Nun’s Beach VR Development Blog #4
Howdy Do! This blog is all about the WHY? and the HUH? of VR in my own workflow as an animator and indie artist.
I have 3 research questions to answer with this project, which the answers to are perhaps more important than the project itself.
The answer to these questions will conclude if I should be pursuing VR in my career or if it’s a side interest.
THE BIG 3 Q’s
- Can I work in a VR Pipeline?
Is it fun to use, will it be awkward and importantly will it make me sick? What is the production pipeline like and what practical use in my field (2D Animation) can it ultimately have, if at all? - Does my film making skillset translate into the VR medium?
How complimentary is my current skillset with VR and what new skills will I need to develop and learn? - Can a VR experience be truly immersive and worth the effort in 2021/2022?
I want to see for myself, through my creative process if I truly believe in VR.
So far I have been disappointed with VR. Is the tech 10 years away from what I desire and is this all ultimately a gimmick for the few who can afford to use it? And how is this any better than a comfortable viewing experience on a screen?
Let’s keep those in the back of our heads as we move forwards. This proof of concept project I make will be made for the primary reason to solve these nugget busters.
I’m more than halfway through production on this VR project with now 650.7 hours logged in SteamVr (the background software you run to experience VR, this number is a direct indication of the time I’ve had VR open). I’ll do a quick check in on these 3 research questions now and eventually conclude them later with my final project blog.
Can I work in a VR Pipeline?
I see this question like:
Could I be a Flight Attendant?
Being a flight attendant you need to have the right personality and emotional connections to a very specific set of things. To some the idea of a flight attendant is romantic. Working 40,000 feet in the air, travelling from continent to continent and having access to places the general public doesn’t. Hotel rooms, procedure, a hint of danger and if you’re lucky a little hat. But for others (like myself) the idea of working in a claustrophobic tube, being taken further and further from home and needing to assist an anxious clientele… it sounds like hell to me.
Is working in VR day in and day out hell? Is having a big hunk of shit on your head and face while tethered to a computer via a cable like a deep sea diver just a miserable way to spend your time? What are the long term affects of that level of environmental and reality disconnection? Or maybe… maybe it IS romantic? Maybe the thrill of creating and working in virtual spaces is immersive and incredible and the ability to use your full body to create digital art a breakthrough?
So 650 hours in where am I at on this Question?
Working in VR can be exciting, it can feel revolutionary and like you are at the forefront of… something. The issue I keep finding though is this: The forefront of… what? Who is this for? Why am I doing this? What am I getting from this that I can’t already get in my familiar and comfortable existing working methods? Also, it’s incredibly awkward. Headsets and hardware and technical issues, resolutions and frame rates and GPU shortages and all that BS. We just aren’t there yet.
I’ll aim to have a fuller and more concrete conclusion on this in the final days of this project.
Does my film making skillset translate into the VR medium?
There is definitely a learning curve to working in VR. A lot of initial knowledge and info must be found. It’s not something you can just pick up in an afternoon. If I hadn’t had this art grant to dedicate a full time dive into a VR practice I’m unsure I would've found the time and energy on my own to pursue it and overcome the various initial speedbumps. I’ve only scratched the surface of what VR art can be and the tools and skills you could use to approach it. I ALMOST learned some game engines like Unity and Unreal but chickened out at the last second as to how daunting that undertaking would be. Like I installed the softwares, they’re on my hard drive right now. I even loaded up some tutorials… but that’s as far as I got. The rabbit hole of game engines and VR is a career’s worth. I concluded that’s not me and that’s ok.
What I COULD apply though is my basic skillsets of planned production and project themes and messages. Initial prototyping and experimentation to eventually find the project pathway that fit within scope. While also narrowing in on the theme and “artistic” approach of the piece and what I am trying to say with it. These skills are universal for any Artistic practice I believe and the same application for 2D animated film can be applied to VR.
BUT the thing that I haven’t worked out in that application is: how the viewer/audience would then experience it? With a film I end up with a video file that I just need to put some eyes and ears in front of and it linearly does the rest. I curate a very straight forwards A-B experience and manipulate the viewer to feel things. But VR? I make a space… then I plonk them in it and… it’s now up the viewer/audience to do the rest really. I can make a linear immersive VR narrative experience where a story happens around you, but you still have your limited vantage point. I can’t really play with editing and shot composition the way I normally would and TIME works very differently. It’s much more stage theatre than film, I think a theatre director would have an easier time of it.
We have a whole language of film, it’s well documented and we know what works and what doesn’t. For editing we can make our shot changes that sync up with the viewers eye blinks to link the experience to their biological rhythms. Hold a shot for the length of a deep inhale. Create a rhythm of the edit that builds tension, use camera angles and shot compositions to create unease and a well timed camera move to bring somebody to tears. All those arrows in my quiver kinda fall on the floor within VR. Linear film making is all about the manipulation of an audience into feeling the things you want them to feel, to relate and connect and notice the things you the director need them to experience in order to ultimately say something.
In VR? I don’t know hey.
One of the best linear VR narrative experiences I’ve found, which I’ve also forced maybe 10 people to experience is AGE OF SAIL. It’s such a beautiful and immersive piece of story telling. It also must have cost millions of dollars and a huge technical crew. It came out in 2018 and I haven’t seen anything like it since… that may be an indication that we haven’t figured out how to apply the film making skillset into VR yet. I also would ask what does this film offer in VR that it couldn’t also provide in a traditional video format? Sure it’s cool an immersive and being on a big boat and around the characters is neat, but I’ve also seen people totally miss key moments of the story because they were looking the wrong direction. The dialogue scenes are pretty boring as you sit stationarily watching these characters, missing all nuance of facial performance or drama. We don’t get character close ups, no little subtle artistic indications in the edit with cutaways etc. I would argue this film would be more impactful in a traditional format with half the budget and crew (I counted around 70 crew on this piece), while also being universally accessible through a screen VS a bit of a gimmick to those who have the means to access VR. Oh hey look at that, they have a full traditional theatrical version of the film, with all the editing tricks etc and it’s fantastic:
So… I dunno what I’m working towards here but I’m not sounding too keen on it all am I? I don’t want to be discouraging but I’ll say my best VR experiences haven’t come close to my best experiences with film.
Not even close.
Can a VR experience be truly immersive and worth the effort in 2021/2022?
This is a two part question.
Part 1. Can a VR experience be truly immersive:
YES. I’m actually answering this as a yes. I have had some very “awakening” experiences in VR where I was fully immersed. But it was never a curated narrative experience, it was rather a more inward experience where I became immersed in my own self and mind with VR operating as a kind of catalyst for that. The primary experiences I have had with that are as follows:
Ayahuasca
DeepStates [VR]
Visitations
Playne
You’ll notice all these experiences are non narrative. Rather inward meditative explorations and often psychedelic. My conclusion is that the true value of VR is connecting with self. If I were to pursue further VR projects these are the kinds of works I wish to make. The creation of safe environments to find yourself inside of. Linear narrative in VR seems like a simple gimmick when compared to that potential.
Part 2. Is VR worth the effort in 2021/2022:
Ooof, that’s a toughie. IF you are truly curious and interested (and have some cash to burn) I would say yes, follow it and see where it takes you. The question breaks apart further if we ask if it’s worth making content in VR vs experiencing content in VR.
It’s worth experiencing VR provided people are pushing the boundaries and discovering the language of VR, which is slowly crawling ahead.
Artistic creation in VR is tougher, and probably not worth it yet. The software, hardware etc is still so far off. I believe in say 2024 or so we may start to be where I wish we were. The future of VR is hard to know, especially with the “metaverse” etc coming to destroy it, or perhaps empower it? The way I see it is if Meta pushes VR software and hardware forwards by injecting insane amounts of cash into the development space, then that creates a benefit for all the other experiences and headsets that aren’t linked to facebook and meta. Like apple pushing phone tech and displays so that we can now just get android phones haha. So I’d say don’t get involved with any of that META business and wait for the ethical, advertising free alternatives that will grow around that poisoned ecosphere.
SO that concludes this 650 hours of research portion. I will finally touch on these questions again when I make it to my conclusion, this was a check in.
UP NEXT WILL BE ACTUAL PIPELINE AND PROCESS STUFF!
