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Is photography going cameraless? Shutterstock buys CG market Turbosquid for $75,000,000

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It’s been said for years that CG is coming to take away jobs from photographers and in some respects, that may be true. We know that companies like Ikea use almost exclusively CG imagery in their catalogues now instead of actual photographs of the products. But this is nothing new. Back in 2014, 75% of their “photography” was CG.

With many photographers around the world unable to work in 2020, though, CG imagery has seen a fairly solid uptick, which would probably go a large way to explaining why stock photography company, Shutterstock has purchased Turbosquid, the world’s largest 3D model marketplace, for a whopping $75,000,000.

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The person in IKEA’s latest ad is a hyper-realistic CGI model

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We are already witnessing the change in the industry with CGI models taking over ads and campaigns. The latest ad from IKEA Japan is one of the examples, and it’s really interesting to watch. Instead of a human, IKEA used a computer-generated model to be a star of its ad, and I believe most of us couldn’t guess that it wasn’t a real person.

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New “virtual” model agency turns to Uncanny Valley as COVID forces model shortage

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The COVID-19 crisis has hit the fashion modeling industry hard. This is why fashion photographer Shavonne Wong had an idea that could keep the industry alive. Just like these crazy times that we’re living in, the idea is kinda crazy too: Shavonne started a modeling agency that hires virtual models for virtual shoots.

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Last Of Us 2 shows us the right way to pack a cable post shooting (or when looking for zombies)

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Cables seem to be popping up more and more in our lives lately, whether it’s power cables, USB cables or whatever. And as many of us have shifted our attention towards video, there are even more, with HDMI and microphone cables. But cables require care, especially the expensive ones. There are ways to wrap them up properly and definitely ways you don’t want to wrap them.

But what does this have to do with video games? Well, The Last of Us Part 2, it seems, has taken this mindset to heart, to provide more realism. It shows pretty much perfect techniques for wrapping cables and ropes that never tangle and come loose when thrown.

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Computer generated fashion models will take over the industry – Is it happening already?

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This is a topic that I’ve seen come up every few months in some form or another. Removing photographers from the process of image creation. And every time CG makes some incremental improvement, getting closer to the appearance of reality, I hear doom and gloom from photographers that their future is in jeopardy and “they won’t even need photographers anymore in a couple of years”.

And while that future might already be here for some product photography, it’s not quite happened for human subjects. Yet. But we may not be far off, if Imma’s Instagram account is anything to go by. Because Imma is actually not human. She’s a CG “virtual model”, who has mostly managed to claw her way out of Uncanny Valley.

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These images may look like CG renders, but they’re actually photographs

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In a world where many CG artists are aiming for photorealism, one very skilled photographer seems to be going the opposite way. These images look like something straight out of 3DS Max or Blender. They’re not, though. They’re actually very carefully designed photographs, created by Norwegian design duo Lars Marcus Vedeler and Theo Zamudio-Tveterås at their studio, Skrekkøgle.

Looking at the final work is pretty surreal, and if nobody ever told you that they weren’t CG renders, you’d never be able to tell. In a way, it kind of makes you redefine “photorealism”. I mean, these are photos, so if your renders look like this, they’re photorealistic now, right?

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This car transforms into any vehicle you want in post production

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The company that brought us such amazing sequences as Jean Claude-Van Damme’s “Epic Split” and Super Bowl 2014’s Jaguar – Rendevous commercial seem like the perfect people to need a vehicle like this. As one didn’t already exist, they built their own.

London based, The Mill recently announced the Blackbird, a vehicle that can transform in length and width to match any car commercially available (and probably most of those that aren’t). Computer controlled systems also allow it to simulate the driving characteristics of those cars, for a very realistic performance in front of the cameras.

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