Towards understanding what makes 3D objects appear simple or complex

Abstract

Humans perceive some objects more complex than others and learning or describing a particular object is directly related to the judged complexity. Towards the goal of understanding why the geometry of some 3D objects appear more complex than others, we conducted a psychophysical study and identified contributing attributes. Our experiments conclude that surface variation, symmetry, part count, simpler part decomposability, intricate details and topology are six significant dimensions that influence 3D visual shape complexity. With that knowledge, we present a method of quantifying complexity and show that the informational aspect of Shannonpsilas theory agrees with the human notion of shape complexity.