The Interdisciplinary Challenge of Entertainment Technology

Randy Pausch

Entertainment Technology CenterCarnegie Mellon University

pausch@cs.cmu.edu, www.randypausch.com

Outline

The World is Changing Very Fast Creativity comes from putting different people

(e.g. artists & engineers) together

My work with Disney Imagineering

CMU’s ETC -- (Entertainment Technology

Center) Projects:

Synthetic Interviews

Building Virtual Worlds course

My “Computers”

Communicator Reader/translator audible.com (and the death of

the Music Industry via Mp3)

Creativity Comes From Putting Different Kinds of People Together

They see the world differently

Partly innate, partly training

Quick Test...

Count the green dots…you will have three seconds…

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How many were there?

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Advice to students

Learn to see the world from as many viewpoints as possible

Creative is more valuable than smart … “if you're in the top 1%, there's only 55 million people smarter than you”...

Work and play nice with others

Advice:

Don’t be afraid of being silly

My Dad, age 76

Advice:

Think out of the box.

Disney Imagineering

Sabattical in 1995 Part of a 25 person team Aladdin Virtual Reality Since 1995, 1 day/week,

mostly on DisneyQuest

Videos

CMU’s New Entertainment Technology Center (ETC)

CMU = fine arts + technology (rare combo) Two directors; one from CS (me), one from

Drama (Don Marinelli) 2 year MS in Entertainment Technology ~15 faculty doing ET-style projects focus is on working with different kinds of

people, not on being jack-of-all-trades

www.alice.orgFree tools to…1) Model 3d objects*2) Paint them3) Animate them

*Teddy modeler, by Takeo Igarashi (Ph.D. student, Univeristy of Tokyo)

Alice Demo

Building Virtual Worlds

50 students from art, design, drama, and CS

Randomly chosen teams, change per project

Two weeks to design, implement, and test

Six projects during the semester

Audition to Get In Separate “talkers” from “doers”

Show auditions at first class… result: sense of talent across the aisle

No Disciplines:“What can you do?”not“What major are you?”

4 “Intangibles”

sound editing storyboarding production tracking “guest” testing

Live performance; 600 people attended

Sample Worlds (all running on Windows)

Campus-wide Exhibition

Gettin' Drunk Salvador Dali's Studio Spiderman Virtual Mr. Rogers Neighborhood Godzilla vs. Pittsburgh Calvin & Hobbs and the Dreaded Suicide Sled It’s a Small World (gone bad) Akira Group Pong

Videotape

Counter-Intuitive Fact It is easier to get artists and engineers to work

together than to get engineers to work with each other.

Handout: Tips for Working in Groups

Videotape

The Students of Building Virtual Worlds ‘99Jessica Abroms

Vince Allen

Zachary Amsdem

Joshua Anderson

John Arroyo

Kevin AuYoung

Evan Bernstein

Ziva Borlja

Kelly Bowles

Christine Chun

Jay Crossler

Matt Davidson

Chad Dawson

Bryan Dougherty

Blair Erickson

Ira Fay

Clifton Forlines

T.J. Gardner

Toby Goldstein

Khalid Goudeaux

Karyn Graff

Kristin Grasso

Dave Hall

Adrian Herbez

David Hirschfield

Joseph Hocking

Yik Lin Khoo

Matthew Kurtz

Seung Chan Lim

Jack Lin

Clint Luikart

Moises Manas

Adriana Moscatelli

Susan Murray

Herbert Yik-King Ng

Norman Papernick

Aaron Powers Michael Rankin

Valmiki Rao

Carlos Reverte

Jennifer Rode

Gavin Ross

Rodger Ruzanka

Matthew Shelby

Paul Sottosanti

David Stern-Gottfried

Levin Stevens

Mable Ting

Jina Valentine

Chris Weller

Jay Woodward

Sandra Yoon

Joel Young

Alexa Zimmerman

A Special Thank You to My Research Group

Kevin Christiansen

Lydia Choy

Tina Cobb

Dennis Cosgrove

Adam Fass

Cliff Forlines

Kristin Grasso

Shawn Lawson

Dan Maynes-Aminzade

Dan Moskowitz

Randy Pausch

Jeff Pierce

Jason Pratt

Angela Saval

Dave Stern-Gottfried

Desney Tan

Univ. of Virginia Adobe Chevron DARPA Intel

Additional Thanks

Microsoft NASA NSF PIXAR SAIC SUN

Summary

The world is changing. Very fast. Creativity comes from putting different

people (e.g. artists & engineers) together

CMU’s Entertainment Technology Center

Building Virtual Worlds course as a concrete

example of “creating creativity”

The Interdisciplinary Challenge of Entertainment Technology

Randy PauschEntertainment Technology Center

Carnegie Mellon Universitypausch@cs.cmu.edu

www.randypausch.comwww.cs.cmu.edu/etcwww.alice.orgwww.disneyquest.com