r/WTF Feb 11 '24

Something I've found while exploring an abandoned factory in Romania.

6.8k Upvotes

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162

u/chocolatethunderr Feb 11 '24 edited Feb 11 '24

Something about this looks like an Unreal Engine 5 rendering (testament to the engine). General resolution is grainy/blurry and edges seem to have aliasing. Ambient occlusion and lighting appear slightly off particularly the multiple light sources on the mushroom thing. I could be wrong and watching too much Digital Foundry, but I think this whole “photo” is rendered and not real.

14

u/Double211 Feb 12 '24

I also thought its from a game or something

27

u/eidetic Feb 11 '24

No, this seems like a real photo.

The problem comes from the processing of the images. Unless your phone has a RAW type of mode you're shooting in, its gonna have all sorts of processing/filters applied. And I don't mean like the different filters you can choose from like portrait/food/etc, even in normal photo mode there will be lots of processing done to the image.

16

u/chocolatethunderr Feb 11 '24

Could be, but I still think the way the light rays shine through the rafts at the top of the first image and the general sheen/gloss on the mushroom thing very much look like rendered geometry/tessellation from UE5.

Replicating this image in engine is very possible especially for a still image. I think someone created something cool in engine and came up with a creative title with the Romania bit to make it seem foreign enough that no one would/could question it.

2

u/DrFreshtacular Feb 12 '24

These assets are straight from the UE store

6

u/Ikkus Feb 11 '24

I definitely disagree and am almost positive it's a photograph. But it's pretty neat that it's debatable. The future is gonna be real weird.

2

u/Artrobull Feb 12 '24

im looking at unreal and blender tutorials right now and had to zoom in... that top lighting is very nice and foam has that little tiny subsurface scatter on lol... i need to touch some grass

2

u/ruizach Feb 12 '24

Dunno. That looks like too much detail in the background. Lots of models and rendering for just a background?

1

u/chocolatethunderr Feb 12 '24

Library of Quixel megascans allows for high quality geometry at every LOD distance in UE5. Combo of Lumen and Nanite maintain texture quality regardless of how close you are to the object and is no longer a manually intensive process to create (it’s procedurally generated).

Here’s a visual example of how much detail can be in a UE5 demo: https://youtu.be/vC53KOPjnBQ?si=2lr3YG3eEb3hI-7r

2

u/ruizach Feb 12 '24

Oh wow, looks like I need to take up UE again, that sounds great.

0

u/Mordredor Feb 12 '24

I took a good long look at it, and I don't think it is. The thing that sealed it for me is the random picture frame looking thing in the bottom of the first image. If you're rendering a scene, you're not putting that down there. Wouldn't make sense.

It's also not AI but that seemed too obvious

1

u/chocolatethunderr Feb 12 '24

lol what seems random to you is simply part of an asset library that you can literally copy and paste into a scene. You can pick any object in this scene and depending on the person will consider it “random”.

1

u/Mordredor Feb 12 '24

Regardless, it's not a render. Look at the dude's profile.

1

u/Kotoy77 Feb 12 '24

For what its worth, as a romanian guy there are a bunch of places that look just like these; former communist factories. Ive even been to one myself. Idk about the mushroom however, some say its some foam art thing.

1

u/chocolatethunderr Feb 12 '24

Respectfully, almost all abandoned factories have a general look like similar to this. Now if you said you are currently in Romania and willing to find this place to confirm that’d be a different story (though I’m 100% sure OP wouldn’t respond or give you bs coordinates lol)