This Is Not a Photo But a Highly Realistic 3D Work Made in Blender

Have a look at this image: it appears as a photo, but in fact it is an impressively realistic 3D render created by an artist known on Reddit as Unable_Coat_8100. The artist aimed to achieve photorealism in Blender and also demonstrated the WIP image, which proves this is indeed a 3D work.

Unable_Coat_8100 masterfully recreated the table surface with reflection and scratches, the realistically scattered composition, and imitated camera imperfections — from the believable framing to the noise effect. As the creator explained, the camera quality was intentionally made to simulate an older device, like the iPhone 7. The Redditor also revealed that approach proved convincing enough to fool at least two people, though some still noticed the subtle uncanniness of CGI.

In the comments to the Reddit post, users have been sharing advice on how to improve the scene even further. xXHomerSXx advised a tutorial on adding pixels to the depiction of a monitor, and tekastudio shared a video with tips on visualizing glossy surfaces.

Check out more of the ultra-realistic Blender scenes that we featured before, such as this riding animation made by a Reddit user known as Yo, or rawrcewas, a river landscape by a Redditor HastyBen, a photorealistic render from tzbtzb, and a setup that resembles footage from a security cam by TAK-WAN:

The windowsill setup by Rayan Zomorodi shown in the video below looked so realistic that it was removed from the Blender subreddit. If you want to take a behind-the-scenes look at how it was made, check out our interview with the artist.