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http://www.androidblues.com/visualperception.html
I'll focus on the 'Non-Human'. It's obvious why we would like the 'Human', and easy to use this - even without knowing it - in art. In fact we do all the time.
Not so obvious is why we sometimes feel pleasure just staring at a dried tree stump or a Japanese rock garden.
If we can find out exactly what about the stump and the rocks is causing this, we should be able to apply it to any image.
And no; answers like "they are natural", "they have aesthetically pleasing textures", or "their positive and negative spaces are balanced" etc, really aren't answers at
all.
Physiology
A saccade is a special kind of eye movement, usually automatic, that rotates the eyeball a very short distance in a very short time. Here is a representation of the
saccades an eye may do looking at this image; note the 'jerky' quality of the path.
In 1950s researchers showed that if saccades are eliminated - an image is 'frozen' with respect to the retina - one stops
seeing the image in 1-3 seconds - basically goes blind. The same thing happens when the visible field is too uniform (all one color). This is a "blank field".
But the opposite is just as bad: an "aggressive field". An example: a wall with thousands of regular spots on it - the distance between spots about 15 mm. From a
distance of 4 meters the space between the spots is 0.23, roughly the distance of an average saccade. Looking at it soon gets extremely uncomfortable. 1960's
Op-Art was based on this. If taken too far this can cause nausea, or even seizures in some people. See if you enjoy looking at this, for any length of time:
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And just to clarify, I'm not talking about any old polkadot pattern, as in this dress. The image of this dress is, in contrast to the above
pattern, very varied and not too many separate high contrast foci.
So too little contrast is bad, and too much is bad. But medium contrast isn't the answer either; the above pattern would be almost as bad if it was low contrast, or
fewer dots (see 'Composition' below). So what's the attribute we're looking for?
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.
You could also think of them as equivalent to the hierarchical levels of a Subdivision Surface in a 3d program.
Each higher LoV represents a (higher resolution) change or modulation to the preceding lower level. (Of course the number of possible kinds of modulation is
practically infinite.)
Here's Christian Bale from Equilibrium - on the left heavy smudging to smooth the details - removing the higher frequencies. On the right minimal retouching (just to
remove a heavy grain). The curves below represent what part of this face might look like in cross-section.
Note that the image, and the curve, on the right is by far the more interesting, in the primal basic sense I use the word here - the eyes are instinctively more attracted
to it.
Another attribute that can raise interest is Breaks - discontinuities, a change so abrupt it can't be defined as a modulation. Breaks have Borders.
I think images can be classified according to how many LoVs and Breaks they have (and the size of those Breaks, and the shape of the Border between them). I
also think the most important aspect of these is the Lovs.
Here's an example:
L0, no Break: an image consisting of all pixels the same color. Extremely boring to look at.
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L1: a very low frequency modulation, across the whole image. Strangely, with such a small change, it's now a lot more pleasant to look at.
L2 - a variation on the variation, but NOT covering all of the previous level - it could, but that leads to less multi-leveled variation, and so to a less interesting image.
L3 (in fact my sloppy brushstrokes add a bit of L4 as well): again, not covering all of the previous level. Its looking much better.
A Break containing an L1 texture. Not improving it that much, the L1 needs to be modulated into a higher level.
This landscape, from which the above image was cropped, I estimate is mostly L3 or 4 at this resolution, and the Borders between the many Breaks very varied in
shape. High L, many Breaks, varying Borders = a more interesting image.
On the right I've simplified it as much as I could without loosing it's identity, making it mostly L1 and 2. Look at them both for a minute or so. Which one of these
could hold your attention longer, and why?
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http://www.androidblues.com/visualperception.html
Realism
Good cg is realistic, bad cg isn't.
This doesn't mean a cg image necessarily and always has to be realistic, like a photograph - but in practice, it turns out that's usually the direction it should be taken. Even cartoony
images must follow the laws of perspective and light, and have a logic to the design and anatomy, even if it's only internal.
(As you may have guessed, I'm not partial to abstract art, especially in cg.)
As discussed above, every successful image has some or all of these attributes:
1. Detail (complexity)
2. Variation of this detail,
3. Breaks between different areas
But how to apply it? The simplest way is to look at reality. Reality has an infinity of this. As a rule, cg is the direct opposite. This is why I hold reality up as the standard.
Below is an image deliberately created to be unreal and ugly. You may often see very similar images from beginners. Note how confusing, flat and uninteresting it is, how alien to our
depth perception. Hardly any edge is defined; there's lots of detail and many Breaks - but no LoVs. This leads to a huge compositional problem, mainly due to poor distribution of the
contrasts, the foci of attention, as mentioned in the Composition section.
How do we fix this horror? The easiest way is to simply make it more realistic.
1. Shading
Add shading to the objects in the scene, this raises the LoV, and improves depth-cueing.
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Best is to use real photo textures as a starting point, there are plenty of them on this site
5. Reflections, GI etc
Still ugly colors, but that's easily fixed, and otherwise it's much improved. Next we should improve the composition, by moving the foci around, by playing with the light, placement,
camera angle, adding or removing objects etc. The strongest focus is off-center like it should be (upper edge of the biggest box), but almost too close to the edge. The second focus,
the brightest part of the wall, is definitely too close to the edge, leading the eye right out. There's another focus near the lower right hand corner doing the same thing there. I'd suggest
moving the blue disc to the right, and darkening the upper part of the wall. Other than that, the composition is okay.
Composition
Here's a perfectly symmetrical image, with only two foci, of exactly similar weight,
close together.
As an image it fails to hold our attention for very long, mostly because it soon
becomes tiresome to look at.
On the right, see a rough indication (in red) of how the eyes will probably move
across the image.
They become 'caught' in the center, hardly venturing outside - there just isn't
anything to lead them there, and to 'stick to' once there. And if the eyes do leave the
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center, they stay glued to the edges and corners of the image. This is
uncomfortable.
(I'm guessing because here our visual system can't do what it's supposed to do very
efficiently - gather information.)
A similarly bad image would result from using only one focus, even if not centered.
.
But how about moving the 2 foci further apart, to lead the eye around more real
estate?
Even worse - this configuration will quickly tire the eyes. (Try it; enlarge it and look
at it intently for a minute.)
Six similar foci are almost as bad, as you can see on the right. In fact the more the
worse, seems to be the rule - see the 'aggressive field' above.
So let's try something else. Maybe 2 slanted? A little bit better - now the eye goes
in a triangle between the foci and some of the corners.
But even better is lowering the amplitude of one focus, giving it less 'weight' to the
eye.
Let's add more foci...
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