Watching it at a relatively low bitrate on my phone the two things that stand out are the drinking glass and the lamp. The glass is too perfect - a real glass will have tiny deviations in wall thickness and surface imperfections that are apparent when you look through it, especially when moving around, glasses are always one of the biggest giveaways for me.
The lamp also has something strange going on and doesn't look like any real diffuser. I think they've tried to use surface roughness to simulate frosted glass, but have made it too translucent. It doesn't look like a translucent plastic either because of the high IoR, and have possibly made it solid rather than walled.
Rewatching it trying not to pick out too much is difficult, but if I would add one more thing it would be the very uniformly rainy windows which have some gridding to the droplets (and the small error of putting the shader on both panes of the doube glazing :p)
Not "giving away", the lighter and pen certainly are captivating, but more like on a second view some things clearly stand out as CGI.
1. The window. The water behavior is straight impossible, I think. Too much water an the glass.
2. The lighting dynamics and lens distortion are slightly off in this uncanny valley way. Too algorithmic, too smooth.
3. Clearly the lighter and pen have gotten the most touch up. Everything else is a bit too generic. Additive and subtractive manufacturing leaves marks and uneven deposition.
In reality, sometimes things do look weird from a certain angle, and they never avoid the impression of CGI origin, ironically. It's really hard to perceive and recreate the world the way it is, because your brain only ever constructs it as mix of filtered and processed visual input and internal modelling. Very well illustrated with the involuntary multi-stable perception phenomenon [1] and illusory contours [2]. People are blind to the way things don't look like the things they are. I think, artistic mastery is overcoming the inherent limitations of perception and becoming fluent and expressive in the unspoken language of pre-cognitive expectations, symbolism and archetypes.
The perfect camera autofocus when object distance changed quickly, especially since it's "macro" distance at times. No real camera auto focus is that good.
Also, some things are too perfect/lacking imperfections. The lamp shade texture for instance is too even & perfect
I think I was primed because of the title, so I was more attentive. For me it was the candle that appears unnatural, also pencils are a little too perfect and the label on the lighter is a little too clean. After 10th watching also the speaker and the wooden thing look a little artificial. If I didn't know it was a render I might have put the oddness of the candle on some compression issue.
Can't properly comment on it as I'm watching on a phone, but my 2 cents:
Last week there was an Ask HN thread about live-rendered video games graphics still looking worse than 20 year old Hollywood CGI. A lot of the comments were about balancing performance and having less power, true, but there was something that wasn't being considered: what we expect CGI to look like.
I couldn't word the comment right so I didn't post it, but I was going to bring up the game Unrecord[1] as an example of fairly realistic looking game – it still has general limitations other live rendered work has, but the choice of using a high field of view to emulated a bodycam (alongside cold, high contrast lighting) sells a certain vision of reality.
I see it the same here. Maybe our idea of what CGI looks like clouds us, and something as simple as using a high FOV / fisheye lens throws us off. Also consider that due to the distortion of the lens, real life fisheye footage can have an almost unreal vibe to it.
Looks like they weren't the only ones to have the idea of a bodycam based shooter to improve immersion in hyper-realistic graphics. Another game is trying the same thing to great effect, but as a multiplayer shooter.
Examples like this post are why I think HN should revisit the rules about accurate titles. If this post were just "windowsill [video]" I wouldn't have clicked.
I can intuitively feel that it is probably CG, but hard to put my finger on it. It usually comes down to something with lighting and translucency though.
That said, I spent years studying game development, the majority of which was 3D modeling, and have done animation for independent films.
I'm surprised mods would flag it.
That being said, there were many times throughout the clip where I momentarily questioned myself. Really outstanding work, like, phenomenally good.
> If your render is remotely intended to be realistic, please include wireframe, viewport or clay render along with your post.
This is a bit sensationalistic if you’ve followed the subreddit for any amount of time. People often forget about the rules and either have their posts removed or are asked to post evidence.
Found it here: https://80.lv/articles/this-3d-scene-looks-so-photorealistic...