Render me real? Investigating the effect of render style on the perception of animated virtual humans
Abstract
The realistic depiction of lifelike virtual humans has been the goal of many movie makers in the last decade. Recently, films such as Tron: Legacy and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button have produced highly realistic characters. In the real-time domain, there is also a need to deliver realistic virtual characters, with the increase in popularity of interactive drama video games (such as L.A. Noire™ or Heavy Rain™ ). There have been mixed reactions from audiences to lifelike characters used in movies and games, with some saying that the increased realism highlights subtle imperfections, which can be disturbing. Some developers opt for a stylized rendering (such as cartoon-shading) to avoid a negative reaction [Thompson 2004]. In this paper, we investigate some of the consequences of choosing realistic or stylized rendering in order to provide guidelines for developers for creating appealing virtual characters. We conducted a series of psychophysical experiments to determine whether render style affects how virtual humans are perceived. Motion capture with synchronized eye-tracked data was used throughout to animate custom-made virtual model replicas of the captured actors.
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Two studies demonstrated modulatory movement effects, but these effects were specific to plausible outlier characters (ill-looking face in McDonnell et al., 2012; zombie character in Piwek et al., 2014).
“Two studies demonstrated modulatory movement effects; however, these effects were specific to plausible outlier characters (ill-looking face in McDonnell et al., 2012; and zombie character in Piwek et al., 2014).”
From A review of empirical evidence on different uncanny valley hypotheses: support for perceptual mismatch as one road to the valley of eeriness (2015) · cites this paper as McDonnell et al., 2012
Two studies (McDonnell et al., 2012; Piwek et al., 2014) provided results that resembled the uncanny curve.
“Two other studies provided results that resembled the uncanny curve (McDonnell et al., 2012; Piwek et al., 2014); however, closer inspection suggested that these results could have been explained by outlier stimuli—that is, in terms of the hypothesis H1c.”
From A review of empirical evidence on different uncanny valley hypotheses: support for perceptual mismatch as one road to the valley of eeriness (2015) · cites this paper as McDonnell et al., 2012
The two studies on modulatory movement effects provided conflicting evidence: one reported a significant increase and the other a significant decrease in negative affinity for moving characters.
“Furthermore, these studies provided conflicting evidence: the former reported a significant increase and the latter a significant decrease in negative affinity for the moving characters.”
From A review of empirical evidence on different uncanny valley hypotheses: support for perceptual mismatch as one road to the valley of eeriness (2015) · cites this paper as McDonnell et al., 2012
Closer inspection suggested that the results resembling the uncanny curve in McDonnell et al. (2012) and Piwek et al. (2014) could have been explained by outlier stimuli (H1c).
“Two other studies provided results that resembled the uncanny curve (McDonnell et al., 2012; Piwek et al., 2014); however, closer inspection suggested that these results could have been explained by outlier stimuli—that is, in terms of the hypothesis H1c.”
From A review of empirical evidence on different uncanny valley hypotheses: support for perceptual mismatch as one road to the valley of eeriness (2015) · cites this paper as McDonnell et al., 2012
The evidence from McDonnell et al. (2012) for H1a was considered inconsistent because both unrealistic and realistic stimuli were found to be less appealing, friendly, and trustworthy than the remaining stimuli.
“However, we considered this evidence inconsistent because both unrealistic (“ToonBare” rendering) and realistic (“HumanBasic” rendering) stimuli were found to be less appealing, friendly, and trustworthy than the remaining stimuli.”
From A review of empirical evidence on different uncanny valley hypotheses: support for perceptual mismatch as one road to the valley of eeriness (2015) · cites this paper as McDonnell et al., 2012
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- Authors
- McDonnell, R., Breidt, M., & Bülthoff, H. H.
- Affiliations
- Trinity College Dublin (IE)
- Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics (DE)
- Korea University
- ORCID
- McDonnell, Rachel
- Venue
- ACM Transactions on Graphics
- Published
- 2012-07
- Volume
- 31
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 1-11
- ISSN
- 0730-0301 (ISSN-L)
- 1557-7368
- OpenAlex
- W2122852424
- Cited by
- 286
- References
- 22
- Citations by year
- 2026: 26 · 2025: 29 · 2024: 24 · 2023: 26 · 2022: 17 · 2021: 30 · 2020: 14 · 2019: 19 · 2018: 22 · 2017: 11 · 2016: 27 · 2015: 19 · 2014: 11 · 2013: 9 · 2012: 2
- FWCI
- 19.75
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- ACM Transactions on Graphics (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (R31-10008)
- National Research Foundation of Korea (R31-10008)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Social Robot Interaction and HRI
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design › Computer Graphics and Visualization Techniques
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Control and Systems Engineering › Human Motion and Animation
- Keywords
- realistic rendering, stylized rendering, virtual humans, virtual characters, character perception, motion capture, eye tracking, film characters, psychophysics
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