02: History of Photorealism

The History Behind Photorealism

Photorealism organically developed through multiple activities, methods, techniques and skills that improved over time to what it is now.

I will be talking about the multiple ways from which this started.

Art on Canvas

The term 'Photorealism' began around the 60s when painters started exploring a more realistic side of art.

'Photorealist' was a name given to the artists who have achieved certain requirements, such as:

Creating photoreal paintings for more than 5 years before 1972. 

To achieve a high level of realism in their paintings, artists used to use a photograph from which they would obtain the information needed to achieve the technique. They would look for details such as reflections, scratches, dirt, how the light is displayed or even how the objects are laid out. Sometimes they would grid the canvas to obtain as much accurate details as possible. 

Big Self-Portrait (walkerart.org)

Matte Painting

In layman terms, it is using one or more images to replace a background. Matte Painting was invented more than 100 years ago, in the early 1900s. It consisted of painting in glass, filming from one side combined with the real scene on the other. The painting had to look very close to what the real scene looked. 

The History of Matte Painting

Nowadays matte painting is done digitally utilizing programs such as Photoshop, Nuke and Maya.

Miniatures

Miniatures have been around for thousands of years. Its use provides film makers with the ability to create impossible things which has been popular from around the same time as Matte Painting started being used.

In 1902 the film director Georges Melles created a film called 'A trip to the Moon' which is believed to be the first movie with miniatures in it.

In order to create such intriguing objects, artists used to and still use different materials, such as cardboard, plastic, rubber and paint.

How impossible worlds came alive in movies - The story of Miniatures (srushtivfx.com)

Miniature Effect: Using Miniature Models in Film to Create the Impossible (beverlyboy.com)

Modern Days Photorealism 

5 steps to creating convincing photorealistic 3D portraits | CG Channel

Looking back at how artist created their art is safe to say that the artistic skills and the thought process behind it, are still being used. 

The clear and main difference between the art back then and now is the tools the artists create their art with. Now we have more range to expand and create things from imagination as well as from real life references.

Using CG doubles as an example, we can see how artists try to replicate the many details as accurate as possible. 

Old photorealism 3D

Technology plays an important part in the creation of 3d assets, as artist were creating what they thought was the best realism made with what they had. In the case of Avatar, James Cameron states that it took him more than 10 years to create the film as he had to wait for technology to improve in order to create the visually mind-blowing world.

(113) How Pixar's Animation Has Evolved Over 24 Years, From ‘Toy Story’ To ‘Toy Story 4’ | Movies Insider - YouTube

Pixar is one of the studios that revolutionized 3d for films, they pioneered the creation of multiple techniques such as the creation and animation of fur, water and animating clothes. As technology was not fully developed, they created their own software in order to be able to add fur to a character such as in Monsters ink. Renderman is a render engine they invented so they can have more leverage when compositing multiple effects in one scene, the more films they created the more experience and improvement in the software they obtained. 

In the first Toy Story, they tried to minimize how much screen time human characters had, as animating clothes was very difficult. Renderman allowed them to set multiple lights in scenes improving the mood of it.

Toy Story 1

In video games. Going back to the firth generation of video games or the 32/64 bit or 3D era. This is when games jumped from 2d and 2.5 d to 3d environments. Using Counter Strike as an example, we can see how low the graphics were, but this is what worked and what was considered as realistic. As technology improved and better consoles were developed, so did the graphics and the ability to work with more complex 3d objects.

Counter Strike

New photoreal 3D

Comparing Toy Story 1 with Raya The Last Dragon, we can clearly see incredible improvements that were very difficult to make. In this film they used techniques such as hair, cloth and water simulation that would have been incredibly difficult to recreate when Toy Story 1 came out.

Raya The Last Dragon

Nowadays video games show visually stunning graphics and with the development of Unreal Engine 5 which is supported with the new generation of consoles, graphics are and will be more promising. In this game Epic shows how strong Unreal 5 is by creating an environment composed of millions of polygons and dynamic lighting which in the previous generations was not possible.

Unreal Engine 5