Augmented Reality User Interfaces for 3D Media Production

Krichenbauer Maximilian Michael(1351121)

Modern media production such as movies and games have a high demand for high-quality 3D models and animations. Currently, these are created using the common 2D user interfaces (UIs) mouse, keyboard and 2D screen. Augmented Reality (AR) technology allows us to create novel 3D UIs to make this task easier and more efficient. Even though this concept has been repeatedly suggested over the last decade, and in spite of recent technological advances making such an application increasingly feasible, very little progress has been made towards an actual real-world application of AR in professional media production. To this day, no immersive 3D UI has been commonly used by professionals for 3D computer graphics (CG) content creation.

In order to advance the research on AR UIs for professional application, I performed a requirements analysis for the field of media production. Based on several sources, foremost a survey performed with media industry professionals, I identify a number of specific requirements that were previously largely ignored by AR UI researchers. From these findings, I derive several interaction design principles that aim to address the challenges of real-world application of AR to the production pipeline. In order to validate these findings, I implemented a prototype of a AR UI for 3D design work, and presented it to media professionals, whose feedback was in turn used to advance the understanding of the topic as well as concrete improvements of the prototype system.

The insights gained in through the requirements analysis, design, implementation, and evaluation are relevant for research and development aimed at creating novel production methods for 3D media production.