Nun’s Beach VR Development Blog #3
We’ve explored hardware for our VR project, now let’s get limp.
IT’S SOFTWARE TIME!
For the creation of NON VR digital artwork there are a myriad of iterated and constantly improving softwares (in the case of adobe that may be a stretch…)
As a 2D animator and film maker let me first share my standard NON VR creative softwares I use to do my job:
TVPAINT Animation aka “My Happy Place”
My beloved TVP. TVPain. Television Paint. The frenchest software you’ll ever use. TVPaint is a bitmap based animation package instead of vector, that translates to having less end control on your linework (you can’t resize or even really rotate your art!) BUT it means the quality of the line and brushes are absolutely gorgeous. TVPaint has the best draw feel of any software. Fight me.
VEGAS PRO
Solid video editing software, has a robust sound editing usage too!
ADOBE After Effects & Photoshop
Adobe has bad business practices and exploits their users but you can’t deny their softwares everyday usage and professional utilities. I’m also pretty sure Adobe is using sophisticated data gathering to make you redundant with super AIs (I’m not making this up)
Adobe analyzes your content using techniques such as machine learning in order to improve our products and services. This analysis may occur as the content is uploaded, sent, received, or stored using Adobe servers.
Yikes!
BLENDER
A FREE and very functional 3D software package. As a 2D animator a basic understanding of building and using 3D objects can solve a lot of logistical problems.
TOMIGHTY
If you’ve never tried using the Pomodor Technique in your workflow I highly recommend it for productivity! Tomighty is a free desktop timer to use the technique.
GOOGLE SHEETS
Gotta plan. Gotta plan fast and make cool lil tables and maybe put colours in there and track shots n revisions and roughs n cleans n backgrounds n colours n comps n highlights n shadows and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
With these softwares I have access to an entire Hollywood production studio. With these softwares 1 person is able to achieve what was once limited to Steven-bloody-Spielberg in terms of visual effects, editing and animation capabilities (some of the above programs have been worked on, iterated and perfected since 1988)!
So why, if we are here to discuss VR Software did we go through these?
I wanted to reinforce how young and undeveloped VR is as a software platform, especially for the independent creative. I don’t have access to any of my softwares in VR. So we must find new underdeveloped alternatives.
So if I have access to the height of visual production for a major hollywood studio in 2D, for VR what do I have? I have a handful of janky beta test software, where people haven’t even worked out basic functional UI and inputs. We’re talking pre-mouse levels of input here. The current methods to create high quality VR experiences is closer to video game development than accessible indie art. Programming languages, custom in house tools, new tech development, quality assurance teams and fat stacks a cash, blech.
It should also be noted the major VR Creative Software seem very volatile at the moment, as large companies such as Google and Facebook develop prototype tools and then drop any support for them seemingly at random.
Luckily the small software scene is growing fast and there are some promising tools out there, so let’s take a look.
QUILL by Smoothstep
Please note that as of 10/18/2021, the Oculus Quill application is no longer available for download and will not be supported or updated by Oculus. Quill has returned to its original roots under the ownership of founder Inigo Quilez and his company Smoothstep.
See this is what I mean.
Quill in my opinion is the most promising VR Animation package. It was (and at the time of writing this still is) exclusive to Oculus headsets and the facebook VR store. Facebook then randomly dropped the software but luckily returned it to the original owner Inigo Quilez. and is now being developed by Smoothstep. I’m waiting for it to release on steam with other non oculus headset inputs! I sadly haven’t gotten a chance to use the software yet as we know that I’ve refused to put facebook on my head. But give it some months and hopefully it will be free from oculus platform exclusivity. I’ve heard the UI is a bit of a nightmare but these are the areas that will hopefully improve over time and iteration.
If you are interested in getting into Quill it’s got a great active discord channel!
TILTBRUSH by Google
Google this week announced that it will be ending its support for its genre-defining VR painting app, Tilt Brush by Google, marking the end of a historic era for the immersive art & design scene.
AWWW COME ON! What the heck. Ok let’s try that again:
OPENBRUSH by ICOSA
Open Brush is a derivative made from the open source code of Tilt Brush, a room-scale 3D-painting virtual-reality application available from Google, originally developed by Skillman & Hackett.
Hell yeah, now we are talking. POWER TO THE PEOPLE!
So Tiltbrush got dropped by google but in a cool move they released the code as open source. Icosa an open collective of passionate devs quickly jumped in and started their Open Brush software, built off the solid framework of Tiltbrush. Tiltbrush had accomplished something that none of the other VR art packages I’ve used could, which is create a really fast and intuitive pipeline to creating art. With an intuitive control scheme that helped to remove the “software” barrier to just creating.
It was through using Open Brush that I realised I could actually work professionally and create in VR.
The software itself stopped being a hurdle to creating something and helped to empower it. It should be noted at the time of writing this (Nov 2021) Open Brush is still pretty limited in terms of functionality. There is no form of animation system and the environmental and lighting control is still very limited. But in terms of just getting in there and drawing and building spaces it’s really wonderful. Check out the Open Brush discord where I also lurk.
GRAVITY SKETCH by… Gravity Sketch?
I’ve only lightly tested Gravity Sketch, and I came to it just after getting a good feel for Open Brush. From what I can gather Gravity Sketch is a much more “professional” and technically minded VR art package. I want to test the software more, especially as from the above video I just learned you can easily bring in Open Brush art into the Gravity Sketch and make it more… “professional”. You gotta wear a tie when you work in it I guess. But yeah, seems like a solid package! But I can say that the UI is far less intuitive and immediate than Open Brush from my experience, but perhaps that larger barrier holds far more power under the hood? My beloved TVPaint is by no means intuitive.
CONCLUSION:
There are a bunch of other VR art softwares that I’ve experimented with or looked into, I’ll quickly list some more off just so we have em here for the curious:
MasterpieceVR
AnimVR
Kodon
Blocks
Sketchbox
vBuilder
But what you may notice with these softwares is there is a little less polish, a little less intuitiveness that I look for. For my own preferences I want that mysterious space between myself and the thing I’m creating to dissolve. This can be a hard gap to close when working digitally, but VR is offering a strange new space where you can start getting your whole body involved. It’s really neat! The dance of VR art.
For this VR research project (Nun’s Beach) I’m hanging my hat on Open Brush. It’s a wonderful and immediate software with a very open and accessible Dev team. Their discord channel is also fantastic and the devs will always listen to and respond to your feedback and software suggestions (shout-out to Open Brush dev Andy Bak who has been incredibly generous with his time on this project).
So I believe in the long run Open Brush will have a great lifespan. It’s important to find a software that can grow with you as a professional. I am hurting for some animation system’s within open brush but for the initial prototyping phase it’s fantastic. The “art” can also easily be exported to bring into other 3D packages to apply further coats of paint. An example would be to build an environment in Open Brush and then bring it into Unity to take it further. But shit… now I gotta learn Unity too? My head hurts. But a good kinda hurt. Brain growing pains.
See ya next blog when we will actually go into the pipeline and prototyping for my VR project, using Open Brush!
