Towards intelligent authoring tools for machinima creation

Abstract

As user-created content increasingly becomes an ever more prominent element of modern game design, tools have been developed to aide in the creative process for several forms of digital media, including machinima. Because creating content that will be valued by the community is a challenging process, tools are needed that will assist novices in both technical realization and optimization of content. We are exploring tools for machinima authoring that use a 3-pronged approach: authoring via metaphor, performance, and automation. Future work involves using AI to provide feedback to machinima authors, suggesting sensible attributes for scenes based on prior input by acting as a surrogate audience.

The Prose Storyboard Language: A Tool for Annotating and Directing Movies

“…Other previous work in virtual cinematography [29,14,10,21,16,18] has been limited to simple shots with either a static camera or a single uniform camera movement. Our prose storyboard language is complementary to such previous work and can be used to define higher-level cinematic strategies, including arbitrarily complex combinations of camera and actor movements, for most existing virtual cinematography systems.…”