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There was a link awhile back (maybe on his personal blog), comparing the original stock location photo with his rendered background. What I remember are the following:
1.) The perspective and layout of photo and BG are the same
2.) The general color and texture of photo and BG are the same
3.) The anime-style coloring differentiates the BG
4.) The lighting and shadows don't seem to be filtered on, but rather reworked into the picture.
I have attempted to do a similar thing (create detailed backgrounds for animation given stock footage), and while I can get some of the realism in textures and shadows/highlights, the lighting still eludes me as Shinkai's works are never flat in color. He has some sort of 'secret recipe'
Where Shinkai uses BGs are external objects. A few times he uses them for background objects (such as the water tank? in Wind OP). But in my opinion, the best backgrounds are rendered as fully flat raster images (i.e. Photoshop). I know way more people who can pull of excellent BGs armed with just Photoshop than those armed with a full 3D suite. Even 3D-rendered BGs must have textures to look real, and guess where they pull off those textures?
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