Hyper-Realist Rendering: A Theoretical Framework

TL;DR

This paper introduces a theoretical framework for hyper-realist rendering, emphasizing artistic and representational approaches to create visually convincing illusions of reality that do not strictly adhere to physical laws.

Contribution

It proposes a formal framework for hyper-realist rendering that leverages artistic techniques to produce realistic illusions without strict physical accuracy.

Findings

Hyper-realist artifacts can evoke reality without physical correctness

Artistic methods can produce more convincing illusions of reality

A set of formal methods for expressive illumination modeling

Abstract

This is the first paper in a series on hyper-realist rendering. In this paper, we introduce the concept of hyper-realist rendering and present a theoretical framework to obtain hyper-realist images. We are using the term Hyper-realism as an umbrella word that captures all types of visual artifacts that can evoke an impression of reality. The hyper-realist artifacts are visual representations that are not necessarily created by following logical and physical principles and can still be perceived as representations of reality. This idea stems from the principles of representational arts, which attain visually acceptable renderings of scenes without implementing strict physical laws of optics and materials. The objective of this work is to demonstrate that it is possible to obtain visually acceptable illusions of reality by employing such artistic approaches. With representational art methods, we can even obtain an alternate illusion of reality that looks more real even when it is not real. This paper demonstrates that it is common to create illusions of reality in visual arts with examples of paintings by representational artists. We propose an approach to obtain expressive local and global illuminations to obtain these stylistic illusions with a set of well-defined and formal methods.