TOOLS FOR GUIDING

Temporal links

eRENA has created novel production technologies that allow shared 3-D virtual worlds to be recorded, replayed and edited. These recordings are not video. They are full 3-D recordings. Every action – movement, object manipulation and talk – of every avatar in a virtual world is logged and time-stamped in enough detail to recreate faithfully the virtual world as it happened at some later time.

Using a technique called temporal links within the MASSIVE-3 system, the replay of a virtual world can be embedded within a live virtual world. Live participants see the replayed action unfold around them and can move through it, viewing it from any angle. Temporal links also allow these replays to be manipulated in a variety of ways. They can be scaled up and down, and run forwards and backwards, at any speed and yet still animate smoothly. Their appearance can be also manipulated so they may appear to be ghostlike. The live world containing the recording can then be recorded for later use.

Using temporal links, Avatar Farm included the first ever examples of 3-D flashbacks within a virtual world, and 3-D recordings of the whole of Avatar Farm have been used in complex post-production.

MRL at University of Nottingham

More information:
Third Demonstration of Inhabited Television

Concept and software:
Chris Greenhalgh, Jim Purbrick a.o.