Camera movement for chasing a subject with unknown behavior based on real-time viewpoint goodness evaluation

We propose a method that automatically generates a smooth chase camera movement to follow a subject, a user-controlled character or a character with unknown behaviors, in a 3D environment freely in real time. We consider three objectives in generating the smooth-camera movement: to avoid collisions with obstacles, to avoid subject occlusions, and to choose a good viewpoint for looking at the subject. We evaluate the goodness of viewpoints by using a viewpoint entropy map and choose the best viewpoint as the goal position of the camera in real time. Afterwards, we move the camera toward the goal position by following the shortest path, found by the A* algorithm, on a roadmap graph. The resulting camera movement has a high degree of freedom and fulfills the three objectives above. Our method is effective for third-person-view 3D applications in tracking the real-time movement of user-controlled characters in exploring a 3D environment.