with mocap IMHO.
The thing is, as a lone-wolf hobbyist, I don’t have real humans “available” for that. In fact, that is a major reason why I got into (character) CGI in the first place because that way I don’t have to show (and deal with) real humans. Besides, since I would not want to appear on camera myself, I can’t really ask anybody else to either, especially not for free (and there is no budget for “paid” actors).
BTW: Tim, why not use the quote function instead of re-posting the entire thing you are replying to? Makes a thread unnecessarily long, IMO.
Yes, at this time and with these tools, “complete” realism is elusive for the hobbyist. But I think it is possible to aim for a semi-realistic or less stylized look if that is what you want (and I do).
If you look at Pixar’s Toy Story films, you will also find a progression in terms of “realism” in the render styles in line with the technical advancements over time. And I prefer the look of the last one to that of the first movie (which was impressive looking at the time it came out, but not so much today. I’m just referring to the look/render quality, not to story, characters, etc.).
So, I prefer “realism” in my own stuff as well—within my limitations, of course—over a heavily stylized/cartoony look, the same way I prefer 3D over 2D (in fact, creating 2D animations has never been of any interest to me).
What’s wrong with that? I’m in this for the fun of the ride, not for any particular destination (final outcome).
Agreed. However, with these engines, it may be easier to get the look you want. For example, I have found Redshift better to work with for a more realistic look than the Standard and Physical renderers in C4D, although I have seen others get good results with those.
Last night I rewatched all four episodes of Quest of the Key on my TV and I noticed that the rendering of textures and details has improved with the use of Redshift, while still maintaining a cohesive, overall look.
What’s wrong with that? I’m in this for the fun of the ride, not for any particular destination (final outcome).
Thats fine, but many of us have a actual objective to our 3D/CG efforts beyond “tinkering” with the tech.
Sure it’s nice to able spend thousands of Dollars on Software and hardware and hi res 3D assets just
for “the ride” of cranking up render settings to see how your uber GPU performs.
For me it is to tell stories set in genres I find personally interesting
Promote my personal narratives and world views.
And (yeah I admit it), to receive some
tiny amount of external validation from like minded fans of those genres in terms of youtube views comments.
If you look at Pixar’s Toy Story films, you will also find a progression in terms of “realism” in the render styles in line with the technical advancements over time. And I prefer the look of the last one to that of the first movie (which was impressive looking at the time it came out, but not so much today. I’m just referring to the look/render quality, not to story, characters, etc.).
This is a perfect example of how “technical advances” and more “realism” do not necessarily translate to success with your target audience.
To my eyes, the best looking Pixar movie so far ,in terms of render quality character design & animation ,was the “Buzz Lightyear” movie.
The “tech nerd” in me would love to see an in depth behind the scenes breakdown of how they used their in house “marionette” animation software and how their
in house render engine performs compared to Arnold,Redshift or Vray
Alas for a variety of reasons ,unrelated to render quality, it failed to resonate with the general public
It costs $373 million to produce but only made $267 million at the box office losing Disney/Pixar $106 Million dollars.
Well, I don’t have stories to tell, am not involved in specific genres (like game, comic, or movie IPs) and don’t have any personal narratives or world views I want to particularly share via 3D animation. Thus—as I said before—I do “tech-demos” instead.
With regard to money spent: (a) I don’t consider an RTX4090 an “uber GPU” (if that is what you were referring to); it is just the fastest GPU I currently have, and I knew the diner scene was slow to render anyway, so why make it even slower by choosing a less powerful GPU? Also, some scenes do not work on the RTX2080Tis because of the limited VRAM.
(b) there are few other hobbies I have that “cost money” and since I don’t have other major financial commitments (such as a mortgage, car payments), don’t like traveling, and don’t need to support anybody else financially, spending a little money on hardware and software for 3D does not seem all that profligate to me—even if it just for “enjoying the ride”.
I purchased the 4K BD of “Lightyear” last year but haven’t been able to make myself actually watch it yet (I understand the movie is “woke”, which may also have contributed to the poor performance (for a Pixar movie) at the box office). That said, I don’t think that the public at large care all that much about technical render quality; that is more the realm of tech nerds like us.
LOL–you are correct–the reason is that I didn’t know there was a quote function until just this very minute–I was wondering how it worked, but your question led me to figure it out–thanks! I was wondering how you did it!
All good points. I guess I’m guilty of expecting “more” from a commercial production by saying “hey, just film it,” but that said, I do personally find these realistic (but not real) characters a bit of a turn-off, so maybe I’m still gazing into the uncanny valley. I imagine one day we’ll get to the point where we really can’t tell the difference, but we’re not there yet.
True, and I guess my answer above would speak to this as well. I’d add that, as I’ve noted before, I try not to get too realistic with my characters, since even the “big boys” can’t do it to my satisfaction yet, and I’m not sure I’d go there, even if I could. I feel like one of the strengths of animation is its abstraction of reality–by removing the strict realism, it allows the animator to cut through some of the “clutter” of the real world and accentuate emotions, moods, actions etc. in a way that would be hard to do in live action or even highly-realistic characters. Some of the live-action Disney movies are fine as movies, but they lose a lot of the charm and fun from the animated original. I mean, even if Robin Williams himself had played the live-action genie in the live-action Aladdin, the animated version would still be superior IMHO.
True. What’s interesting is that the human characters in the more recent Toy Story films look more realistic than many of the more recent Disney/Pixar “humans” in other films, I suspect so that they look more different than the toy characters in that film, many of which are kind of human. Contrast that with Inside Out 2, for example, where the human characters can be more stylized because the “emotion” characters are very cartoony, so they don’t have to compete in the “human” space.
Thanks for checking them out again! 
I think I mentioned earlier, but I feel like Redshift did a nice job of improving the lighting without changing the look too much. That said, I still had to do a fair amount of cheating. In many of the shots, the lights that are lighting the environment are not the same lights that are lighting the characters, or at the very least, there are always an additional light or two on the characters to fill in shadows or key lights to separate them from the background, and especially to add the all-important “eye spot” reflection.
It did inhabit that area of “stylized” but not overly-cartoony characters, and otherwise had a nice look.
The problem wasn’t that it was “woke” (and it really wasn’t–I mean, wow, a non-straight couple [you can’t say “gee ayy wyy” on this forum??]–hide the children!) it just didn’t have the kind of laugh/cry moments, great story, or memorable characters you expect from Pixar, or even a great villain like the best Disney cartoons. I’m a huge Disney/Pixar fan, but I felt like Buzzyear was just okay, where it could have been a lot more fun.
That is what I have been doing (and advocating) for quite some time. With post-processing there is a lot that can be accomplished even using the native renderer. At some point, in my opinion, you need to make a choice between telling you story with whatever means available or chasing the perfect render. Both are certainly worthy endeavors but doing them at the same time is very difficult. I’m foremost a story-teller, and animation is the perfect medium for me.
My sentiments exactly!
I usually add an eye-light as well, however, apart from getting that eye reflection, I normally don’t “cheat” exterior renders and interior scenes only if absolutely necessary. The diner scene above uses the RS sky rig for the exterior, the practical (in the scene) lights for the interior, plus the emissive materials of the signage. If I had characters in there, I’d probably add eye-lights if needed.
So, I finally watched the “Lightyear” movie and have mixed feelings about that: on the one hand it was not quite a bad (i.e. woke) as I had feared and on the other hand not quite a good as I had hoped. Except for a few scenes, I thought the whole thing was pretty meh.
The quality of the render overall was decent, but not mind-blowing. The thing that stood out like a sore thumb to me was the design of the character’s faces: pretty stylized and at odds with the rest (including the characters’ hair in some cases). Now, I totally get that they could not stray too far from the way Buzz looks in the Toy Story movies, but then they should have made the rest also less realistic and more stylized (the environments, the wear and tear, dirt, smoke/dust, etc. all looked quite realistic). That said, I’m not really sure where the 300+ million dollar and more than 5 years of production time ended up; I didn’t see that money or time on the screen.
@AutoDidact On the regular BD, there are a few short BTS bits and a commentary track for the feature film (which I have not yet listened to for its entirety). So far, I haven’t noticed any mention of render times, what engine/software they used or anything tech-nerdy like that.
I used to be as well, but a lot of their more recent stuff has been pretty inconsistent, so I have become more wary and have reduced my expectations accordingly: when hitting “play”, I basically went from “this is gonna be good” to “please, don’t let 'em mess this up”.
Perhaps I’ve become too jaded with age, but it’s been quite some time when a Hollywood movie made me go “wow”; in fact, I’ve not set foot in a movie theater for more than 25 years because I don’t think the movies are worth that hassle anymore. These days, I only watch movies at home (preferably on physical media); don’t have Netflix and Co.
There’s a whole range of words you can’t use on this forum, because the software won’t let you post them.
I used to feel squeamish about “cheating” the lights on the characters, but if you look at how they film a movie or TV show, they use use all kinds of “faked” lighting with added lights and especially reflectors to reduce the shadows on a person’s face. It’s not strictly realistic, but the “real” lighting doesn’t aways work. Here is an example of the “real” lighting vs. the added lights on the character only. I don’t think anyone would want to watch this with the character in such shadow, but I didn’t want the background to be any brighter.
Exactly, it was meh. And–just talking strictly from a writing standpoint–if you got rid of any and all “woke” elements, it would still have been “meh.” It just wasn’t that good of a story. There was an old 2D cartoon of Buzz Lightyear back in 2000 that was actually pretty fun, and–from a “canon” perspective–one could argue that this was the cartoon that Andy from Toy Story was watching to make him want a Buzz Lightyear action figure. I think it would have been a hoot if Disney had done a movie of that show, since we would have seen the Buzz that the “Toy Story” Buzz was supposed to be.
I kind of get why they tried to make the world more realistic, since they seemed to be trying to say that “this is real” and is not “Toy world”, but I agree, it didn’t really work, stylistically.
My fandom includes going back to the original Snow White, which is actually a technical marvel given when it was produced, and is still very watchable. There have been some misses in recent years, but if you look at the history of their movies over the last 80 years or so, they go through dry periods and will have a few years with some misses in a row, then come back with a hit, which is pretty true for any movie studio. I think maybe the early years of Pixar gave people unrealistic expectations of a blockbuster every time, but that’s not realistic. I agree with the “don’t mess this up” feeling, especially with sequels, but you never know, some of the sequels have been very good.
I have to be really excited for a movie to make me go to the theatre, so I don’t go nearly as often as I used to, which is ironic since the theatres these days are super comfortable and have great sound and clean digital projection. Kids these days wouldn’t believe the cramped seats and ragged physical film projectors I grew up with LOL.
There is no such thing as “cheating” with your lighting
Some people think that just because they have a GI that they don’t ever have to add fill and rim lights.
The earth environment is natural GI but ,as you said, Hollywood
cinematographers use all kinds of reflector fills etc even for broad daylight shots.
Exactly! Perfect image to show just how much they mess with the lighting.
Sure. As I said, interiors may have to be “cheated” more often. However, characters can also be lit with “practical” lights. In this case, there are (unlit) candles in the scene. Also, in a blacksmith’s shop, I would expect the glow of fire.
In the “Lightyear” movie I noticed, that some of the suits have lights in the neck area which help to illuminate the characters’ faces especially during those scenes on the dark side of the planet.
Yep. Not to mention gum on and under the seats and the floor sticky with spilled soft drinks.
I’ll take your word for it; obviously, I wouldn’t know from first-hand experience.
Apart from the hassle of going to a theater, there is as an additional issue for me: my hearing is not what it used to be (and it was never great to begin with) so I often need subtitles to follow the dialogue. Watching movies at home, I can put subtitles on and also “rewind”, if there’s something I didn’t catch.
Of course they do. It’s still a “cheat”, though, in the sense that it is not what a witness to the scene (if it was real and unstaged) would actually see. But the movie business is based on smoke and mirrors anyway, so why not “cheat” with the lighting?
As I said, I use “cheats” when needed, however, I prefer to use practical lighting in my scenes if possible.
In case of the side-by-side image that Tim posted, I would not go with the left version either. However, instead of just selectively lighting the character (which is way easier in CG than in real life), I’d at least consider adding in-scene lights.
And if the background needs to be darker, you can always make the background materials (e.g. the stone material for the walls) less “susceptible” to light—hence darker—when using Redshift (also something you can’t do IRL).
Why mess with your wall materials when C4D can just exclude the wall from the accent lighting he placed on the character?