Oculus Quest 2 - second gen VR headset AND Quill Animation Software

[Svengali]

Today I stumbled into something completely new to me.

For a while now I've been aware of the Virtual Reality headsets (featured in Speilberg's "Ready Player One" a few years ago), but I've been in the dark as to how 3d VR animation and the VR gaming environment was created. Today, I spent several hours looking at more than a few YouTube videos demonstrating "Quill", a VR painting system that is used to build and animate 3d objects and construct 3d worlds... fascinating.

The leading Quill artist, Goro Fujita, has dozens of YouTube video tutorials which show how Quill works and show reels with hundreds of examples of his animation work done over the last 4 years as resident artist at FaceBook, which bought Oculus Rift (from one of the leading developers of VR headset equipment) to get in the VR game.

Currently, there is a 2nd generation version of the product called Oculus Quest 2 that has been released. (Frankly all I know about it is from watching several YouTube reviews and unboxings and a quick visit to the Oculus website,) Anyway, below are links to an introductory video showing the VR headset and the Quill software in action and a brief example of some VR animation.


1. The Making of "A Moment in Time" using Quill Animation Software
2. "A Moment in Time", a VR World Video

Anyone else familiar with, or using Oculus Quest 2 (and maybe Quill)?

sven

[slowtiger]

I've tested it briefly some years ago at a conference, yes, impressive technology, but I decided it's not for me. Doesn't add anything to what I want to tell, and takes away a lot from what I find important in design.

[Peter Wassink]

Fujita is great, i also really love this guy:
Daniel Martin Peixe
He is a Disney animator and makes really good work in Quill, a lot of really well drawn tableau's
He also created an animated comic or film/comic hybrid: 'The Remedy' which i would count as one of the very few succesfull examples of this niche artform.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmhYZ1 ... aqtvKOKp0Q

i did a weeklong VR animation workshop a few years ago, it is magic the possibilities this technology summons.
and also such a kick to draw spatially.
sketch a tiny house... then scale it up to giant proportions and suddenly you feel like an ant... its awesome!
but i also must say working long ours with the goggles was tiring to the eyes for me

I did buy a Quest2 las year but havent got it working with Quill ...yet...because quill is not supported by the quest unless you hook it up to a powerfull pc.
my powerfull laptob doesn't connect to the quest... so i'm stuck at this point.

[schwarzgrau]

I just tried drawing in 3D space a few years ago and it was really interesting and a kind of unique experience. But I imagine it to be too tedious to use it for animation, but a friend of mine plans on getting a VR-setup for storyboarding and maybe animatics.

[Svengali]

Thanks to everyone who replied.

I am truly intrigued by the videos from Goro Fujita in which he shows his admirable work, especially the "annual animation sketch collections" for 2019 and 2020.

Also, for anyone who has had some experience with Rigging and Cameras, check out this hour long tutorial, it's a revelation and demonstrates the sophistication of the Quill environment with floating interfaces including the timeline and easy figure construction with psuedo IK keyframing, wow.

I'm very tempted to invest in a Quest 2 VR system and the Quill software to test it out. Painting and animating inside a 3d space is a dream I've had for many years, going WAY BACK to my days as a wannabe abstract-expressionist painter (reference de Kooning, Franz Kline, Motherwell and Gorky among others)...

sven

EDIT: But, as I look at other Quill videos I discover the other half of the VR creative process is rendering out the Quill animation - in practical terms it means acquiring and learning additional software before outputting the results for viewing. So there's more that needs to be researched and considered.

[NathanOtano]

I experimented with it and with a VR artist for some visual development and storyboarding and it's crazy good and promising ! A quest 2 isn't a big investment, I really think you should try! For now import/export is a bit tricky cause frames are all individual objects if it's not transformation layers, but hey in 2D it's the same. Just that 3d isn't used to 3D keyframes yet xD

[Svengali]

After a short vacation in the North Woods, I'm returning to TVPaint and still seriously considering the purchase of the Oculus Quest 2 very soon, then investigating the Quill painting software (which is currently a free download).

Over on YouTube, I found a series of introductory, how-to-use-Quill tutorials (18 in number, each one very short), after subscribing to the "ANIMBRUSH ACADEMY" ...interesting name?

Here is a link to their first tutorial...

sven