Benno Grützmacher, Richard Wages, Georg Trogemann

An Authoring System for Non-Linear VR Scenarios

Abstract: Nobody would ever try to realize a movie without using a script. What is quite natural for movie productions seems to be the exception for VR productions. In VR we still observe a lack of approaches and tools that allow the description of an analogue to the movie script. The authoring approach proposed in this paper is based on directed parallel graphs, where the nodes represent story-relevant situations and the edges represent user interactions or self-triggered transitions (i.e. internal temporal, spatial and logical events). The basic functionalities of the authoring system are storyboarding, event scripting and logical testing. The storyboard function allows the user to define the overall structure of the story and to attach additional information (images, sound, movies, scribbles etc.), which is relevant for the production process. The logical interdependencies between the development of the story and the participating virtual objects are described by event scripts. The integrated internal story player finally allows for a logical traversing of the story.