Realism? Prize Salmon by bigbraader
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No AI - This artwork was created entirely by hand or with traditional digital tools.
Description
The salmon has been landed :)
- A texture and lighting study, going for realism (I stress "going for"!).
I've modified the "Chinook Salmon" texture (comes with the download from "Toucan") in several aspects: increasing the resolution & some colour adjustments, designing bump-maps from the original texture, reflections, and transparency maps for the fins, most noticable on the tail. Of course the fins are standing out a triffle too much - well, this is what the model looks like :)
The grass is made with the brilliant free software Bantam3D "Grass 7" by "Geese" (http://www.bantam3d.com/). Besides making wonderful grass objects of your own design, it lets you decide how and where the grass should grow. Knowing what I wanted, I rendered an alpha-mask of the salmon, and used it for "alpha picture" in "Grass", thereby blocking the area where the fish was to be - otherwise you could get straws sticking through the body etc.
The grass object here is exceptionally huge, 23 mb., as it was to be used in this close-up. Normally the objects are smaller than 1 mb.
- The "lure" is freestuff from the web, thanks!
Rendered in Vue 4. 8 mio. polys (the grass!), 4 lights, 3 hrs. render.
Feedback, votes etc. very much appreciated - hope you like it. Thanks for taking a look.

Comments (18)
I am amazed nobody commented on this one yet. It would be obvious to say that the realism goal was achieved perfectly. The lighting is especially good. It is one of those pictures that are so close to a photograph that it wouldn't hurt showing a snapshot of the wireframe objects :) Great job !
Holy snap you got me!!! i thought it was a photo. excellent!! everything is perfect the grass the texture on the fish everything is perfect even the lighting. wow!! Wooooooooow!!
I agree with agiel, to amaze that so few comments and appreciations has been done on this marvelous image till now. IMO it's a great work. Bravo bigbraader.. and vote!
Wonderful - even for me who does not like fish. Perfect image. Simple (looking) and totally effective. Superb.
Great job, BB; love the shininess of the scales, and the grass is terrific.
Wow, it certainly does look like a photo!
Outstanding realism!!
Very convincing, well done.
just amazing...high level of realism
a fantastic work in texturing the fish and grass looks really extra.. a great bravo!
The grass is perfect! No doubt about that! The colour-variations are superb, as well as the lighting. The salmon however looks a bit fake... if you were able to improve the resolution even more so you can't see the pixels it would be perfect! Excellent and vote for sure
Very convincing image! The amount of realism is very impressive. Great job on the grass, too. Two thumbs up! :)))
Fantastic looking grass and image , well done:-)
superb realism..i would say yor experiment was a big success bravo....
Boy, talk about realistic! You can't get much better than this! Fantastic work!
Realistic indeed! Mission accomplished :) I love the grass!!
you can tell though that its rendered because of the low resolution 'bluring' of the textures around the head of the fish. but the right side of the image is 100% perfect.
Looks like a real one - so what't for the dinner today ? ;-))