>>1009944
> there are people who are doing photorealistic assets by hand.
Ofc there are, where do you think all that CGI you saw in films and games from eras before photogrammetry was even a thing came from?
There are people who can draw images that you'd easily mistake for actual photographs, pic related; Milla Jovovich by Tuna Ferit - charcoal on A4 paper.

>manually sculpting photorealistic bark of a tree for example.

Things like that comes up for when you need some dramatically shaped tree that doesn't exist or when you need bark to form specific shapes, like the face of the Ents in Lord of the Rings etc. It's not that the artists that does things like that are some bark sculpting savants it's that they know fine arts and find good references and meticulously set out to replicate custom shaped surfaces that mimics it.

Making art like that is very time consuming and tying up talent you have a limited pool of so if a surface can be made in some procedural way you go for it and employ
the artistry in the spots it's needed to tie it all together.