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Fake or Foto survey.


arvidurs
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Dear Sir or Madam,

 

For the successful completion of my Bachelor Studies I am in need of your professional opinion in the architectural field. The project is about the creation of interior living-spaces (kitchen) with the help of a computer.

In a survey I will present you a series of kitchens where some are real photographs, and some are created with a computer, where you have to chose which one is which.

The whole test will only take 5 minutes of your time and is completely anonymous.

 

 

the SURVEY

 

Currently I am a student at the private Institute SAE which is located in Berlin where I am doing an apprenticeship in the 3D Animation&Film field.

 

It will really help me a lot,

 

thank you very much,

 

best regards,

 

Arvid Schneider

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Hey brodie,

 

thanks for taking part in the survey.

The main idea behind is to show that its possible for more or less 3D beginners to create a photorealistic image within a week. It should prove, that its much easier and faster to virtually create interiors rather than taking photographs of every angle.

 

Best regards,

Arvid

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arvidurs, I hope you don't mind if I challenge your supposition then (in the friendly debate sense, rather than a trollish sense)? Also, keep in mind that I'm being careful not to give anything away that might taint the results of the survey in case someone reads through the thread before taking part.

 

Were the cgi renders included in the survey created by "3d beginners...within a week"? If not, then I'm not sure how it could relate to the thesis. If so...well, that really is quite impressive.

 

Secondly, I'm not sure that even if you're able to prove the first supposition that it necessarily proves the second. That is, no matter how meticulous the photographer, it's not going to take him a week to take photos of a house, much less a kitchen. Photography is necessarily faster because it only shares the steps of setting up the camera, lighting, and post process work, while the cg artist must model and texture as well.

 

It's my contention that there may be reasons to do a rendering of an existing building, but they're pretty limited and I can't quite imagine how they'd outweigh photography from a commercial standpoint. Where cg becomes crucial is before the structure is built, at which point photography can't compete.

 

-Brodie

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Thank you brodie,

at the end of the survey is stated which of the pictures are cgi, and which ones are not. I can assure you that the cgi images where created within a week.

I want to show that for a 3D image, you can easily change the shape of the doors, or move around things in space without going through the photography aspect. I know taking the photo isnt a long process, but altering stuff in a photograph is much more challenging than just moving the fridge in z-space.

I really like to thank you for your input, and it didnt sound trollish ;) thanks :)

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Yes, I did notice that it tells you which are real and which aren't.

 

That makes more sense. That would certainly be a valid reason to use cgi. I think it'd be a tricky proposition to make since it's very situational - basically catering to folks doing renovations of existing structures it sounds like. That said, kitchens would definitely be a good place to target. I used to work in a home improvement store where I designed kitchens for folks and used a specialized software with premade cabinet/appliance objects that not only produced a cutsheet with costs and such but also could produce a so-so quality rendering. I could see how something like that could fit well into your supposition.

 

-Brodie

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Thanks for your input. So tomorrow is the last day of the survey..and till now I have almost 300 participants which is much more I hoped for :) so its really great, and analysis will be kind of fun.

 

If someone still wants to undergo the survey, here is the link.

 

the SURVEY

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A few thoughts I had during and after the survey (spoilers ahead):

 

There seemed to be a very uniform level of noise across all of the images. Noise is always a dead give away for a rendering. Were the photos you used supplied with that much noise? If our photographer provided us with images which showed that much noise, we'd be pretty ticked off.

 

I've found in my limited "professional photography" experience that photos (particularly those that have gone through a significant post process) look like renderings. I don't know if this tidbit skews your results or not but it's worth pointing out.

 

Are you saying that your renderer had never used the software and in one week produced the results seen in the test? That's pretty darn fast. Was your renderer motivated by the survey? What I mean was the person (maybe you) who produced the rendering motivated to prove a point or was this a more casual user? I think there are a lot of people in this industry who enjoy the work, want to get better but maybe aren't hell bent on a mission to prove a point. I think this is significant to your assertion that one (anyone) could sit down with the tools for the first time and in one week produce very high quality work.

 

I'm also not sure that your ratio of photographs to renders provides you with totally valid results (at least to prove your point scientifically). I'll leave it at that.

 

Lastly, the biggest point (mentioned earlier) is that the real value of 3d work comes not from the ability to make a rendering which looks like a photo but from the ability to make a rendering well before a photo is possible. The other side of the coin here is that in some cases its a bit dishonest to represent rendering as photos. Not in all cases mind you but if for example an architect put ten great photographic renderings in his or her portfolio and represented them as completed architectural works, well...that's not right.

 

I think what you are getting at is quite interesting and I don't mean to discourage you. I just wanted to share my thoughts.

 

Good luck with everything

Matt

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Having taken the survey, and having now seen the results, I have to say that I believe your study to be very unbalanced and biased and therefore not very useful from a research point of view. (dont read on if you dont want to know the resuts).

 

Basically by having such a large number of photos set up against a single render means that you are knowingly tricking the viewer to assume that there are a greater number of renders being compared, most would assume there are at least a few in their and this would skew their answer. Especially by posting this question to forum who are aware of the high quality which can be acheived by rendering. By having so few renders to compare against you are not striking a very profound argument that the quality of the renders is high, as there is only one. If you put forward an equal number of both, I think you could get much more accurate results from your test. I am also in agreement as others have mentioned that the quality of the photographs are poor, exhibiting a lot of uncharacterisitc noise to make them seem more like a rendering.

 

Seems to me that the overall results have been biased to prove a point rather than putting forward an impartial question, not very useful research in my opinion.

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Bewdy makes an interesting point, particularly in conjunction with Elevation's post. It would seem that the survey skews the results not only by only including 1 rendering which is made to look like a photograph (worts and all), but also by diminishing the quality of the photographs to look more like renderings (worts and all - ie. noise).

 

-Brodie

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Hey brodie,

 

thanks for taking part in the survey.

The main idea behind is to show that its possible for more or less 3D beginners to create a photorealistic image within a week. It should prove, that its much easier and faster to virtually create interiors rather than taking photographs of every angle.

 

Best regards,

Arvid

 

Arvidurs plese give us some information about who this 3D beginner is and at what level his/her 3D knowledge was at when this project began. Was the scene modeled for this person before hand, did they texture everything on their own and set up all the lighting as well as the camera? I find it hard to beleave that someone with no 3D knowledge at all could learn all the tools well enough in a week to produce a photoreal image. If this person was able to do this with no priar knowledge of 3D and no help then they are the exception not the rule and most likle are very adapt at understanding new concepts and putting them into practice.

Edited by Maxer
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Having taken the survey, and having now seen the results, I have to say that I believe your study to be very unbalanced and biased and therefore not very useful from a research point of view. (dont read on if you dont want to know the resuts).

 

Basically by having such a large number of photos set up against a single render means that you are knowingly tricking the viewer to assume that there are a greater number of renders being compared, most would assume there are at least a few in their and this would skew their answer. Especially by posting this question to forum who are aware of the high quality which can be acheived by rendering. By having so few renders to compare against you are not striking a very profound argument that the quality of the renders is high, as there is only one. If you put forward an equal number of both, I think you could get much more accurate results from your test. I am also in agreement as others have mentioned that the quality of the photographs are poor, exhibiting a lot of uncharacterisitc noise to make them seem more like a rendering.

 

Seems to me that the overall results have been biased to prove a point rather than putting forward an impartial question, not very useful research in my opinion.

 

Quoted for agreement. I kind of felt a bit abused after doing the questionnaire....

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