Photorealistic Renders: How to Convince People Something Digital Is Real

Agreed. At first, it reads like something interesting is coming, like "where are we in the uncanny valley and here's the latest on getting out the other side." But then it turns into a very basic description (not even a tutorial) of basic 3D modeling and rendering. Then comes the ad.

One of the more useful developments in photorealistic rendering in recent years is the "Principled BSDF" shader.[1] This brings together most of the shader features you need for photorealism into one convenient package. Disney/Pixar came up with this to get their workflow organized, and now it's a semi-standard. Blender and Unreal Engine now support it.

If you want to read up on photorealistic rendering techniques, read stuff from the last 3 years. It's getting easier.

[1] https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/cycles/node...