Recent Projects
Mini Bio
My PhD research was in computer science and complexity science, although I also published in web-technologies (and even paleontology!) I have founded, run and sold a high-tech business based on my research and written two technical text-books published by Elsevier.
Game Cinematography
December 2006 - January 2007
I developed code to mimic cinematic idioms with in-game cameras.
Game developers use the metaphor of a camera when thinking about how the 3D game environment is rendered to screen. Despite the metaphor, games normally model the capabilities and behaviour of the camera on the human eye: with a wide feel of view, no noticeable depth-of-field, and a relatively fixed viewpoint in relation to the game's protagonist.
I looked at the camera techniques used by Oscar winning cinematographers, and how they could be implemented in a game without compromising playability. I analysed the use of different lenses, with their characteristic visual cues, I looked at tracking techniques and how physical motion introduces tell-tale imperfections in the motion of a camera.
I then provided proof-of-concept code that implements these techniques. The client intends to implement these algorithms in their game creation toolkit for future titles.