Intelligent Cinematic Camera Control for Real-Time Graphics Applications

<p>E-sports is currently estimated to be a billion dollar industry which is only growing in size from year to year. However the cinematography of spectated games leaves much to be desired. In most cases, the spectator either gets to control their own freely-moving camera or they get to see the view that a specific player sees. This thesis presents a system for the generation of cinematically-pleasing views for spectating real-time graphics applications. A custom real-time engine has been built to demonstrate the effect of this system on several different game modes with varying visual cinematic constraints, such as the rule of thirds. To create the cinematic views, we encode cinematic rules as cost functions that are fed into a non-linear least squares solver. These cost functions rely on the geometry of the scene, minimizing residuals based on the 3D positions and 2D reprojections of the geometry. The final cinematic view is found by altering camera position and angle until a local minimum is met. The system was evaluated by comparing video output from a traditional rigidly constrained camera and the results of our algorithm’s optimally solved views. User surveys are then used to qualitatively evaluate the system. The results of these surveys do not statistically find a preference between the cinematic views and the rigidly constrained views. In addition, we present performance and timing considerations for the system, reporting that the system can operate within modern expectations of latency when enough constraints are placed on the non-linear least squares solver.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

MS in Computer Science

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Computer Science

Year dc:date.available

2020

Author dc:creator

• Meeder, Ian Harris

Contributors dc:contributor

• Zoë Wood
• Computer Science
• College of Engineering

• computer graphics
• virtual camera
• video game
• cinematography
• artificial intelligence
• rule of thirds
• Artificial Intelligence and Robotics
• Graphics and Human Computer Interfaces

Identifier

10.15368/theses.2020.18

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.calpoly.edu:theses-3591