For over two decades, I have perfected the art of turning pixels into realistic landscapes capable of fooling the eye. In this session, I'll share a journey to take digital environments to the next level of realism. From the futuristic cities of Andor and The Mandalorian, to the castles of Harry Potter, to the jungles of Jungle Book or the deserts of Martian.... Each production presents unique challenges, tricks and lessons learned. We will explore multiple resources that will help us achieve that degree of realism so difficult to achieve, where renderings become indistinguishable from reality.

What elements make an environment realistic and memorable, capable of generating sensations in the viewer? We can all perceive when we like an image and find it credible, but identifying why it is not is much more complex. Through a conscious analysis, dismantling and evaluating different visual components, we will learn to find solutions and focus our efforts effectively, instead of relying solely on intuition.

To do this, we will review various film and television productions made over the years at studios such as Framestore, MPC, El Ranchito, DNEG and ILM. With their successes and failures, each project leaves us with a lesson learned and a new tool for our artist's palette.