LumiMood: A Creativity Support Tool for Designing the Mood of a 3D Scene

The aesthetic design of 3D scenes in game content enhances players’ experience by inducing desired emotions. Creating emotionally engaging scenes involves designing low-level features, such as color distribution, contrast, and brightness. This study presents LumiMood, an AI-driven creativity support tool (CST) that automatically adjusts lighting and post-processing to create moods for 3D scenes. LumiMood supports designers by synthesizing reference images, creating mood templates, and providing intermediate design steps. Our formative study with 10 designers identified distinct challenges in mood design based on the participants’ experience levels. A user study involving 40 designers revealed that using LumiMood benefits the designers by streamlining workflow, improving precision, and increasing mood intention accuracy. Results indicate that LumiMood supports clarifying mood concepts and improves interpretation of lighting and post-processing, thus resolving the challenges. We observe the effect of template based designing and discuss considerable factors for AI-driven CSTs for users with varying levels of experiences.