VarCity - the video: the struggles and triumphs of leveraging fundamental research results in a graphics video production

Kenneth Vanhoey, Carlos Eduardo Porto de Oliveira, Hayko Riemenschneider, András Bódis-Szomorú, Santiago Manén, Danda Pani Paudel, Michael Gygli, Nikolay Kobyshev, Till Kroeger, Dengxin Dai, Luc Van Gool

Abstract: VarCity - the Video is a short documentary-style CGI movie explaining the main outcomes of the 5-year Computer Vision research project VarCity. Besides a coarse overview of the research, we present the challenges that were faced in its production, induced by two factors: i) usage of imperfect research data produced by automatic algorithms, and ii) human factors, like federating researchers and a CG artist around a similar goal many had a different conception of, while no one had a detailed overview of all the content. Successive achievement was driven by some ad-hoc technical developments but more importantly of detailed and abundant communication and agreement on common best practices.