Virtual Director provides a user-friendly, virtual-reality method to control camera motion for instant playback or animation recording. The Virtual Director shown in VROOM is a camera motion-control application using the CAVE to control and play back users' input in real time. Stored camera- motion data can be used to control various computer-generated imagery cameras (e.g., Wavefront, AVS, Renderman, etc.). This demonstration also includes an astronomical simulation of colliding galaxies that has been fully rendered in batch mode with this kind of camera motion control in mind. The galactic data were simulated using a supercomputer and visualized with Wavefront.
Historically, controlling camera motion has been one of the most clumsy aspects of computer animation. When camera motion is recorded and played back using virtual reality, the control mechanism is much more user- friendly and natural for novice users than attempting camera control with traditional methods. Virtual reality facilitates the real-time interface for camera motion viewing, recording, and playback. This application is robust and can be applied to various 3D imaging settings as well as scientific datasets.
The virtual camera and its path is shown in the 3D space of the colliding galaxies. Vectors on the path represent the camera's orientation along the spline. The red shape highlights the current camera keyframe. This view is created from a secondary virtual camera inside the CAVE using Marcus Thiebaux's Virtual Director renderer.
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