3D User Interfaces for General-Purpose 3D Animation

Modern 3D animation systems allow a rapidly growing community to create and animate increasingly sophisticated worlds. Despite the inherent three-dimensionality of these tasks, the user interfaces of such systems are still predominantly two-dimensional, using 2D input devices and techniques which severely limit the range of tasks that can be accomplished interactively. In particular, these limitations make it very difficult to interactively input complex 3D movements. In this paper, we present Virtual Studio , a 3D animation environment where all the interaction is done directly in three dimensions. 3D devices allow the specification of complex 3D motion while virtual tools are visible mediators that provide interaction metaphors to control application objects. An underlying constraint solver, that automatically maintains multi-way relationships, provides the ability to tightly couple application and interface objects. The animation is defined by recording the effect of the user's manipulations on the models, taking into account the temporal aspect of the interaction. Data reduction techniques are applied to obtain editable representation of continuous parameters' evolution.