Reddit reviews Digital Lighting and Rendering (2nd Edition)

I've worked a lot on 3D in the past and photorealism is tough to nail correctly and to be objective in my criticism here, this picture of Wall-E is not really photorealistic. It's a good effort, mind you, but this setup requires little skill in modern rendering engines (for example, you can load a simple scene in 3ds Max, put an object there with mental ray materials, render it and you end up with similar result).

It's not about using HDR environment maps or more dusty materials, even the cleanest of materials can be made very photo-real. Photorealism is not about how clean something is, but how reflective-refractive surfaces are and how properly light has been set up. Light is the toughest thing to nail in any photorealistic rendering.

My own photorealism renderings are not that good either, so I know how tough this is to get right. For example: http://waher.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/soccerball.jpg and http://waher.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/koolitiirurender.jpg

In order to improve, I highly recommend you read through this book which covers subjects about how colors, shadows and light works since more than anything that is the way to get to actually photorealistic renderings:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Digital-Lighting-Rendering-Jeremy-Birn/dp/0321316312/

Understanding the physics of light is very, very important.

Best of luck!

Hey, I'm a CG Lighting artist by trade, I'll let you know some good resources that have helped me.

As a lighter, your goal is things things, Setting the mood/atmosphere, Shaping (making sure you can make out forms of the scene), and Leading the eye (I feel like there is a fourth, but I can't think of it this morning lol)

Some good books to read:

Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter

Light for Visual Artists (hard book to find, but worth finding a copy)

Digital Lighting and Rendering(new edition coming out soon)

Great resources to start and help train your eye, studying films is the next step. Picking apart scenes to understand how and why they lit the scene the way they did, studying photography is a great place to look as well.

Also if you can afford it, TD-U has a fantastic online course from a couple of great instructors to help you on your way of understanding CG Lighting. If you can afford the class it will be a great place to start. I took the class last year and it was an AMAZING resource, I didn't know anything beyond the technical understanding of lighting, this course really helped me understand the artistic side of lighting. The instructors are great and very helpful.

anyways, hope that helps, if you have any questions feel free to message me.

I got a lot out of Digital Lighting and rendering, especially considering the cheap price.