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

这个探索性项目的目的是使科学家能够轻松地创建讲故事的动画，以便有效地交流研究成果。今天，可视化已经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，发现新的发现，并与他人交流的不可或缺的工具。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捕获所研究主题关键方面的单个图像。然而，科学家的一个重要需求——为讲故事制作动画——没有得到充分的支持。科学家们以视频的形式广泛使用动画来解释复杂的结构或过程。令人惊讶的是，大多数可视化包对制作动画的支持非常有限。本项目的目标是：(1)设计一个与可视化界面无缝集成的交互式动画界面，并根据用户指定的关键帧制定控制摄像机运动的最佳策略；(2)创建一个原型系统，以评估拟议的集成界面如何提高用户为讲故事创建可视化动画的能力；(3)通过案例研究和用户研究，调查使用该系统创建的动画是否有效地说明了复杂的过程和空间关系。这个概念验证研究的重点是体积数据可视化；然而，研究结果有望推广到广泛的科学和信息可视化领域。这项拟议的研究是具有挑战性的，因为它试图建立对动画如何有效地说明不断发展的结构，空间关系和模式的理解，以及需要什么系统支持才能使用户在数据探索期间创建富有表现力的动画，而无需寻求专业动画师的帮助。从这项研究中吸取的教训表明，下一代可视化系统的新框架的设计可以使广泛的科学家受益。教育活动包括以专题课程的形式将研究与教学相结合，在工业和国家实验室建立实习机会，并向来自其他学科的学生介绍所提出的可视化技术。项目网站（http://vis.cs.ucdavis.edu/NSF/IIS1255237）用于发布结果。

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.