The Effect of Realistic Appearance of Virtual Characters in Immersive Environments - Does the Character’s Personality Play a Role?
The Effect of Realistic Appearance of Virtual Characters in Immersive Environments - Does the Character’s Personality Play a Role?
Katja Zibrek, Elena Kokkinara, Rachel McDonnell
Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics
2018 IEEE
Abstract
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Motivation
What issues or problems did they try to solve?
They tried to solve whether different types of rendering styles would directly influence appeal or a character's personality was the most important factor for appeal.
What was lacking in existing research?
The study of Zibrek showed there was a possible link between appearance and personality but only investigated two styles and was conducted on screen.
Method
What system did they create? Why did they think that the system design was well justified?
They used five different rendering styles. Realistic >> highest level of realism Toon CG >> less realistic cartoon character Toon Shaded >> the least realistic character Creepy >> designed to induce a sense of discomfort by using grossly enlarged eyes Zombie >> additionally changing the diffuse map for the skin and tye eyes were an unnatural color
they instructed the actor to react to different emotional situations based on the Big Five traits
as the theory was perceived by many to be the standard description of human personality.
What kind of surveys did they do? How did they justify their study design?
What experiments did they conduct? How did they justify their experimental design?
Waiting Room An instruction box appeared in front of the participant’s view and it guided the participant to do the first task to be familiar with a realistic virtual character. After the task, the participant could enter the training room.
Training Room The participant was asked to remember word tags in the room
Experiment Room In the experiment room, the participant was instructed by the character which was randomly assigned to rendering style and personality. The participant remembered the words and answered them as did in the training room.
Insight
What results did they obtain? Under what conditions did it work, and under what conditions did it not work?
They used three measures:subjective responses, an implicit measure and a behavioral measure
Rendering style does not affect overall perceptions, even the perceived realism. Unexpectedly zombie appearance was the best proximity result.
As for personality, it contributed to the variety of responses on empathy, affinity and even realism, but did not affect the perceiver's behavior.
What are the new findings? What are the findings that could be used in other applications or systems?
Rendering styles did not vary significantly in appeal. Rendering Style only changes its appeal in the combination of suitable personality.
A cartoon looking character is attributed to its personality by the situation.
Contribution Summary
Zibrek tried to investigate the relationship between render styles and character’s personality and found affinity towards the virtual characters is a complex interaction between the character’s personality and appearance.
