🧵 Untitled Thread
Anonymous at Sat, 22 Mar 2025 08:07:26 UTC No. 1009875
Do you think both WoW and Genshin's rendering can be described as "stylized PBR"?
It seems they both use normal maps, roughness maps, maybe even metallic,
yet they also use handpainted textures, and somehow also painterly looking photorealistic textures sometimes I guess?
Would you consider this the hardest type of stuff to work on?
Anonymous at Sat, 22 Mar 2025 18:19:21 UTC No. 1009898
>>1009875
Yes but pbr is a render method, the other is the style. Pbr is used in realism because it's what it tries to emulate, but you can have a cartoony game with pbr without problem, both are the same in level of difficulty, what it makes it harder or easier is how good your art direction is
Anonymous at Sat, 22 Mar 2025 19:08:22 UTC No. 1009903
>>1009898
Hmm, when asking about easy or hard I meant more like, in photorealism, people NEVER draw anything, they simply use photographed textures and even 3d scanned assets, in stylized PBR you have to model and draw everything, and you also have to make sure everything is consistent and coherern, while in photorealism that comes automatically because whatever you photographed and 3d scanned from real world will always automatically be coherent with each other. In stylized PBR as I see it, maybe some classic photo textures can be used, but with heavy processing. For example, I suspect on that OP screenshot stone floor might be a normal stone texture processed to the level that it's mostly flat and monotonous but if you look carefully you see how much there is going on still.
Anonymous at Sat, 22 Mar 2025 19:30:45 UTC No. 1009907
>>1009903
its definitely not processed. authoring stylized pbr is really easy, look into things like substance designer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZi
Anonymous at Sat, 22 Mar 2025 22:01:21 UTC No. 1009915
>>1009875
>Would you consider this the hardest type of stuff to work on?
No, it's a naive and simplified style that omit alot of the things you have to pay attention to if you pursue something naturalistic looking.
Once you have amassed the skills so you can work on arbitrary complex scenes what determines how difficult any specific look
is to work on comes down to your volume of work per unit bespoke surface area.
Art styles with exact geometrical worn in surfaces that are rich in detail are the hardest ones. Things like Organic panelized machinery with lot of overhangs and
machine part that overlaps one another etc, you can't realy sculpt it but it is semi-organic and and modelling it is very tedious.
Art styles like that of 'Vitaly Bulgarov' are the most difficult ones. You'll find that even when you know what to do and how you can't actually do them.
Because you burn out throwing that much work onto your surfaces. The man is a machine of willpower to do what he does being so prolific in such a tedious style.
It's sort of like the difference between knowing how to run a marathon once every couple of weeks where actually replicating the style involves doing a ultra marathon daily.
Anonymous at Sun, 23 Mar 2025 05:31:03 UTC No. 1009936
>>1009915
> naive and simplified style that omit alot of the things
When it's simple, there needs to be effort for things to look good and harmonious together.
When you take photoscanned assets with basically infinite detail, your viewer has the opportunity to get lost in every little piece, composition and other things become less important and even less visible.
> Art styles with exact geometrical worn in surfaces that are rich in detail are the hardest ones.
Do you mean trying to imitate it yourself? I would expect most of this detail to come from professionally photographed hq pbr textures.
Recently I learned how easy it is to sculpt some extra detail with alphas in anchor mode so I guess that's also something to throw on top to make it a bit "your own".
>>1009921
>>1009929
Appreciate the complexity of detail, but it's definitely not my type of stuff. However, how much of surface detail comes from photos instead of actual modelling is still a question.
Anonymous at Sun, 23 Mar 2025 07:23:48 UTC No. 1009940
>>1009936
>When it's simple, there needs to be effort for things to look good and harmonious together.
All art takes effort but the more stylized an simplified a visual language is the more forgiving it is in how much detail you are allowed to omit and
still deliver a finished piece that looks like it belongs. Once you identified the groove of the style and eased into it making something that'd look like
another plant or hill side or tree that belonged in OP's scene right there it'd be something I'd comfortably Bob Ross my way thru.
With these sort of extreme hyper realistic styles even once you've identified the visual rules and rhythm and succeeded in implementing the visual language
such that your work looks like it could've been theirs it's still cock & ball torture every millimeter of the way you're asked to move in that direction.
Like you just climbed Everest and made it all the way down and someone looks at what you did and goes "oh very good! now again!"
>but it's definitely not my type of stuff.
Look it's not exactly my type of stuff either (too visually busy to have high appeal on me), but of all the art I know of it's the hardest act to follow.
The patience and perseverance you need to put up to approach it is absolutely next level.
Appeal in art is not determined by how difficult something is, but the question wasn't about our subjective likes and dislikes but about 'hardest type of stuff to work on'
and then these sort of detail masturbatory 'extreme hard surface' styles would be my answer.
Like how the most appreciated guitarist in the world isn't amongst those composing pieces that are hardest for other musicians to play.
But someone is that player that you have to admit is just on another level of raw unfiltered skill because even in understanding the exact note progression
and knowing your way around the fret board inside out you still fail to play their pieces, because it asks you do do too much too fast too precise for too long.
Anonymous at Sun, 23 Mar 2025 07:37:48 UTC No. 1009941
>>1009940
> of all the art I know of it's the hardest act to follow.
> The patience and perseverance you need
Again you're still omiting the most important question in this regard:
> Do you mean trying to imitate it yourself? I would expect most of this detail to come from professionally photographed hq pbr textures.
A lot of beautiful photorealistic art I see comes from using ZERO handmade assets.
You literally go download 3d scans of objects from sketchfab, arrange them together, do cool lighting, and voila - beautiful and deep photorealistic scene.
Here is what I mean:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3G
I'm not sure if someone's even trying to imitate that by hand and if there's even point in doing so.
Anonymous at Sun, 23 Mar 2025 07:47:35 UTC No. 1009942
So if you look at it this way it's like:
> stylized styles - everything is usually handmade
> photorealistic styles - everything is usually a photoscanned asset and if it's not it's a handmade model but the texture is photographed pbr material and even if there was some manual work on texture it's usually not more than adding some extra detail on top of photographed material
Anonymous at Sun, 23 Mar 2025 08:21:21 UTC No. 1009943
>>1009941
>>1009942
>You literally go download 3d scans of objects from sketchfab, arrange them together, do cool lighting, and voila - beautiful and deep photorealistic scene.
Well imagine you are a artist that is working on a project that is using assets like that and now the production needs a creature/character or building
that doesn't exist anywhere for anyone to go scan. Everybody turns their heads to look at you; the artist. Congratulations it has now fallen on you
to go craft something that has a fidelity such that it doesn't look out of place next to assets like that.
For you are the glue that makes those heavy asset flippy drag-and-drop assets work in the background without being revealed for what they are.
And you don't get to be the one that just drags & drops anything you get to be the one that is making all those bespoke crafted/custom assets that are
to stand as the hero-pieces grabbing the the attention and tying it all together.
Once you've started using photo-realistic scanned assets you have basically committed to a visual language where everything you need to handcraft must be film-grade.
It's not the crutch you think it is, it is the problem of the director shooting a film with live actors and now for the next scene they need Thanos and his ~Stardestroyer.
Anonymous at Sun, 23 Mar 2025 08:43:32 UTC No. 1009944
>>1009943
You didn't directly answer the question, but what you write implies that you think there are people who are doing photorealistic assets by hand.
Which I would personally find impressive and really hard.
I'd love to see timeline of person manually sculpting photorealistic bark of a tree for example.
But I've never seen people doing stuff like that.
Anonymous at Sun, 23 Mar 2025 09:15:35 UTC No. 1009945
>>1009943
> creature/character or building
I guess the confusing part of this discussion is that this kind of geometry doesn't depend on style. Modelling is not that different in whatever style.
It's detailing that is different: in some styles people are forced to draw everything by hand, in others people are forced to use photographies, in others there are just colors and gradients or procedural patterns.
Anonymous at Sun, 23 Mar 2025 09:29:58 UTC No. 1009947
>>1009944
> there are people who are doing photorealistic assets by hand.
Ofc there are, where do you think all that CGI you saw in films and games from eras before photogrammetry was even a thing came from?
There are people who can draw images that you'd easily mistake for actual photographs, pic related; Milla Jovovich by Tuna Ferit - charcoal on A4 paper.
>manually sculpting photorealistic bark of a tree for example.
Things like that comes up for when you need some dramatically shaped tree that doesn't exist or when you need bark to form specific shapes, like the face of the Ents in Lord of the Rings etc. It's not that the artists that does things like that are some bark sculpting savants it's that they know fine arts and find good references and meticulously set out to replicate custom shaped surfaces that mimics it.
Making art like that is very time consuming and tying up talent you have a limited pool of so if a surface can be made in some procedural way you go for it and employ
the artistry in the spots it's needed to tie it all together.
Anonymous at Sun, 23 Mar 2025 10:06:58 UTC No. 1009948
>>1009947
> Things like that comes up for when you need some dramatically shaped tree that doesn't exist or when you need bark to form specific shapes, like the face of the Ents in Lord of the Rings etc. It's not that the artists that does things like that are some bark sculpting savants it's that they know fine arts and find good references and meticulously set out to replicate custom shaped surfaces that mimics it.
This makes sense, I'm not sure I've ever seen that though. My favorite dramatic trees are always from some kind of stylized fantasy like World of Warcraft and similar.
I'm not even sure how photorealistic tree texture that doesn't really exist would look like and if I'm gonna be able to tell that bark is not a photo of some real tree.
LOTR example isn't perfect though because that's basically just slapping PBR bark texture on top of sculpted face?
Bark texture itself might as well be photographed from a real tree.
> Making art like that is very time consuming and tying up talent you have a limited pool of so if a surface can be made in some procedural way you go for it and employ the artistry in the spots it's needed to tie it all together.
This kind of mindset is very compatible with AI yet people cry about it all the time.