Clutter and Realism: An investigation on the effect of clutter on the perceived realism of 3d computer generated renderings

Clutter and Realism: An investigation on the effect of clutter on the perceived realism of 3d computer generated renderings

Mishev, D.S.

Verlinden, J.C. (mentor)
Wijntjes, M.W.A. (mentor)
Salters, B. (mentor)

Industrial Design Engineering

DE (Design Engineering)

Integrated Product Design

2012-04-24

Current "Philips" practices include development of physical environments in which luminaires can be tested with the user. However "Philips" is also interested in virtual prototyping and thus is turning towards identifying a number of features in 3d environments which influence the human perception of realism. This study utilizes traditional psychophysical analysis to investigate the effect of object induced clutter and its connection to the perception of visual realism in 3d renderings. This project goes beyond the identification of pre-perceived common trends and reveals the actual perceptual value of clutter according to the perceived realism that it brings to virtual scenes. This project strives to define and manage clutter and its affect on the sensation of visual realism in renderings. The project begins with the hypothesis that: “The amount of clutter of objects strongly affects the perception of realism in 3d renderings.” During the development of this project this assumption is thoroughly tested and the needed conclusions are drawn according to the findings that are made. The design of the series of tests in the perceptual experiments is governed by the need to create the large sets of images scaling the clutter features as accurately as intended. These sets are comprised of photographs and renderings or only renderings. The software and hardware used to create these images are chosen to most accurately serve the goals of this experiment and create a project environment in which the participants can better focus on the features of the experiments. The project itself is comprised of 3 perceptual experiments. For the first experiment of this project renderings and Tone Mapped HDR photographs are compared and the effect that the number of objects in them has on their visual realism is shown. For the following stages renderings are compared between each other and unlike the first experiment where the focus is on the number of objects these contain items varying in angle and placement. Thus this project includes a total of 4 participant test stages which test the effect of the number of object, the placement and the angle shift which we argue are the 3 features definitive to object clutter. This study concludes that on the basis of the experiments made clutter did not affect realism greatly. Despite the fact that there is a proven small and consistent rise in realism with the rise of the clutter, that rise is not affected by either the number of objects or their placement in the scene but only by the variable of angle shift. Angle shift under the conditions in which this project took place proved to have a greater effect on the visual perception of realism than the other features of clutter. This was consistent over the samples of the last stage, which we believe is the most detail revealing for the entire project. However, the small difference leads us to believe that the perceptual value the angle shift brings to the visual realism of scenes could be even smaller in a none test environment. Thus an overall conclusion that clutter does not affect the perception of realism greatly is drawn. For professional luminaire designers we believe the current project can serve as a demonstration to what the actual perceptual value of clutter is, while still minding the fact that the resources spent in projects are in most instances case specific. For virtual prototyping of luminaires the outcome of this project points towards a defened simplification of the scenes used. As the number of object in the scene does not greatly contribute to the perceptual value of the renderings we believe that 3d scenes can be stripped off objects inside them and thus made quicker, with less skill required and eventually rendered faster. However we stay far from trying to stipulate that adding any objects to 3d scenes is pointless. This is as besides the actual perceptual value some objects in 3d environments obviously also carry other values such as for instance the artistic. These are yet to be quantified. Nevertheless it is arguable if these are of importance to luminaire prototyping. Still, if we believe that this is the case, it is also questionable what objects should be chosen to be most informative for the characteristics of the luminaires and if not chosen by this criteria then in what way are they contributive to the rendered environments and virtual luminaire prototyping.

clutter
virtual realism
computer graphics
virtual prototyping
light design
3d objects

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:0cbfdf43-fb85-4683-8046-719ea38e1197

Campus only

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2012 Mishev, D.S.