Empowering Creative People
Thomas Muender, Thomas Fröhlich, Rainer Malaka · 2018
Previsualization (previs) is an essential phase in the design process of narrative media such as film, animation, and stage plays. Digital previs can involve complex technical tasks, e.g. 3D scene creation, animation, and camera work, which require trained skills that are not available to all personnel involved in creative decisions for the production. Interaction techniques such as virtual reality (VR) enable users to interact with 3D content in a natural way compared to classical 2D interfaces. As a first step, we developed VR based prototypes and performed an exploratory user study to evaluate how non-technical professionals from the film, animation, and theater domain assess the use of VR for previs. Our results show that users were able to interact with complex 3D scenes after a short phase of familiarization and rated VR for previs as useful for their professional work.