• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.106-115
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• 2011

In this paper, we evaluate the effectiveness of previous shading algorithms in depicting shape of 3d objects. We perform a study in which people are shown an image of one of ten 3D objects shaded with one of eight styles and asked to orient a gauge to coincide with the surface normal at many positions on the object's surface. The normal estimates are compared with each other and with ground truth data provided by a registered 3D surface model to analyze accuracy and precision. Our experiments suggest that people interpret certain shape differently depending on shading of 3d object. This paper offers substantial evidence that current computer graphics shading algorithms can effectively depict shape of 3d objects where the algorithms have the properties of lots of tone steps and uniformly distributed tone steps. This type of analysis can guide the future development of new CG shading algorithms in computer graphics for the purpose of shape perception.