Context-aware Camera Planning for Interactive Storytelling

Abstract

In the application of 3D interactive narratives, virtual camera is a crucial element for appropriate presentation of scenarios happening dynamically. In this work, we have designed a virtual cinematographic system to generate appropriate camera plans automatically in a 3D virtual environment for interactive storytelling. In such a system, not only the story line but also the relative positions between the actors may be changed at run time due to interaction with the user. Therefore, a camera plan that can reflect the changes in dynamic scenarios needs to be generated automatically at run time. We have also designed a scripting language to describe the directive details of the story and implemented a camera planning system to generate camera configurations according to the scenario descriptions. We will use an example to illustrate the idea of interactive narratives in 3D environment and how appropriate camera motions can be generated according to the result of interaction.