Films and shorts, animated pieces, games and serious games, and interactive experiences such as training simulations and installations are only as good as the tools and pipelines that produce them. In this call, media refers to all of these works: the audiovisual and interactive works that audiences experience in XR. Making immersive media raises problems that conventional media do not: the audience controls the viewpoint, interacts with the scene, and is embodied in it; media must run in real time on constrained hardware; and the people who create it are often domain experts, such as educators, trainers, artists, and designers, rather than programmers. These challenges arise across different forms of media creation, from movies and their Virtual Production workflows to games and animation. However, research on these problems is currently scattered across computer graphics, animation, HCI, game, and XR communities.
This workshop brings these communities together around a single theme: how immersive media is made. It covers authoring tools, capture-to-asset workflows, animation and real-time graphics, and the design and evaluation of the resulting experiences, across films and shorts, animation, games and serious games, and interactive experiences. The focus is on the creator's process and on the technical means that support it.
The workshop has two tracks: a Technical Track, with peer-reviewed papers published in the proceedings, and a Festival Track, where selected works are screened and demonstrated in a dedicated session. The same contribution can appear in both, and this is strongly encouraged.
Multiple application domains are considered, including but not limited to cinematic VR, industry, games, entertainment, healthcare, cultural heritage, education, etc. Moreover, VR-related technologies spanning the entire “virtuality continuum” can be considered. A non-exhaustive list of workshop topics is provided below.
Authoring tools and production pipelines
Authoring tools and interfaces for non-programmers, including in-XR (immersive) authoring.
Scenario and experience authoring for training, education, and serious games.
Virtual production, real-time and in-engine production, and previsualization in XR.
Collaborative, distributed, and low-cost production workflows.
From capture to media assets
Turning reconstructions (photogrammetry, neural fields, Gaussian splats) into editable, animatable, and interactive assets.
Scene editing, adaptation, and cleanup for immersive experiences.
Neural and implicit shape representations for media creation.
Performance and motion capture for media production.
Animation, characters, and real-time graphics
Character modeling, rigging, facial and body animation.
Performance-driven, physics-based, and procedural animation.
Sketch-, gesture-, and multimodal interfaces for animation, and animation editing in immersive environments.
Procedural modeling of environments, objects, and characters.
Stylized and physically based real-time rendering, virtual cinematography, and real-time visual effects.
Designing the experience: narrative, games, and sound
Cinematic VR, 360° and volumetric video production, and narrative design for spatial media.
Directing attention and viewpoint as a design problem.
Game design, serious games, and gamification as media-creation problems.
Spatial audio, sound design, and multisensory or haptic effects as part of the media.
Evaluation
Evaluating creator workflows: effort, control, learning curve, and production efficiency.
Evaluating the resulting experiences: engagement, comprehension, and technical and creative quality.
Reproducibility and documentation of production pipelines.
The Technical Track welcomes work with a clear technical or scientific contribution: new techniques, tools, systems, pipelines, user studies, and evaluations.
Full papers (4-8 pages) presenting mature contributions with empirical or technical results.
Short papers (2-4 pages) presenting early-stage work, technical notes, case studies, or position papers.
Page limits do not include references. Accepted papers will be included in the IEEE VR 2027 workshop proceedings and submitted to the IEEE Xplore Digital Library. At least one author per accepted paper must register for the workshop, and authors will give a short presentation. Demos and videos accompanying a paper are encouraged, and authors are invited to also present them in the Festival Track (see below).
Authors of Technical Track papers are strongly encouraged to bring the artifact behind their paper (a prototype, a demo, or a short film or game made with the proposed technique) to the Festival Track. The paper explains the technique, and the artifact lets attendees experience it. The Festival Track deadline falls after the Technical Track notification, so authors of accepted papers can add a festival contribution, with a short artifact description (one page is enough) that declares the link to the paper. The two tracks are reviewed independently, and the acceptance of a paper does not depend on its artifact.
Technical Track: papers must be submitted through the EasyChair system. Submissions must be in English, anonymized, and in PDF format, using the formatting guidelines for VGTC conference style papers (https://tc.computer.org/vgtc/publications/conference/). Authors of accepted papers will be expected to provide a 10-minute presentation at the workshop and invited to show artifacts related to their contribution in the Festival track. Proceedings of the Technical track will be submitted for inclusion in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library.
The Festival Track lets attendees experience emerging works directly, rather than only through presentations. Selected works are presented in a dedicated screening and demonstration session.
Accepted artifacts may include:
Films and shorts (immersive, 360°, or animated).
Interactive experiences, games, and serious games.
Research prototypes with a substantial audiovisual or interactive component.
Demonstrations of tools and pipelines, live or recorded.
A submission consists of the artifact (a video, build, or link) and a short description (1-2 pages) covering the concept, the production process and technical approach, the tools used (including any generative or AI-assisted components, described transparently), lessons learned, and how the work is to be experienced (format, hardware, duration). Works must be feasible to present at the venue on a headset, laptop, screen, or projection; the organizers will coordinate with the conference on equipment. Festival contributions are non-archival, and works that have already been shown or published elsewhere are welcome. At least one creator per accepted work must attend to present it.
Festival Track: submissions (description PDF and a link to the artifact) will be collected through a Google Form. The short description must be in English, anonymized, and in PDF format, using the formatting guidelines for VGTC conference style papers (https://tc.computer.org/vgtc/publications/conference/). Authors of accepted contributions will be invited to present their artifact at the workshop. Proceedings of the Festival track will not be part of the IEEE Xplore Digital Library.
Technical Track papers are reviewed by at least two domain experts in a double-blind process, in line with IEEE VR requirements. Failure to anonymize a submission will result in desk rejection. Publication in the workshop does not prevent later non-verbatim publication as a full paper or journal article based on new developments. Review decisions are final, and authors of accepted papers are expected to submit a revised version addressing the reviewers' comments.
Festival Track submissions are reviewed by the program committee for relevance to the workshop theme, quality of realization, and technical or creative merit. Reviews are not anonymous, since the artifacts identify their creators.
Papers that were rejected from IEEE VR and that fit within the workshop themes can be resubmitted for special consideration at the workshop. In order to do so, please submit a revised version of the paper you submitted to IEEE VR via EDAS, including your meta-review as well as a summary of changes (max one A4 page) as additional content. All papers that do not fulfill these conditions will not be considered. In the summary, please describe how you addressed the points raised in the meta-review. Please note that papers have to fit within the workshop’s page limit. These papers will not be reviewed a second time, but rather, a decision will be made based on a juried process on how well the issues raised in the previous review process were addressed.
Technical Track (to be included in the IEEE proceedings):
Submission deadline: January 17, 2026
Notification deadline: January 22, 2026
Camera-ready deadline: January 30, 2026 (for inclusion in IEEE Digital Library)
Festival Track (including artifacts accompanying technical papers):
Submission deadline: January 21, 2027
Notification deadline: January 29, 2027
Final materials: February 5, 2027
Workshop date: February 27-28, 2027
Each deadline is 23:59:59 AoE (Anywhere on Earth) == GMT/UTC-12:00 on the stated day, no matter where the submitter is located