Camera Control with Motion Graphs

This report presents Camera Motion Graphs, a new technique to easily and efficiently generate cinematographic sequences in real-time dynamic 3D environments. A camera motion graph consists of (i) pieces of original camera trajectories attached to one or multiple targets, (ii) generated continuous transitions between those trajectories and (iii) transitions representing cuts between two camera trajectories. Pieces of original camera trajectories are built by extracting camera motions from real movies using vision-based techniques, or relying on motion capture techniques using a virtual camera system. A transformation is proposed to express all the camera trajectories in a normalized representation, making camera paths easily adaptable to new 3D environments. Specific metrics are then detailed to compute the best transitions between camera paths. Multiple results illustrate the simplicity of the technique, its adaptability to different 3D environments and its efficiency.