Search

In a storytelling context, the visualization of the timelines for appliance usage could convey a great amount of information to audiences about the patterns or habits of households when using appliances in smart home. However, today's research on smart home visualization is more focused on time series data, while research on timeline does not focus much on expressiveness in a storytelling context. If we simply visualize the time series or use traditional visualization methods to visualize the timeline, the intention and effectiveness of storytelling may be reduced. In this paper, we analyze the above issues in detail and propose a new visualization design based on machinima and a dynamic circle.

Machinima, screencast animated videos made in a virtual world, are still not a very well-known phenomenon, and there has been little reseach in relation to their use as a teaching material in English language classrooms. This study aimed to investigate the potential for and challenges in using machinima in the pre-intermediate English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom. Bespoke machinima were created for three classes in Nepal, and the lessons using them were observed. Two teachers and four students were given semi-structued interviews, and 20 students were asked to write a reflective note on their impression of the use of machinima. The findings of the study indicate that machinima are distinct from other materials in that they can be contextualized to address the needs, interests, and values of the learners. Student engagement is thus found to have been significantly higher.

The role of computer technology in the world of cinematography is getting widely. One of the supporting technologies is Machinima. Machinima is a system that uses 3D graphics rendering technology real time to produce a virtually cinematic product. In the process of making a cinematic product like a film, the camera positioning play an very important role. In the real world there is a director who will directing the cameramen to place the camera manually according to specific view point and behavior. This research proposes an intelligent multi behavior of cinematographic camera where the camera will be place automatically in accordance a behavior directorial style. By doing the appropriate camera positioning then a film will have different impact to audience. For positioning of the camera will be based on fuzzy logic. This research proves that an artificial intelligence engine for camera can be made for positioning the camera based on director’s style. From the test result is obtained that the system can implement multi behavior cameras in machinima using fuzzy logic.

As the core program component of video game operation, game engine was originally used to render some scenes and cutscenes in the game. Game developers constantly upgrade the engine technology, using "real-time rendering" technology to generate a series of game animation similar to the picture of the movie, so they tried to use the game engine to make movie clips, engine movie came out. Engine movies should not be limited to ordinary video games or 3D animated movies, but should be seen as a new form of image expression under the collusion of new film and television thinking and real-time engine rendering technology. The cross-boundary fusion of film and video game has become the development trend of film in the digital era, indicating the possibility of the change of film form.

Rapidly creating educational content that is effective, engaging, and low-cost is a challenge. We present Canvas, a tool for educators that addresses this challenge by enabling the generation of educational video, led by an intelligent virtual agent, that combines rapid nonverbal behavior generation techniques with end-user facing authoring tools. With Canvas, educators can easily produce compelling educational videos with a minimum of investment by leveraging existing content provided by the tool (e.g., characters and environments) while incorporating their own custom content (e.g., images and video clips). Canvas has been delivered to the Smithsonian Science Education Center and is currently being evaluated internally before wider release. We discuss the system, feature set, design process, and lessons learned.

Creation of machine generated cinematics currently requires a significant amount of human author time or manually coding domain operators such that they may be realized by a rendering system. We present FireBolt, an automated cinematic realization system based on a declarative knowledge representation that supports both human and machine authoring of cinematics with reduced authorship and engineering task loads.

Deliberation-driven reflective sequences, or DDRSs, are cinematic idioms used by film makers to convey the motivations for characters adopting a particular course of action in a story. We report on an experiment where the cinematic generation system Ember was used to create a cinematic sequence with variants making different choices for DDRS use around a single decision point for a single character.

open access article

Machinima is a computer imaging technology typically used in games and animation. It prints all movie cast properties into a virtual environment by means of a camera positioning. Since cinematography is complementary to Machinima, it is possible to simulate a director&rsquo, s style via various camera placements in this environment. In a gaming application, the director&rsquo, s style is one of the most impressive cinematic factors, where a whole different gaming experience can be obtained using different styles applied to the same scene. This paper describes a system capable of automatically profile a director&rsquo, s style using fuzzy logic. We employed 19 output variables and 15 other calculated variables from the animation extraction data to profile two different directors&rsquo, styles from five scenes. Area plots and histograms were generated, and, by analyzing the histograms, different director&rsquo, s styles could be subsequently classified.

Machinima is which use real-time graphics rendering platform game engine to create animated videos or films. Traditional methods of machinima filming are stand-alone methods that using artificial intelligence scripting to implement the plot. However, massive script writing work of artificial intelligence will cost a IoT of manpower and resources. This paper proposes a method based on network game and Kinect. Compared to traditional machinima filming in stand-alone environment, this method based on network game framework, uses Kinect to control character's motions and added functions to control actor's position, implements a more complete machinima system.

Serious games present a relatively new approach to training and education for international organizations such as NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Although serious games are often deployed as stand-alone solutions, they can also serve as entry points into a comprehensive training pipeline in which content is delivered via different media to rapidly scale immersive training and education for mass audiences. The present paper introduces a new paradigm for more effective and scalable training and education called transmedia learning. Transmedia learning leverages several new media trends including the peer communications of social media, the scalability of massively openonline course (MOOCs), and the design of transmedia storytelling used by entertainment, advertising, and commercial game industries to sustain audience engagement. Transmedia learning is defined as the scalable system of messages representing a narrative or core experience that unfolds from the use of multiple media, emotionally engaging learners by involving them personally in the story. In the present paper, we introduce the transmedia learning paradigm as offering more effective use of serious games for training and education. This approach is consistent with the goals of international organizations implementing approaches similar to those described by the Army Learning Model (ALM) to deliver training and education to Soldiers across multiple media. We discuss why the human brain is wired for transmedia learning and demonstrate how the Simulation Experience Design Method can be used to create transmedia learning story worlds for serious games. We describe how social media interactions and MOOCs may be used in transmedia learning, and how data mining social media and experience tracking can inform the development of computational learner models for transmedia learning campaigns. Examples of how the U.S. Army has utilized transmedia campaigns for strategic communication and game-based training are provided. Finally, we provide strategies the reader can use today to incorporate transmedia storytelling elements such as Internet, serious games, video, social media, graphic novels, machinima, blogs, and alternate reality gaming into a new paradigm for training and education: transmedia learning.

This article explores hybrid curatorial practices that have developed around digital “socio-techno-cultural” practices such as machinima. Machinima is a creative cultural movement that has evolved considerably since its emergence in 1996. The article highlights interrelated themes of curatorial practice: coevolving sense-making and social consumption; creative cognition and exploratory visualization; technologies as cultural intermediaries; social products, materialized expression and collective memory; capturing contexts through cocuration; and sustainability and stability of cultural capital. The article concludes that curation is a process of continually evolving interpretation of the artifact, representing shifts in the technology landscape, network of community members and audience interactions.

Teaching video production using video game technology and a method of live manipulation of digital puppets and props ofers new possibilities for narrative, without shifting focus away from storyline and dramatic content, due to technical hurdles. This production technique known as Machinima has been steadily gaining in popularity and prominence due to the relative ease and speed in which small production teams can learn to use video game software in this new way and quickly create professional quality animated movies.

The interactive, immersive and performative aspects of digital games and virtual worlds take the challenges faced by media archivists, curators and historians beyond software preservation to problems that demand new documentation and preservation strategies. The social and performative aspects of online worlds are forcing repositories to develop new strategies for preservation. Of the utmost importance is to preserve and archive practices and performances and not only the software that made these practices and performances possible. The author also argues that the three primary methods for making machinima during its brief history — demo, screen capture, and asset composition — can be matched to three ways for documenting the history of virtual worlds (replay, POV recording, and asset extraction), concluding that machinima provides compelling evidence for the ability of players to turn digital games into their own creative medium.

The author argues that although machinima is a relatively specialized field, it offers a newer and faster production pipeline for the commercial animation industry as a whole. Pioneered by individuals who have turned their passion for gaming into a powerful professional animation medium, machinima has a great potential. After comparing the development of machinima to the evolution of the internet, the author concludes that the emergence of virtual worlds such as Second Life was instrumental in the growth of this particular type of real-time computer animation.

The theory and lessons of knowledge exchange, in both a physical and virtual environment, suggest a framework for understanding the specific requirements for a digital design class in Second Life. Through teaching and observing students who were asked to complete a machinima project, our research provided examples of the strengths and the weaknesses of using Second Life for knowledge exchange. Learning is a process of creating knowledge, and so we observed the input and the output of the process. A literature review of knowledge creation considering the exchange of both tacit and explicit knowledge exchange informs our theory. Teaching occurred both remotely and, in person, in a media lab that included a physical presence of 33 students using networked computers and also allowed virtual presence in Second Life. The students also experienced a mixed‐reality environment in which they collaborated sometimes in close physical proximity and sometimes only together in the virtual space. The exchange of tacit kn...

This paper describes the making of stereoscopic 3-D movies utilizing the Metaverse. The authors focused on machinima, which is a way to make movies using PCs and video games. A tool for making stereoscopic 3-D movies in Second Life is proposed. The tool also enables running experiments with different ways of stereo shooting. The purpose of this study was to propose a novel method that supports movie creators to make stereoscopic 3-D movies easily.

The last decade has witnessed the emergence and aesthetic maturation of amateur multimedia on an unprecedented scale, from video podcasts to machinima, and Flash animations to user-created metaverses. Today, especially in academic circles, this pop culture phenomenon is little recognized and even less understood. This paper explores creativity in amateur multimedia using three theorizations of creativity—those of HCI, postructuralism, and technological determinism. These theorizations frame a semiotic analysis of numerous commonly used multimedia authoring platforms, which demonstrates a deep convergence of multimedia authoring tool strategies that collectively project a conceptualization and practice of digital creativity. This conceptualization of digital creativity in authoring tools is then compared with hundreds of amateur-created artifacts. These analyses reveal relationships among emerging amateur multimedia aesthetics, common software authoring tools, and the three theorizations of creativity discussed.

Multimedia training methods have traditionally relied heavily on video-based technologies, and significant research has shown these to be very effective training tools. However, production of video is time and resource intensive. Machinima technologies are based on videogaming technology. Machinima technology allows videogame technology to be manipulated into unique scenarios based on entertainment or training and practice applications. Machinima is the converting of these unique scenarios into video vignettes that tell a story. These vignettes can be interconnected with branching points in much the same way that education videos are interconnected as vignettes between decision points. This study addressed the effectiveness of machinima-based soft-skills education using avatar actors versus the traditional video teaching application using human actors in the training of frontline healthcare workers. This research also investigated the difference between presence reactions when using avatar actor-produced video vignettes as compared with human actor-produced video vignettes. Results indicated that the difference in training and/or practice effectiveness is statistically insignificant for presence, interactivity, quality, and the skill of assertiveness. The skill of active listening presented a mixed result indicating the need for careful attention to detail in situations where body language and facial expressions are critical to communication. This study demonstrates that a significant opportunity exists for the exploitation of avatar actors in video-based instruction.

Chapter 1 Introduction: Discourse Analysis and Digital Practices Rodney H. Jones, Alice Chik, Christoph A. Hafner Chapter 2 Discourse Analysis of Games James Paul Gee Chapter 3 Discourse, Cybernetics, and the Entextualization of the Self Rodney H. Jones Chapter 4 Tagging on Flickr as a Social Practice David Barton Chapter 5 Intertextuality and Interdiscursivity in Online Consumer Reviews Camilla Vasquez Chapter 6 YouTube as Text: Spoken Interaction Analysis and Digital Discourse Phil Benson Chapter 7 Co-constructing Identity in Virtual Worlds for Children Christoph A. Hafner Chapter 8 Recreational Language Learning and Digital Practices: Positioning and Repositioning Alice Chik Chapter 9 Investigating Digital Sex-Talk Practices: A Reflection on Corpus-Assisted Discourse Analysis Brian King Chapter 10 Apps, Adults and Young Children: Researching Digital Literacy Practices in Context Guy Merchant Chapter 11 'It's Changed My Life': iPhone as Technological Artefact Victoria Carrington Chapter 12 Digital Discourse@Public Space: Flows of Language Online and Offline Carmen Lee Chapter 13 The Discourse of Celebrity in the Fanvid Ecology of Club Penguin Machinima Jackie Marsh Chapter 14 Discourse of 'Curation' in Digital Times Ilana Synder Chapter 15 The Discursive Construction of Education in the Digital Age Neil Selwyn

Player-created game movies have been an outlet for creative expression by World of Warcraft (WoW) players since the beta version of the game. The proliferation of players, clans, Web sites, and community forums for creating, consuming, and commenting on WoW movies is remarkable. Linking multiplayer game communities and the making of animated movies is not unprecedented. It has been a characteristic of machinima for more than a decade. In this article however, the author hopes to show that the context, content, and consumption of game movies based on massively multiplayer games raises new questions about contributions game-based performances make to player communities. The author connects the brief history of WoW movies to the history of machinima and other game movies, illustrates the variety of impulses behind WoW movies through three quickly recounted examples, and gathers together salient themes around one movie in particular: Tristan Pope's Not Just Another Love Story.

The author investigates the feasibility of machinima as a commercial filmmaking format, suggesting that quality-wise, it cannot compete, in its current state, with computer generated imagery. Moreover, although computers and game engines will improve dramatically in the next decades, machinima’s re-sampling nature will not allow this form of expression to achieve the variety and originality of live action or animation. The author concludes that machinima could become more successful — critically and commercially — in other areas, such as television and the internet.

A one-semester introductory undergraduate course in computer game development is described. The freshman-level course has been taught for five years. The course was designed and implemented in the context of a new curriculum in computer game development. Goals of the course were to retain undergraduate computer science (CS) majors, attract new students to CS, and expose students to the content creation pipeline used in advanced courses. A significant aspect of the course is the end-of-semester project to create a machinima - a video created using computer game technology. Besides the initial goals for the course, other benefits were discovered including fostering a sense of community. Results, both quantitative and anecdotal, show the course has exceeded expectations in meeting the goals originally established. The course has been integral to the growth of the CS program, enabling the program to nearly triple in size over four years.

While computer gameai¾?s cutscenes are predominantly used for a cinematic narrative development, in many computer games cutscenes might serve not only as a basic orientation hint about next level in a gaming environment but might play a role of an information system. This contribution will discuss the eventualities to understand cutscenes and their implementation in a gaming environment as a sort of an information system useful for the interpretation and reconfiguration performed by the player with the respect to the rapid prototyping for serious games. Further, will be briefly discussed the potential to author the cutscenes for a sample concept of a serious game (documentary computer games) in the rapid animated movie production tool Moviestorm.

Machinima is a new form of creative digital filmmaking that leverages the real time graphics rendering of computer game engines. Because of the low barrier to entry, machinima has become a popular creative medium for hobbyists and novices while still retaining borrowed conventions from professional filmmaking. Can novice machinima creators benefit from creativity support tools? A preliminary study shows novices generally have difficulty adhering to cinematographic conventions. We identify and document four cinematic conventions novices typically violate. We report on a Wizard-of-Oz study showing a rule-based intelligent system that can reduce the frequency of errors that novices make by providing information about rule violations without prescribing solutions. We discuss the role of error reduction in creativity support tools.

In this work, we propose an innovative approach, 3D recording, to support serious games and educational role-playing. 3D virtual worlds (3D VWs) are often used for generating educational content. Even though this technology allows creating full context of the real-life educational process, it is usually recorded as flat 2D video (such as Machinima in Second Life), which eliminates many advantages of the technology, such as sense of presence (Mckerlich et al. 2011). In addition, there are no systematic approaches for combining synchronous and asynchronous learning modes. We propose that 3D recording is capable of solving these challenges, as it offers an easy way for creating advanced 3D content from synchronous activities, as well as accessing this content in both synchronous and asynchronous modes.

TUIs have become part of a larger digital ecology. Thus, hybrid interface design that combines tangible with other interaction options is ever more important. This paper argues for the importance of such hybrid approaches for creative practices that use divergent collaborative processes. It presents the design, evolution, and implementation of such a hybrid interface for machinima film production. Finally, it provides initial reflection on the use and preliminary evaluation of the current system.

The popularity of Machinima movies has increased greatly in the recent years. From a transmedia point of view, there was little development regarding tools to assist the production of Machinima. These are still mainly focused on the gaming community, and 3D animators. The developed tool aims to bring the typical workflow present on a normal movie set, into a machinima creation environment, expanding possibilities for transmedia productions. With Mappets as a plugin for the Unity3D game engine, we allow a translation from the typical movie dimension to a virtual one. This work evaluates the current state of art of machinima development tools and presents a working solution more adequate for transmedia productions and non-expert users interested in the production of machinima.

In this paper we propose to share our experience of ethnographic research in the virtual world Second Life. We intend to narrate our experience producing machinima the method we used to enter the field and interact with residents. The production of films from the software and or hardware of video games or other real-time 3D graphics programs is called machinima. Our goal here is to discuss the possibility of using machinima as a technique for obtaining, presenting and interpreting ethnographic data. Nesse trabalho propomos relatar nossa experiência de pesquisa etnográfica no mundo virtual Second Life. Pretendemos narrar nossa experiência produzindo machinimas como forma de inserção em campo e de interação com os residentes. A produção de filmes a partir do software e/ou hardware de videogames ou outros programas gráficos 3D real time é chamada de machinima. Nosso objetivo aqui é discutir a possibilidade do uso de machinimas como técnica de obtenção, apresentação e interpretação de dados etnográficos.

With the rapid development of computer graphic, the graphics real-time rendered by game engines tend gradually towards graphics offline rendered by 3D softwares. The machinima technology receives an increasing attention. This paper proposes a new technique to control the virtual camera semi-automatically in game engines for machinima making. Compared to the manual control, this technique results in more stable and accurate machinima shots. Compared to the automatic control, this technique gives more creative freedom to machinima makers. The crucial point is that, with the introduction of Camera Language, using this technique for machinima making becomes convenient and efficient.

This paper describes a comparative study to investigate the efficacy of interactive games, non-interactive media and traditional instructional teaching on mathematics and science learning with high school students (aged 13-14). Utilizing a blended in-game (narrative and puzzle games) and off-game (machinima/animation and teacher) learning approach to assess the efficacy, together with survey of teachers' opinions on the introduction of serious games and blended learning approaches, the results shed some light on the integration / assimilate of serious games into the classroom and curriculum.

Online multiplayer gaming has emerged as a popular form of entertainment. During these games, the players' main focus is usually placed on achieving the objectives that must be completed to win the game. Over the course of the game, however, their interactions may result in interesting emergent narratives that go unnoticed. Afterthought is a system that monitors player activity, recognizes instances of story elements in gameplay and renders cinematic highlights of the story-oriented game play, allowing players to view these emergent narratives after completing their gameplay session. This paper outlines Afterthought's design at a high level.

This chapter describes Darshak, an end-to-end system that automatically generates camera shot sequences for generation from a given story and visualization goals. The shot sequences that are generated by Darshak are visualized on a commercial 3D game engine automatically by an execution module implemented on the game engine.

Many Universities are building interdisciplinary programs that overlap engineering and fine art departments that focus on games, special effects, animation and other forms of interdisciplinary efforts. With increasing demands for education linking the Engineering Sciences and Fine Arts, fueled by the competitive nature of the industries that recruit graduates, educators need to become more efficient and effective in their task of educating engineering and art majors in cross-disciplinary courses.CS3650 at the University of Utah is a digital character production course. This course is interdisciplinary and draws from several disciplines including computer science, graphics, anatomy, sculpture, art, and entertainment. It is a prerequisite for our machinima class, which immerses students into 3D game engines. Visualization tools are used in the course to help students learn to create better digital models.Presented in this paper is an experimental comparison between traditional visualization tools and digital visualization tools, which are less expensive, easier to distribute, arrange/procure and transport than the traditional tools. Traditional visualization tools include lifelike skeleton reproductions, wooden body mass structures, actual live human models, and anatomy drawing books. The digital visualization tools that are contrasted in this paper are: a layered anatomically correct, digital human model (skin, muscles, masses and some bones adapted from several sources) and a VisTrails version of a properly produced human figure (interactive animation). The digital tools are used to replace the traditional visualization tools used in the same educational curriculum, which teaches students to design, model and produce digital characters for games, machinima, and animation. The quantitative experiment demonstrates that digital visualization tools help to improve a student's understanding of the complex software packages used to produce characters, helps to improve specific techniques used to model 3D characters, and it helps to improve understanding of 3D form, more than the traditional tools within the context of this educational curriculum.

The Zuzen framework is an intelligent tool set for assisting in the generation of machinima. With Zuzen, users that are novice cinematographers do not need to use complex movie-making tools. Rather, they only need to specify a set of high-level cinematic directives for use in filming a story and Zuzen will produce a video file that reflects their specifications. This forgoes the usual learning curve associated with typical machinima or cinematic content creation tools. This paper describes the Zuzen framework and details its implementation.

Storytelling is an important feature in games and also other types of (semi) automated entertainment systems such as machinima and digital-TV. The majority of the current research in storytelling use precedence-based directed acyclic graphs, or even linear sequences, to model the ordering of events in a story. This approach makes it easier to plan, recognize and perform these events in real-time, but it is also too simple to represent complex human actions, which form the basis of the most interesting stories in this niche. PNF-Networks and Interval Scripting are frameworks to represent, recognize and perform human action that was proposed in the context of computer-aided theatre. In this paper we describe two extensions to this framework that were designed and developed to enable its use in larger scale storytelling systems: Hierarchical PNF-Networks and a template-based definition. Hierarchical PNF-Networks present lower complexity propagation heuristic while the definition language enables high-level and abstract description of the temporal structure of the actions and events that compose an interactive story or game.

Web3D '09: Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on 3D Web Technology, June 2009, Pages 159–166. The article of record as published may be found at https://doi.org/10.1145/1559764.1559789 Broad needs for digital models of real environments such as 3D terrain or cyber cities are increasing. Many applications related to modeling and simulation require virtual environments constructed from real-world geospatial information in order to guarantee relevance and accuracy in the simulation. The most fundamental data for building virtual environments, terrain elevation and orthogonal imagery, is typically acquired using optical sensors mounted on satellites or airplanes. Providing interoperable and reusable digital models in 3D is important for promoting practical applications of high-resolution airborne imagery. This paper presents research results regarding virtual-environment representations of geospatial information, especially for 3D shape and appearance of virtual terrain. It describes a framework for constructing real-time 3D models of large terrain based on highresolution satellite imagery. This approach is also suitable for underwater bathymetry. The Extensible 3D Graphics (X3D) Geospatial Component standard is applied to produce X3D Earth models with global scope. Efficient rendering, network retrieval and data caching/removal must all be optimized simultaneously, across servers, networks and clients, in order to accomplish these goals properly. Details of this standard-based approach for providing an infrastructure for real-time 3D simulation merging high-resolution geometry and imagery are also presented. This work facilitates open interchange and interoperability across diverse simulation systems and is independently usable by governments, industry, scientists and the general public.

This paper describes four candidate X3D extension nodes: Camera, Shot, Movement and OfflineRendering. An X3D lexicon for camera movements is defined so that individuals directing virtual cameras in X3D can directly apply terms that film directors and cinematographers understand. This approach greatly simplifies the technical tasks involved in creating precise camera animations and setting up still images for digital photography. Further, candidate methods are examined for implementing Depth of Field for focus control. Moving beyond the typical clumsiness of Viewpoint control can enable authors to create compelling still and moving images from X3D scenes.

Many Universities and Colleges are building interdisciplinary programs that overlap engineering and fine art departments allowing a focus on games, special effects, animation and other forms of invention that require interdisciplinary efforts. With increasing demands for education linking the Engineering Sciences and Fine Arts, fueled by the competitive nature of the industries that recruit graduates, educators need to become more efficient and effective in their jobs of educating engineering and fine art majors in cross-disciplinary courses.Many of the courses that draw from the disciplines of the engineering sciences and fine arts are neglected in the research of educational best practices and tools for enhancing the learning experiences of the students. The courses are also becoming larger and more unmanageable as presently taught.Digital character production courses can range from predominantly engineering content to one with mostly art content, or a combination in the middle of the two departments depending on curriculum design. Our course at the University of Utah is directly in the center, drawing equally from both disciplines. It gives students an applied experience in 3D graphics and the computer science that helps to produce 3D graphics. It is a prerequisite for our Machinima Class, which extends the blend of art and technology as it immerses students into 3D game engines for creating cinematic short animations. Our particular digital character production curriculum has been taught at many universities and has been refined over the last twelve years.Presented in this paper are two experimental comparisons between traditional visualization tools and digital visualization tools, which are less expensive, easier to distribute, easier to arrange/procure and easier to transport than the traditional tools. Traditional visualization tools include lifelike skeleton reproductions, wooden body mass structures, actual human models and anatomy drawing books. They are used in conjunction with lectures, demonstrations and one-on-one lab instruction. The digital visualization tools that are contrasted in this paper are: a layered anatomically correct, digital human model (skin, muscles, masses and some bones adapted from several sources) and a VisTrails MAYA version of a properly produced human figure (interactive animation). The digital tools are used to replace the traditional visualization tools used in the same educational curriculum, which teaches students to design, model and produce digital characters for games, machinima, and animation. The first experiment assesses if the digital visualization tools are comparable to traditional tools in three areas; for improving a student's understanding of the complex software packages used to produce characters, for improving specific techniques used to model 3D characters, and for improving understanding of 3D form/visual relationships. The second experimental comparison extends the analysis of the third area garnered from the other experiment to determine if the improved understanding of form/visual relationships extends into non-digital medium. Both experiments were designed to measure learning experiences and the ability to adapt modeling processes to a variety of different characters and not to just duplicate the process on similar characters.

As user-created content increasingly becomes an ever more prominent element of modern game design, tools have been developed to aide in the creative process for several forms of digital media, including machinima. Because creating content that will be valued by the community is a challenging process, tools are needed that will assist novices in both technical realization and optimization of content. We are exploring tools for machinima authoring that use a 3-pronged approach: authoring via metaphor, performance, and automation. Future work involves using AI to provide feedback to machinima authors, suggesting sensible attributes for scenes based on prior input by acting as a surrogate audience.

An e-mail interview of Paul Marino, cofounder of AMAS, conducted by Geoffrey Long.