Non-Photorealistic Rendering in Context: An Observational Study

Description:

Pen-and-ink line drawing techniques are frequently used to depict form, tone, and texture in artistic, technical, and scientific illustration. In non-photorealistic rendering (NPR), considerable progress has been made towards reproducing traditional pen-and-ink techniques for rendering 3D objects. However, formal evaluation and validation of these NPR images remain an important open research problem. In this paper we present an observational study with three groups of users to examine their understanding and assessment of hand-drawn pen-and-ink illustrations of objects in comparison with NPR renditions of the same 3D objects. The results show that people perceive differences between those two types of illustration but that those that look computer-generated are still highly valued as scientific illustrations.

Paper download:  (35.6 MB),  (smaller, 3.9 MB), and  (smallest, 2.6 MB)

Additional resources:

• slide deck (PDF, 32MB) of the NPAR 2006 talk on the results of the study
• slide deck (PDF, 28MB) of the CAe 2006 Dagstuhl meeting talk on »Aesthetics of Hand-Drawn and Computer-Generated Illustrations«
• set of images used in the study (PDF, 33.4MB); the images have the exact size as used in the study (assuming that they are printed on Letter paper) and the page numbers correspond to the image numbers used in the paper; please note that the images are copyrighted and cannot be reproduced in print without the permission of the copyright holders/authors

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This work was done at the Innovis group at the Interactions Lab of the University of Calgary, Canada.