Photorealism is a genre of art that encompasses painting, drawing and other graphic media, in which an artist studies a photograph and then attempts to reproduce the image as realistically as possible in another medium. Although the term can be used broadly to describe artworks in many different media, it is also used to refer to a specific art movement of American painters that began in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Animation is a filmmaking technique whereby still images are manipulated to create moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Animation has been recognized as an artistic medium, specifically within the entertainment industry. Many animations are either traditional animations or computer animations made with computer-generated imagery (CGI). Stop motion animation, in particular claymation, is also prominent alongside these other forms, albeit to a lesser degree.
Animation is contrasted with live action, although the two do not exist in isolation. Many filmmakers have produced films that are a hybrid of the two. As CGI increasingly approximates photographic imagery, filmmakers can relatively easily composite 3D animated visual effects (VFX) into their film, rather than using practical effects.
Live action is a form of cinematography or videography that uses photography instead of animation. Some works combine live action with animation to create a live-action animated feature film. Live action is used to define film, video games or similar visual media. Photorealistic animation, particularly modern computer animation, is sometimes erroneously described as "live action", as in the case of some media reports about Disney's remake of the traditionally animated The Lion King from 1994. According to the Cambridge English Dictionary, live action involves "real people or animals, not models, or images that are drawn, or produced by computer".
The RenderMan Interface Specification, or RISpec in short, is an open API developed by Pixar Animation Studios to describe three-dimensional scenes and turn them into digital photorealistic images. It includes the RenderMan Shading Language.
As Pixar's technical specification for a standard communications protocol (or interface) between modeling programs and rendering programs capable of producing photorealistic-quality images, RISpec is a similar concept to PostScript but for describing 3D scenes rather than 2D page layouts. Thus, modelling programs which understand the RenderMan Interface protocol can send data to rendering software which implements the RenderMan Interface, without caring what rendering algorithms are utilized by the latter.
John Baeder (born December 24, 1938) is an American painter closely associated with the photorealist movement. He is best known for his detailed paintings of American roadside diners and eateries.