AniMaster: From Story Texts to Animated Videos via Cinematic Script Generation and Interactive Authoring

Abstract

Recent advances in Video Generation Models (VGMs) have demonstrated strong capabilities in producing short video clips. However, it is still challenging for everyday creators to leverage these models to produce polished long-form animated videos from brief story texts. Informed by a formative study with both novice creators and film experts, we identify two major challenges of interactive video authoring: (1) the lack of expertise in translating free-form story texts to professional cinematic scripts and finally high-quality animated videos, and (2) the absence of effective ways to convey video design intents to key variables of visual storytelling, such as shot composition, camera controls and shot sequencing. Drawing on narratology and film studies, we propose a three-layer design framework that defines the key design dimensions across three layers (i.e., story texts, cinematic scripts, and animated videos) as well as the translation between them. Built on this framework, we present AniMaster, a VGM-powered authoring tool to enable everyday creators to easily produce smooth animated videos from free-form story texts. AniMaster automatically expands brief story texts to detailed cinematic scripts, and further translates cinematic scripts into polished videos by following professional visual storytelling principles. It also allows users to interactively edit the scripts and refine the generated videos via text instructions and intuitive interactions. We extensively evaluated AniMaster through an in-depth user study with 16 participants, two case studies, and expert interviews with 2 film professionals. The results demonstrate the effectiveness and usability of AniMaster in helping everyday creators create polished animated videos from free-form story texts.