Visual Salience Estimation of 3D Mesh Models

The visual salience is an important property of 3D mesh model. There are many metric, including methods based on geometry and ones based on images. It is difficult for the former to infer the direct relationship between geometry and visual stimuli, and the latter is affected by the viewpoint and light source. The visual salience of 3D mesh geometry elements, such as the vertex, edge and patch, is a basic issue which this paper concerns. This paper regards the brightness difference and the contour line as direct factors to stimulate eyes, and deduces the relation between these direct stimuli and the mesh model. The brightness contrast of 3D mesh geometry elements is determined by the model, viewpoint, and light. We treat the light source and viewpoint as variables and compute the maximum brightness contrast of geometry elements for any view point and light source. The maximum brightness contrast is determined only by the model, not the viewpoint and light. So it can be used for measuring the visual salience of the geometry element. The contour line is another important factor to vision. The probability of a geometry element appearing on contour lines is measured and is also treated as a metric of visual salience. Many results of experiments show that our metric accords with human eyes. Key-Words: Salient feature, Visual perception, 3D mesh model, contour line.