20 Pieces of Photorealistic Digital Art That Will Dazzle You

Designing realistic human forms has long been a prized goal of the world’s digital artists. Small details made us realize whether the person we were looking at was real or simply a 3D model. Now better design techniques, modeling software improvements and more powerful hardware are enabling 3D designers and artists to render models that are almost indistinguishable from real-life objects. Unless of course, a subtle change gives it away – like a swamp frog smoking a cigar.
These 20 amazing works of digital art – depicting fictional characters, environments, historical personalities and celebrities – demonstrate how artists can produce works that are in essence indistinguishable from reality.
So sit back, relax and feast your eyes on these beautiful works without wondering whether they’re real – they’re not. But could you tell the difference?

Phil Heath fan art by Gaurav Kumar

Gaurav sculpted this wonderful study of human anatomy in ZBrush and rendered it in KeyShot. The photorealism of this work is fantastic and it even transfers to 3D printing!

A cricket in the house is good luck by Courtney Hopkinson

Courtney brought the superstition ‘A cricket in the house is good luck’ to life by using a combination of V-Ray for Cinema 4D, ZBrush texturing, and architectural visualization from Evermotion.

Portrait of a wolf by Felix Benjamin Bader

Guesthouse by Benjamin Springer

Big Friendly Giant by Brett Sinclair

Old frog by Daniel Midholt

W. Churchill portrait by Eduardo Simon

Barbara Palvin by Galal Mohey

Portrait of Sean Frandsen by Ian Spriggs

Ian Spriggs says this work was inspired by Vermeer’s ‘Girl with the Pearl Earring’. Modeled in Maya, sculpted/textured by using Mudbox, rendered in V-Ray with some touch ups done in Photoshop.