Real or Fake? CG Photorealistic Digital Art that will make you look close

CGI Renderings that Look Realistic!

    Designing realistic human forms has long been a prized goal of the world’s digital artists. Small details made us realize whether the person looked was real or a 3D rendering model. Now better design techniques, modeling software and powerful hardware are enabling 3D designers and artists to render models that are almost real-life objects. Unless of course, a subtle change gives it away.
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These 20 amazing works of digital art - depicting fictional characters, environments, historical personalities and celebrities - demonstrate how artists can produce works that are almost a form of reality.

So sit back, relax and see these amazing works without wondering whether they are real – they are not. However, could you tell the difference?

Some software used: V-Ray for Cinema 4D, ZBrush texturing, and architectural visualization from Evermotion, Maya, Megascans atlases, VR, CryEngine.
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All images are the © copyright of their respective owners.

​Guesthouse by Benjamin Springer
Benjamin spent weeks working with Cinema4D and Corona render for this project. This beautiful piece contains 24 million polygons and takes 36 hours to render on an i73930 with 32GB RAM!

​The Table by Marlindo Dias Pontes
Marlindo used photographic references to create this scene by using 3ds Max, V-Ray, Marvelous and Photoshop.

Daniel Craig portrait by Luc Bégin
Luc created this model in V-Ray for 3ds Max, did the hair with Ornatrix and rendered it in Corona renderer.

Woody Allen by Zbygnek Kysela
Zbygnek used ZBrush and Maya with Arnold to create this stunning model of his favorite personality

​Abraham Lincoln by ShaoNian (少 年)
The detailed wrinkles, especially under the eyes, are what make this ZBrush sculpt of Abraham Lincoln come to life.

W. Churchill portrait by Eduardo Simon
Eduardo used ZBrush, KeyShot and Photoshop to create this amazing model of Churchill.

​Portrait of a wolf by Felix Benjamin Bader
Felix created this portrait as a part of a fine art book print project by using ZBrush for sculpturing, Mari for texturing and Maya with Arnold for rendering. He did the fur in Shave and Haircut with some postproduction in Photoshop.

Portrait of Sean Frandsen by Ian Spriggs

Ian Spriggs says this work was inspired by Vermeer's 'Girl with the Pearl Earring'. Modeled in Maya, sculpted/textured by using Mudbox, rendered in V-Ray with some touch ups done in Photoshop.

​All images are the © copyright of their respective owners.

Contributed by: Michael Swack

Michael Swack is Director of Marketing at CGTrader, bringing 25 years of B2B marketing experience to his position. Before joining CGTrader, Michael served in key marketing roles in the world’s leading #D printing companies Stratasys and 3D Systems.