Hyperreal Internet

February 28, 2015 2:02 PM

David O'Reilly (previously), animator and creator of the indie game Mountain, and Kim Laughton, post-internet artist, have started the tumblr blog #HYPERREALCG. It's dedicated to "showcasing the world's most impressive & technical hyper-real 3d art." A number of tech outlets have picked up on the project, apparently (?) taking it at face value: Gizmodo, Huffington Post, Laughing Squid. A fun bit of trolling and perception for your Saturday afternoon.
posted by naju (27 comments total)

OReilly is one of the best modern artists today, in any medium.
posted by overeducated_alligator at 2:04 PM on February 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

The results are incredible, so much so that you'll probably spend most of the time loudly shouting at the screen as your brain refuses to cave in and accept the truth.

... a wonderful head innards shaking website ... It's really crazy how close to real life we can get with art

... showcases astonishingly photorealistic examples ...

The new journalism! (Via Gizmodo, Huffington Post, Laughing Squid)
posted by sylvanshine at 2:14 PM on February 28, 2015 [5 favorites]

The gaming mouse attribution made me laugh, but real CG is good enough that these don't seem that trollish, at least to my eyes which are apparently bad enough to see a gold and white dress. Still, getting a joke project onto the reblogging train would make my day.
posted by michaelh at 2:33 PM on February 28, 2015 [3 favorites]

Render time: 13.8 billion years
posted by fungible at 2:35 PM on February 28, 2015 [12 favorites]

I'd never heard of Kim Laughton before I wrote this post, but I got a kick out of this thing I found on his vimeo page: VOLUMETRIC EMOTION
posted by naju at 2:37 PM on February 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

Here's a silly interview with OReilly: http://www.lataco.com/taco/david-oreilly-favorite-taco
posted by chaz at 2:52 PM on February 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

Serious question...is it "hyper real" or "hyperreal," the latter rhyming with "imperial"? I've always wondered.
posted by nevercalm at 2:56 PM on February 28, 2015

(I can't believe I'm the first to say) ORLY?

Still, the apostrophe-free OReilly is more honest than Bill.
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:59 PM on February 28, 2015

That first "render" of the tomatoes and cup could be a good successor to the Cornell box. Rendering it well would require subsurface scattering for proper tomato skin, global illumination to make the inside of the cup pink from the reflected tomato, high dynamic range to capture the bright sunlight as well as the dark tablecloth in the background... just add a transparent glass somewhere to provide refraction.
posted by Rangi at 3:02 PM on February 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

This looks real, I can tell by the lack of pixels.
posted by Wolfdog at 3:38 PM on February 28, 2015 [3 favorites]

Weird, I'd never heard of David O'Reilly before but just got linked this earlier.
posted by kmz at 3:49 PM on February 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

The new journalism! (Via Gizmodo, Huffington Post, Laughing Squid)

Gizmodo and Huffington Post are clearly taking the piss.

"I can't believe these hyper real pictures are completely CG and not real"

"'Hyper Real CG', a blog devoted to the small and elite group of artists who are creating photo-realistic images using nothing by computers."

Laughing Squid doesn't really give enough away to tell.
posted by howfar at 3:56 PM on February 28, 2015

I totally bit. Ugfth!
posted by cleroy at 3:58 PM on February 28, 2015

"mysterious warrior queen"

PLAY NOW MY LORD
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:11 PM on February 28, 2015 [5 favorites]

Need more teapots.
posted by sammyo at 6:16 PM on February 28, 2015

I made this hyper real milkshake with blender. Render time: 30 seconds.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 6:41 PM on February 28, 2015 [7 favorites]

So what you're saying is, that none of these is computer graphics and they're all real pictures pretending to be computer graphics? Please tell me, I'm a simpleton and I don't get the joke.
posted by rubber duck at 3:35 AM on March 1, 2015

I work in visual effects and I dont quite get the joke either! All of those images could be produced in cg, and we're honestly at a point that a room full of professionals can be confused as to whether we're looking at a live action element or something we just rendered.
posted by Erasmouse at 5:57 AM on March 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

I mean the only way I'm sure they're real is the lighting isn't quite as nice as you'd make it in post.
posted by Erasmouse at 5:59 AM on March 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

Mod note: A few comments deleted; on second thought, let's not get derailed into figuring out who the woman is in one of the pics.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 10:38 AM on March 1, 2015

I LoLed at POVRay and started to get it.
posted by freebird at 11:23 AM on March 1, 2015

...though I also had a moment of "Wow, POVRay is still around and doing some really different stuff! I should look it up...wait a second..."
posted by freebird at 11:23 AM on March 1, 2015

The joke isn't "there's no way you could do this!" The joke is in choosing pictures that look like they might be renders, and playing around with the just-this-side-of-uncanny-valley quality. For example, some of these have tile floors with repeating patterns that I commonly see in people learning 3D. The ATM machine with the sphere and Greek statue next to it is also hilarious for this reason.
posted by naju at 11:35 AM on March 1, 2015

If you don't laugh at the "playing with Maya fur!" one I don't know what to say.

I'm also on board with the art world trolling the tech world. For any reason.
posted by naju at 11:37 AM on March 1, 2015

The worst part about hyperrealism is when you want to illuminate the scene with sunlight, you need to wait eight minutes for the raytracing function to even start to return results.
posted by mccarty.tim at 12:38 PM on March 1, 2015 [4 favorites]

Part of the joke seems to be the awe these images inspire when it's believed that a computer spent hours rendering them, vs the fraction of a second it took to photograph them. It's like, say goodbye to the Uncanny Valley, welcome to the Unnecessary Valley.
posted by unmake at 1:25 AM on March 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

News* sites are still falling for this somehow. The Mirror.

*Well, tabloid news anyway
posted by naju at 12:11 PM on March 2, 2015