IMPROVISE: Automated generation of animated graphics for coordinated multimedia presentations

Abstract

In this chapter, we describe a graphics generation system, IMPROVISE (IllustrativeMetaphor PROduction in VISual Environments), focusing on how it can be used to design coordinated multimedia presentations. IMPROVISE is a knowledge-based system that can automatically create sequences of animated graphical illustrations to convey a wide variety of data. Our emphasis here is on describing how four important features of IMPROVISE facilitate coordinated multimedia presentation design. These four features are: a knowledge-rich representation of input data, a fine-grained temporal model of visual techniques, an action-based inference engine, and a portable visual realizer.