The objects are real in one of them. Can you tell which one?
Rendering Synthetic Objects into Legacy Photographs by Kevin Karsch on Vimeo.
(Video Link) The following video shows a method called LuxRender, introduced at the 2011 SIGGRAPH convention by a team from the University of Illinois. It allows users to add virtual elements in a pre-existing photograph.
Some simple commands allow you to enter the parameters of the room and its light sources. Then the software generates all the diffuse and specular surface effects, glowing light interactions, shadows, occlusion and shadows.
as a traditional painter who looks at the technology behind the scenes, I find it all very impressive, inspiring and a little scary. When I do a realistic painting of an imaginary scene, I know how it requires my brain to understand these complex lighting interactions. The same is true today, I suppose, for digital painters 2D.
Now our brothers machinery may suggest to us. It is amazing how the computer can make these subtle 3D judgments so easily, especially since it infers the light sources from an existing 2D image picture.
What are the artistic implications of this technology? Once this kind of software finds its way into the hands of users daily and magazine publishers, our visual environment will be flooded with pictures more and more fish. I can put your car in my driveway or my flying saucer on the roof of your house. And I suppose that these tools will save a lot of tedious work in the field of visual effects for live action.
Links
LuxRender Video on Vimeo (with abstract)
Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter
thanks, Steve Merryman
