If you’re looking for 3D realism done well, look no further. J. Payne (aka, JPayne2017) is a master of his craft.
The key challenge for most 3DX artists is bridging the uncanny valley. It’s that weird feeling you get when you look at a person that has all the visual cues of being human, but somehow looks just a bit… unalive. Wax dolls at Madame Tussauds suffer from this, and so do 3D creations every now and again. So most artists choose to sit firmly on the safe side of the divide. In other words, they embrace the artificial nature of their characters and avoid attempts to make them ultra-realistic. Their skin fidelity may be high, their polygon count may soar, and their animations could be perfectly lifelike. But their features will still be sufficiently cartoony or exaggerated. It reassures the audience that this is not 3D art pretending to be something it’s not.
Very rarely do we see artists try to risk a crossing of the uncanny valley and make it, but JPayne2017 seems to be pulling it off. For that he deserves a round of applause from all of us!