3D authoring for content experts: a collaborative approach

The current production model for 3D scenes, inherited from the early years of computer graphics, prevents a real collaboration among the subjects involved and, as a consequence, the full exploitation of the new potentialities of the 3D media. In this scenario the content expert is only a consultant of the 3d modeler, who is directly responsible for designing the interaction model. In complex 3D applications interactivity, graphic complexity and content play different important roles that should correspond to different well defined skills: authoring is a collaborative activity that involves different experts. The content expert is the key figure of the extended team of authors that collaborate to the design and implementation of a complex interactive application. He/she is an intermediate actor between the final users and the experts devoted to the design of the low level graphic details: is an expert in the application domain and understands the needs of the final users with respect to orientation, navigation and access to the information content; is able to speak the technical language needed to describe the interaction but needs to be provided with high level interaction interface, built by the graphic experts, because is not necessarily skilled in the fine-grained language of interaction with the technology used to build virtual worlds