Blender Artist Uses Camera Tricks to Create a Liminal Dreamcore Scene
A Blender artist recreated a liminal, dreamcore scene by intentionally breaking traditional rendering rules and mimicking the look of early digital cameras.
A recent post on the Blender subreddit drew people's attention for how convincingly it captured a dreamcore aesthetic using relatively simple techniques. The image, shared by 15-year-old (yeah, you heard me right) Blender Artist Typhol12, depicts a quiet suburban scene viewed from inside an inflatable pool, with floating bubbles in the foreground and identical houses lining the background. At first glance, some can assume it is a real photograph or a video still rather than a 3D render.
The effect was intentional. The scene was rendered in Blender and deliberately left slightly out of focus. In post-processing, sharpening and compression were applied to introduce artifacts resembling those of low-quality digital cameras from the early 2000s. This combination of blur followed by aggressive sharpening creates a subtle visual tension: the image looks real, but not quite right.
Rather than aiming for technical cleanliness, the artist relied on imperfections. Bloom, glare, and lens flares were used to mimic consumer camera behavior, while heavy JPEG-style compression helped sell the 'found footage' feeling. Commenters pointed out that these artifacts were key to making the image feel authentic, noting that many renders fail to look authentic because they look too clean or plastic.
The creator emphasized that studying real camera behavior was more important than studying filters. Understanding exposure, focus falloff, and how older cameras handle highlights allowed the render to sit in an uncanny space between realism and abstraction. As the artist explained in the comments, the goal was not realism alone, but a feeling that the image 'looks real but doesn't feel real.'
A second image shared alongside the final render shows the scene partway through development, revealing the straightforward geometry behind the effect. Simple suburban houses, flat terrain, and basic lighting form the foundation. The emotional impact comes not from complexity, but from framing, scale, and post-processing choices.
You can find the original post here. Looking for something similar in a game? Check out Backrooms: The Project, a horror game from Night Drive Interactive inspired by the eerie aesthetics of liminal spaces.
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