Towards virtual environment authoring tools for content developers
Mark Green · 2003
The development of digital media requires the skills of both technical and creative individuals. Technical experts produce the underlying technology that makes the medium possible, but without high quality content the medium won't be successful. In order for a digital medium to be successful it must be possible for content designers to have as much access as possible to the technology without requiring the hands-on assistance of technology experts. This paper examines the problem of creating authoring tools for virtual environments that allow content designers to produce interesting artistic environments without the direct assistance of programmers. Over the past two years we have been developing authoring tools for artistic virtual environments, and these tools form the basis of our virtual reality courses. Most of the students in these courses have limited programming abilities, so they cannot use programming based tools for producing their virtual environments. This paper presents some of the important things that we have learned and a brief discussion of the tools that we have produced.