The Complete Guide to Photorealism for Visual Effects, Visualization and Games

This new edition offers the most up-to-date and comprehensive guide to accomplishing and perfecting a photorealistic look in digital content across visual effects, architectural and product visualization, and games. Emmy award-winning VFX supervisor Eran Dinur offers readers a deeper understanding of the complex interplay of light, surfaces, atmospherics, and optical effects, and then discusses techniques to achieve this complexity in the digital realm, covering 3D, 2D and Generative AI methodologies. In addition, the book features artwork, case studies, and interviews with leading artists in the fields of VFX, visualization, and games. Exploring color, integration, light and surface behaviour, atmospherics, shading, texturing, physically-based rendering, procedural modelling, compositing, matte painting, lens/camera effects, and much more, Dinur offers a compelling, elegant guide to achieving photorealism in digital media and creating imagery that is seamless from real footage. In this second edition, the book explores generative AI as a tool for producing photoreal content. It focuses on various workflows and techniques for controlling the generative process and guiding AI models toward the desired results. The book's broad perspective makes this detailed guide suitable for VFX, visualization and game artists and students, as well as directors, architects, designers, and anyone who strives to achieve convincing, believable visuals in digital media.

Eran Dinur is an Emmy and VES award-winning VFX supervisor, artist, and author of The Filmmaker's Guide to Visual Effects (2024). His film and TV work includes Marty Supreme, The Trial of the Chicago 7, Hereditary, The Greatest Showman, Uncut Gems, The Wolf of Wall Street, Boardwalk Empire, Star Trek, and Iron Man. He is an adjunct professor at the School of Visual Arts and the author of several popular VFX courses at fxphd.com.

Preface to the 2nd Edition Acknowledgements Introduction A Quick Overview of the Book PART 1: CORE CONCEPTS Chapter 1: Reality and Photorealism Human vision and cameras The similarities Field of view Seeing with the mind The uncanny valley The detail conundrum The role of imperfections Case study: detail and imperfections in man-made objects The reality of the unreal Image quality and photorealism 2D and 3D workflows Chapter 2: Photorealism in Digital Media Visual Effects Games Visualization Architectural visualization Product visualization Case study: Nature in Architectural Renders Chapter 3: Color The six-layer approach Thinking Additive Subtractive color Additive color Hue, saturation, and brightness in RGB Color operations Gain (exposure) Offset Lift Gamma Saturation Bit depth and dynamic range The low end The high end PART 2: THE REAL WORLD Chapter 4: Light essentials Light as waves Light as particles Light decay Direct and indirect illumination What is "ambient light"? Chapter 5: Light interaction Absorption Reflection and scattering Specular reflection Diffuse reflection Scattering Subsurface scattering Transmission and refraction Albedo Case study: side by side comparison Chapter 6: Daylight The sun The atmosphere Reflection and absorption Atmospheric scattering Rayleigh scattering Mie Scattering Volumetric light Aerial perspective Air Water droplets Haze Chapter 7: Nighttime and Artificial Lighting Natural nighttime light The Purkinje effect Artificial lighting Color temperature Light intensity Common lamp types Light modifiers Chapter 8: Shadows Shadow softness Shadow color Overlapping shadows Nested shadows Contact shadows Chapter 9: Basic Material Properties Dielectric materials Dielectric Diffuse/specular balance Fresnel effect Metals Chapter 10: Lens and Camera Characteristics Defocus Depth of field Bokeh Lens distortion Chromatic aberration Lens flares Simple glow Diffraction Spikes Additional flare elements Dirt and imperfections Anamorphic lens flares Lens bloom Motion blur Grain PART 3: THE CG WORLD Chapter 11: Rendering and Lighting From scanline to path tracing Scanline/rasterized rendering Raytracing The challenge of global illumination Path Tracing Unbiased vs. biased rendering Traditional light emitters Point/spot lights Directional light Contemporary light emitters Area and mesh lights Image-based lighting Procedural HDR environments Photometric lights Essential strategies for PBR lighting Scale matters Natural daytime lighting Skylight color Ambient occlusion for outdoor scenes Daytime interior scenes Man-made lighting Case Study: Product Lighting Chapter 12: Shading A brief overview of shader evolution The BRDF Shading model Diffuse Dielectric/metallic toggle Specular Coat Transmission Subsurface scattering Emission Additional BRDF features Other common shaders Car paint shaders Volumetric shaders Hair/fur shaders Case study: Emulating Plastic Materials Chapter 13: Texturing PBR texturing The linear workflow Base color map Roughness map Metallic map Bump (normal) map Ambient occlusion (AO) map Displacement (height) map Transparency map vs. opacity map Texture generation workflows Image textures Shooting and prepping photos for texturing Resolution Baked-in Lighting Angle, perspective and focus Exposure Optimizing photographs for tiling Procedural textures Combining workflows Chapter 14: Modeling Modeling for lighting Procedural modeling Terrain modeling Case Study: erosion algorithms in Gaea Plant modeling PART 4: THE 2D WORLD Chapter 15: Integrating 2D Elements Color matching Edges: problems and solutions Matching background luminosity Spill suppression Edge and core extractions Edge reconstruction Matte-less extractions Edge blur and edge color Light wrap Chapter 16: Integrating CG elements Compositing with render passes Lighting passes Utility passes Deep compositing Improving CG in comp Render resolution Hazing effect Highlights bloom Albedo pass and contrast Edge treatment Case Study: Hybrid 2D/3D Matte Painting Chapter 17: Lighting in 2D Relighting with color The challenge of reflections Fresnel effect Breaking up reflections Creating shadows Shape, angle and stretching Shadow softness and falloff Breaking up shadows Shadow color Contact and proximity shadows Case study: matte painting integration in film Atmospheric Depth Referencing the footage Chapter 18: Lens and Camera Effects Defocus Lens distortion and chromatic aberration Lens flares Motion blur Grain Chapter 19: Photorealism with Generative AI Generative AI for Video vs. stills Oh, the errors it makes... A note about Stable Diffusion Understanding the Diffusion Process Checkpoint Models LoRA Models Other Types of Models Latent Space and VAE Denoiser Text Prompts (Clips) Generative AI Concepts and Techniques Aspect Ratio Resolution CFG Denoising steps and schedulers The Art of Prompting Prompt Weights Negative prompts Prompting for photorealism Prompting with AI Split prompts Inpainting Inpainting prompts and additional guidance Using ControlNet Models Depth ControlNet Normals ControlNet A 3D scene in Maya is used to guide the generative process: the depth pass (top left) and normals pass (top right) are fed into ControlNet nodes in InvokeAI (bottom left) to drive the generated image of a modern villa (bottom right) Canny OpenPose IP Adapters Segmentation Case Study: Season Changes with ComfyUI and Nuke Epilogue