Disney Research

Abstract

A pervasive artifact that occurs when visualizing 3D content is the so-called “cardboarding” effect, where objects appear flat due to depth compression, with relatively little research conducted to perceptually quantify its effects. Our aim is to shed light on the subjective preferences and practical perceptual limits of stereo vision with respect to cardboarding. We present three experiments that explore the consequences of displaying simple scenes with reduced depths using both subjective ratings and adjustments and objective sensitivity metrics. Our results suggest that compressing depth to 80% or above is likely to be acceptable, whereas sensitivity to the cardboarding artifact below 30% is very high. These values could be used in practice as guidelines for commonplace depth mapping operations in 3D production pipelines.

Copyright Notice

The documents contained in these directories are included by the contributing authors as a means to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work on a non-commercial basis. Copyright and all rights therein are maintained by the authors or by other copyright holders, notwithstanding that they have offered their works here electronically. It is understood that all persons copying this information will adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author’s copyright. These works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.