Intelligent Camera Control in a Virtual Environment

This paper describes a framework for exploring intelligent camera controls in a 3D virtual environment. It presents a methodology for designing the underlying camera controls based on an analysis of what tasks are to be required in a specific environment. Once an underlying camera framework is built, a variety of interfaces can be connected to the framework. A virtual museum is used as a prototypical virtual environment for this work. This paper identifies some of the tasks that need to be performed in a virtual museum, presents a paradigm for encapsulating those tasks into camera modules, and describes in detail the underlying mechanisms that make up the camera module for navigating through the environment.