Immersive previz: VR authoring for film previsualisation

Abstract

Creatives in animated and real movie productions have been exploring new modalities to visually design filmic sequences before realizing them in studios, through techniques like hand-drawn storyboards, physical mockups or more recently virtual 3D environments. A central issue in using virtual 3D environments is the complexity of content creation tools for non technical film creatives. To overcome this issue, we present One Man Movie, a VR authoring system which enables the crafting of filmic sequences with no prior knowledge in 3D animation. The system is designed to reflect the traditional creative process in film pre-production through stages like (i) scene layout (ii) animation of characters, (iii) placement and control of cameras and (iv) montage of the filmic sequence, while enabling a fully novel and seamless back-and-forth between all stages of the process thanks to real-time engines. This research tool has been designed and evaluated with students and experts from film schools, and should therefore raise a significant interest among Siggraph participants.