I Learned Photorealism so You Don't Have To (Blender Tips)

how's it going guys so time and time again i've gotten questions on photo realism how do i achieve photo realism so this video today i'm going to show you a lot of the research that i spent the past two weeks trying to learn about photo repass two weeks trying to learn about photo ring you a lot of the steps that i take every time i do a render that's using cycles i'm trying to get it as realistic as possible i'm gonna show you everything i do plus a bunch of the new things that i've learned as well now just a caveat to this before all the comments come rolling through this is not the only way to get photo realism every scene is specific and you have to do scene specific things every single time what this video is about is things that can work in every single scene and what i would do is encourage you to go in a little bit even more and learn about if you're doing environments or interiors or abstract stuff so these tips i'm giving you today are just overall general so let's get into it number one is photo realism is not a button and i'm saying that because i've gotten a couple messages saying hey what button do i use to make it more photoreal it's not just one button it's actually a very complicated mess of things you'll have to do that sometimes it takes a lot of practice and sometimes it takes an eye for detail now the three things that is going to contribute to whether it's going to look photoreal are going to look weird and flat is your modeling your texturing and your lighting learn as much as you can about those three things that's really going to make give you a home run on your photo realism one specific thing on modeling is bevel everything sharp edges don't exist in the world except for a knife you know things like that so if you have like the table the edges of that table you have to bevel those that's extremely important sharp edges just are a dead giveaway for cg renders now when it comes to your rendering everybody's obsessed with removing noise what i would say is render that thing noiseless go back in photoshop or go back into blender or something and add a little bit of that noise back because in real photography especially low light photography unless you're using extremely expensive lens you're going to have grain you're going to have noise so adding a little bit of back that back end is really really important and does go a long way just like oh it is real because the thing is one dead giveaway for unphotorealistic renders is extremely clear extremely perfect images and that just doesn't exist use depth of field and use chromatic aberration now i'm going to show you in this render right here i use some chromatic aberration and i use some depth of field you can see on the very corners and the edges you could see a little bit of that chromatic aberration and that's just a lens effect that happens in a lot of photography and that depth of field is another thing that really goes a long way to making it look photo real because it looks like it came from a camera and having just subtle depth of field sometimes will go extremely long ways to getting some photo realism now texturing everyone loves the glamorous idea of completely procedural materials and those are really fun and my channel does almost all procedural materials because i love them a lot but if you're trying to go purely for photo realism it's image textures some people hate them some people don't like them they're very annoying you have to tile them all that weird stuff but at the end of the day including if you're using ev most of these things that i'm talking about are cycles but if you're even if you're using ev actually especially if you're using ev you need to use image textures i personally use polygon they're not a sponsor it's just a really really good service but there's plenty of free things out there as well but if you're going for the highest quality the highest photo realism paid services usually are the best option specifically in my case with polygon this image you're seeing right now i used polygon textures for that now surface imperfections if you are working on some maybe some simple abstract stuff or a close-up on a cup if you look at real life almost nothing's perfect your phone screen your the table your tv screen all that stuff if you look closely there is always and i mean almost always surface imperfection so i would say every single time you're working on something and there and you are close enough to see the detail add the detail detail is extremely important and surface imperfections adding that sometimes just say adding a noise texture with a color ramp and keeping both of the values and more of the gray and keeping that just a little bit of roughness on the ground like say if you're doing a car render and there's a light coming down on it and the ground is flat i'd say it must grave texture or noise texture on that and it'll go a long really long ways you'll see if people do home photography things like that they'll usually wet the parking lot things like that so you can get those surface imperfections but the very glossy surface imperfections rather than just a flat parking lot all right color correction this one isn't talked about a whole lot but for me i really enjoy it now if you're rendering use the filmic color space but what i like to do is use filmic log on medium contrast now what that's going to do is give you an extremely flat image but what that does what log does is it preserves the lights and the darks and all the data so you get this flat image so that when you go into a compositing software i personally i don't use the cycles compositor because it's really really slow because it has to update your render and it's just doesn't seem very powerful for the things i like to use it for i use photoshop you can use another free alternative if you don't want to pay for photoshop but going into the curves and messing with the curves and the lights in the darks and going in there if you use a really really flat color render it really goes a long way to giving you a nice clear image and not blown out darks and not blown out lights because a beautiful real image does have a little bit of blown out highlights but just barely but you can have that control in your compositing software now on that i know a lot of people don't like to step outside of blender to do other things but the truth is blender doesn't do everything if you look at professional cg pipelines they don't just stay in maya they don't just stay in blender or cinema 40 or whatever 3d software they're using they'll render that they'll send it off to a compositor they'll send it off to something like after effects or something like that to do other stuff so don't be afraid to learn a new program if you're trying to get the best possible image i know it sucks i know some things are paid for i know that's just how it is but if you're trying to get that best piece so you can really get that good job it's an investment you're gonna have to make blender just doesn't do everything it does a whole lot it's an incredible program just doesn't do everything all right focal length specifically in blender it's usually the camera focal length is set to 50 millimeter and that's replicates a 50 millimeter lens the thing is if you're trying to do say like a microscopic uh render you'll be like at 85 millimeter or if you're trying to do a really wide angle shot like an environment maybe use like a 24 or a 35 one problem a lot of beginners make is they just do weird stuff with their focal length and that is a dead giveaway for a cg render a lot of times they'll make it too wide angle like 10 millimeter most photographers don't even use that and so what that does is you have to get like really close and everything's fish eyed out or if it's really like 120 millimeter and you're trying to get this wide shot and it looked wild study a little bit of photography i would say stay within 85 50 millimeter or 24 millimeter those three are really going to get you those real kind of shots that you're looking for of course if you're trying to get a more flat shot more professional like a portrait i would say go to 50 to 85 if you're trying to get a wide angle use that 24. now the size of your light if you aren't using an hdri which i recommend a lot but sometimes hdri is just not the best option you're using something like an area light the size of your area light is important don't make it huge massively soft you can make it pretty big but sometimes the distance from your object and the size of your area light matter so really pay attention to that don't just willy-nilly put them around try to adjust them to give you the best lighting and i would say look at references look at pages on photography where what they're doing with lighting see how far away the light is from the object and try to do that because that is going to get you a more realistic illustration here's a cheat volumetrics back when i was a beginner i was making really interesting like low light cool sci-fi renders i used volumetrics to cover up my terrible texturing volumetrics is really cool and a really easy way to make things look kind of photo real but but it's not really photoreal but the volume really derives at home sci-fi renders and things like that really utilize that because they can make this beautiful render throw a little bit of volume in there makes a world of a difference and you get this crazy cool render if you look at a lot of um cool sci-fi stuff like blade runner inspired things there's a lot of volume in there not only because it creates a cool ambience but also covers up your lack of ability to make things look better it's a really great cover up all right last two points attention to detail if you're trying to make a photorealistic render it's going to take more than one day specifically because you need to look at it and analyze it you need to learn and hone in a attention to detail and that's something that's learned you just have to practice a lot and pay attention to detail what's going on with shadows what's going on with details is there dust is there different imperfections your attention to detail when it comes to photorealism is very very important spend more than a day on it work on it a lot one day step away come back to the next day you'll have a more clear mind on it you can look at it for me it takes like three or four days to get something that's really photo real like the render i've been showing here on the video that took like four days to really decide if i liked it and i still feel like it can improve but that's how you do that and those are my tips for photo realism again it's not the only way to get photo realism and there's more things to it that are scene specific i would say look at blender guru and type in photorealism he's got like three or four videos that are really great really in depth but that's how i get photo realism thank you guys for watching i hope you learned something you

Channel: Ducky 3D

Views: 59,486

Rating: 4.9237537 out of 5

Keywords: Blender, Beginner, Blender tutorial, Blender Animation, Blender Loop, Blender Animation Loop, Blender 2.8, Blender eevee, Eevee Animation, Abstract, Blender Abstract tutorial, Blender Modeling, Blender Enviornment, Blender Easy, Blender easy tutorial, Blender cycles, Blender 3D, b3d, Blender Guru, Remington Graphics, Intro to Blender, CG Geek, Olav3D, CG Cookie, Midge Sinnaeve, Gleb Alexandrov

Id: tC-DGbvU5lo

Length: 10min 10sec (610 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 17 2020