A Cue-Based Framework for Evaluating Perceived Photorealism in Architectural Rendering

Perceived photorealism in architectural rendering depends not only on physical accuracy but also on the visual cues observers use to infer spatial layout, lighting coherence, and material plausibility. Prior studies have examined individual cues such as contact shadows, global illumination, and view-dependent reflections; however, these findings have rarely been integrated into a practical framework for production-oriented architectural visualization workflows. To address this gap, this study proposes the Perceptual Realism Prioritization (PRP) framework, which organizes six cue categories into a perceptually grounded hierarchy and operationalizes them through a stage-wise evaluation pipeline. The main outcome of the study is a structured workflow that links cue categories to typical failure signatures, inspection order, and corrective actions. A qualitative proof-of-concept demonstration in a contemporary path-tracing environment suggests that prioritizing early-stage cues—particularly spatial grounding and illumination coherence—produces more noticeable perceived improvements than uniformly increasing rendering complexity or focusing first on late-stage surface refinements. Based on this synthesis, the study suggests that architectural rendering workflows can be improved by allocating effort according to perceptual cue importance rather than pursuing fidelity maximization uniformly across all image features. The proposed framework is intended as practical workflow guidance and a basis for future empirical validation.