One-Man Movie: A System to Assist Actor Recording in a Virtual Studio

Acting in a movie is not an easily accessible activity for regular people, not to mention creating a movie alone. Based on the existing functions such as directors, photographers, and editors in a virtual studio that have been established in previous work, this research aims to design a computer-assisted system in virtual reality with actor functions allowing people to experience acting and create their own Computer Graphics (CG) movie. Through virtual reality and wearable motion capture devices, our system allows a user to enter the virtual studio as an actor. The user starts by choosing the role they want to play and then completing the drama performance under the guidance of the system. The motion of the actor will be recorded and in sync with the animations of other characters adjusted in real-time. As such, in addition to playing a single role, the user can also choose to perform and record multiple roles that can be put together to form the film. Thus, the entire CG movie can be completed by a single user alone. We have implemented a prototype of such a system and conducted an experiment to evaluate the system. The results will be reported in this paper.