Realism

I think that realism is based on three mains factors: materials, lights, and post-processing.

Materials

I think, if you want something as realistic as possible, you should use real data such as scanned surfaces or meshes and so on.

I will digress here just a bit. Don’t get me wrong, but I feel that if you have enough time and talent you can produce amazing realistic materials procedurally. However, honestly, thinking about time and cost I don’t consider it worth it.

Photogrammetry is a game changer when you want to produce photorealistic 3D content. Look at Vanishing of Ethan Carter, Battlefront, Adam or the Book of the Dead. If you want to reproduce real life, use it.

I personally see the future of texturing in a mix of procedural or AI-driven shapes and real scanned data. With Quixel Mixer and Alchemist you can modify real scans as much as you want.

For this particular scene, I used only Megascans assets and spent some time to achieve natural shapes and snow deposits.

Lighting

As a photographer, I learned how important lighting is in a hard way. You can completely ruin your work with bad lighting. And you should keep your lighting as simple and natural as possible, just like in real life.

In this scene, most of the work was done with the help of HDR (you need a good sky) and the skylight! Then, my directional does the rest.