 INSCAPE is a unique integrating collaborative tool supporting a wide range of devices and media formats to enable digital content creators to plan, build, experience and publish interactive multimedia stories
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Product - Core Features
A Closer Look at INSCAPE INSCAPE is designed to support you along the whole story creation process. In order to give you flexibility, efficiency and an advanced set of features, we have structured INSCAPE software suite around a core set of tools integrated in the main application which provides a unified interface to plan, assemble and turn the story into an interactive masterwork. This environment covers the essential authoring tasks through five dedicated modules as shown in the image below:
INSCAPE interface is customisable for added flexibility. Each module can be resised and toolbars reconfigured to best fit your way of working. Before we look at features in more details, it's important to understand the concept of INSCAPE objects.
INSCAPE Objects Story, stages and situations contain INSCAPE Objects. An INSCAPE Object is an asset used in the creation of a story and can be something as simple as a 2D image, sound or path or as complicated as a character or device. INSCAPE objects are core to the authoring process you will work with them more than any other aspect of the application through the Object Editor. In the following tutorial you will learn how to manipulate INSCAPE objects to create interactive scenarios but for now there are a number of concepts that it is useful to know. An INSCAPE object is more than a simple asset. When you import an object into INSCAPE, information and extra characteristics are added to the object. This added value can be divided into 4 categories.
When an object is imported into INSCAPE you have the option of adding extra information to the objects description through Metadata. This extra information allows the object to be more accurately categorised and, therefore, allows it to be searched for in a large database of objects. Metadata categories may include information like the object’s author, the type of object, the objects theme (i.e. if the object belongs to a certain genre of story) and the date in which the object was created and whether the object has occurred in any other INSCAPE stories.
All INSCAPE objects have a list of properties which can be modified, either through the Object Editor (more on that later) or interactively, in run-time, as a product of interactions with other objects or user interactions in INSCAPE. Properties usually simple characteristics of the object like color, size and, when imported into a story, position on stage.
INSCAPE objects are also imbued with higher level behaviors we call ‘Actions’. Simply put and action is what an INSCAPE object can do. These actions give an object its interactive potential and can range from the simple (i.e. a sound can either be played or stopped or looped or played once) to the more complex, in the case of characters where animations are attached to this type INSCAPE object allowing the character to walk, run, jump, skip etc. These actions can be triggered by other objects or user interactions in run time and our used when you author interactive scenarios.
Events control what and how INSCAPE objects relate to the INSCAPE system and what needs to happen when you play the story. Typically you define what will happen when the object is interacted with, e.g. a mouse click, or how often the object should update. Events are high level commands that give you a great flexibility and access to different levels of control over your interactive story. Now that we have seen what objects are, we can have a quick look at how essential authoring tasks are accomplished in INSCAPE.
INSCAPE core features and modules
The Story Planner is an incredibly versatile tool that can be used for many different purposes from annotating objects to writing treatments and story boards (as is shown here) and is often (although not always) used in the first instance to gather early pre-production texts and visual materials before embarking on implementing a story.
The Objects Browser is split into two main sections (divided by tabs at the top of the tool), the ‘cast’ and the ‘library’. The cast contains objects currently in use in the project and can be sorted by their type and viewed as a grid of icons or a list. The library contains INSCAPE objects currently available. In this Beta Version of the software the library shows a relatively modest set of objects contained locally on your computers hard drive. However, in the final version of INSCAPE, the library will be able to give access to an online repository of INSCAPE objects, where distributed users can share their creations. Since this repository may contain many thousands of objects we have included advanced search procedures which give users options for searching for different object based on the metadata for each object.
A story in the Story Editor into logical containers known as ‘stages’ and ‘situations’ which are arranged in a global ‘story’ container. The use of these containers is flexible but their purpose is to divide a story up into logical chunks which could represent, for example, scenes in an interactive movie, levels in a computer game or chapters in an interactive textbook. The subdivision of Stages into Situations is also a useful one, allowing for the grouping and sub-grouping of interactive objects, For example, you may choose to use the stage level to organise non-active objects (backgrounds scenery etc.) and the situation to place dynamic objects (characters, props triggers etc). Rather like a scenes in a play this means that you can maintain a constant backdrop whilst subdividing sequences of action into smaller components.
The Object Editor also allows you to edit the object’s properties actions and events and is therefore the key editor for adding interactivity to your story, whether it be adding a simple input device or programming a character.
This widow can also be used to preview the story using play controls placed below the viewing window. In the upper left area of the window are the modifier and camera controls. These allow the user to change viewpoints and cameras and move, scale and rotate objects in the scene.
Extended Features Please see the Extended Features section to find out about INSCAPE additional capabilities.
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Metadata
On the far left of the Application window is the Story Planner. In this case the Story Plan is composed of story board consisting of both images and text divided into separate sections or logical units we call ‘Slices’.
At the bottom/middle of the screen is the Story Editor. The Story Editor feature is among many of INSCAPE’s unique features and replaces the ‘timeline’ used in applications like Director and Flash. Since INSCAPE is a tool dedicated to the authoring of interactivity we have abandoned the outmoded linear timeline metaphor in favour of a non-linear spatial organisation of assets and story chunks.
The Object Editor is your primary access point for information on each INSCAPE objects in your story.
The Stage Editor is placed, by default, in the upper middle section of the INSCAPE widow and shows a view of the story as it will eventually be presented. This view is dependent on which stage or situation is selected.