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 behavior, atmospherics, shading, texturing, physically-based rendering, procedural modeling, 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.