EAGER: Investigation of Techniques for Creating Storytelling Animations During Data Exploration

EAGER：在数据探索过程中创建讲故事动画的技术研究

• 批准号: 1255237
• 负责人: Kwan-Liu Ma
• 金额: $ 9.99万
• 依托单位: University of California-Davis
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-10-01 至 2014-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1255237&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: EAGER; Investigation; Techniques; Creating; Storytelling

The aim of this exploratory project is to enable scientists to easily create storytelling animations for effective communication of research results. Today visualization has become an indispensable tool for many scientists in their daily work to validate and explore the data obtained from their studies, to discover new findings, and to communicate them with others. Both commercial and open-source visualization tools offer a wealth of visualization techniques, enabling scientists to explore their data and generate individual images which capture key aspects of the subject under study. However, an important need of scientists - creating animations for storytelling - is not sufficiently supported. Scientists make extensive use of animation in the form of videos that explain complex structures or processes. Surprisingly, most visualization packages provide very limited support for making animations. The objectives of this project are to: (1) design an interactive animation interface seamlessly integrated with the visualization interface, and develop optimal strategies for controlling camera movement based on key-frames specified by the user; (2) create a prototype system to assess how well the proposed integrated interface enhances users' ability to create visualization animations for storytelling; and (3) through case studies and a user study, investigate whether animations created using the system effectively illustrate complex processes and spatial relationships. This proof-of-concept study focuses on volume data visualization; however, the results are expected to be generalizable to a wide range of scientific and information visualization. This proposed research is challenging as it seeks to establish understanding of how animations can effectively illustrate evolving structures, spatial relationships, and patterns and what system support is needed to enable users to create expressive animations during data exploration without seeking help from professional animators.The lessons learned in this study suggest the design of a new framework for next-generation visualization systems that can benefit a broad range of scientists. Educational activities include the integration of research into teaching, in the form of special topic courses, the establishment of internships with industry and national laboratories, and the introduction of the proposed visualization technology to students from other disciplines. Project website (http://vis.cs.ucdavis.edu/NSF/IIS1255237) is used for results dissemination.

这个探索性项目的目的是使科学家能够轻松创建讲故事的动画，以有效地进行研究结果。今天，可视化已成为许多科学家在日常工作中验证和探索从他们的研究中获得的数据，发现新发现并与他人交流的数据。商业和开源可视化工具都提供了丰富的可视化技术，使科学家能够探索他们的数据并生成单个图像，从而捕获了研究主题的关键方面。但是，科学家的重要需求 - 创造讲故事的动画 - 没有得到足够的支持。科学家以视频的形式广泛使用动画，以解释复杂的结构或过程。令人惊讶的是，大多数可视化软件包为制作动画提供了非常有限的支持。该项目的目标是：（1）设计一个与可视化接口无缝集成的交互式动画界面，并制定基于用户指定的密钥框架控制相机移动的最佳策略； （2）创建一个原型系统，以评估所提出的集成接口如何增强用户创建可视化动画以进行讲故事的能力； （3）通过案例研究和用户研究，调查使用系统创建的动画是否有效说明了复杂的过程和空间关系。这项概念验证研究的重点是数量数据可视化。但是，预计结果可以推广到广泛的科学和信息可视化。这项拟议的研究具有挑战性，因为它试图确定动画如何有效说明不断发展的结构，空间关系和模式，以及需要哪些系统支持，以使用户在数据探索过程中创建表达动画，而无需寻求专业动画师的帮助。这项研究中学到的经验教训暗示了下一代可视化系统的新框架，这些框架可以使广泛的科学家受益。 教育活动包括以特殊主题课程的形式将研究整合到教学上，建立了具有行业和国家实验室的实习，以及向其他学科的学生推出拟议的可视化技术。项目网站（http://vis.cs.ucdavis.edu/nsf/iis1255237）用于结果传播。