Darshak - An Intelligent Cinematic Camera Planning System

Abstract

A virtual camera is a powerful communicative tool in virtual environments. It is a window through which a viewer perceives the virtual world. For virtual environments with an underlying narrative component, there is a need for automated camera planning systems that account for the situational parameters of the interaction and not just the graphical arrangement of the virtual world. I propose a camera planning system called Darshak that takes as input a story in the form of sequence of events and generates a sequence of camera actions based on cinematic idioms. The camera actions, when executed in the virtual environment update a list of geometric constraints on the camera. A constraint solver then places the camera based on these constraints.