Tilt Brush - VR Art Program!

[Moogle]

So with preorders now open for the Oculus Rift, my hype meter is off the charts once more for VR! Decided to snoop around a bit & found a program called Tilt Brush which will be released for (both?) Oculus & Vive. Basically, it lets you scalp (& still do 2D) all while being super interactive with your work. This really is so neat as it gives those who are only intune to working on digital programs a chance to get up and move just like those who would traditionally.

There's currently no release date for this as it'll be brought out when HTC Vive launches, but oh man the wait is killing me.

[Metsys]

This is why I'm getting the Vive rather than the Rift, for the room-based tracking which allows you to do stuff like this. (I understand the Rift will have room tracking later but in Q3/Q4.)

I absolutely can't wait for a VR version of something like 3D-Coat. Once that comes out I probably won't have any desire to work with real clay ever again. This will overcome so many of the shortcomings of sculpting digitally it's not even funny.

- - - Updated - - -

This is really cool. It's a 15-minute real-time (i.e. not time lapse) video of an artist creating a 3D creature from start to finish using Tilt Brush.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYY-DZ14i9E

Again, still can't wait for solid mesh applications of this.

[Chrysocyon]

Woah, that's crazy to watch, I wonder how it feels to draw like that. I never thought painting would wind up in virtual reality. What a time to be alive.

[Noxid]

Looks like a lot of fun. At 600 bucks, it'll be a while before I can afford to splurge on a VR headset though, heh. Still, it's a cool application of the tech and I'd love to try it out. It'll have to see how well it's suited to more detailed stuff, though. I'm skeptic of the accuracy of mapping your input to the 3D space, especially without haptic feedback.

[Metsys]

The haptic feedback one is tricky. I figure if they do something like a 3d modeler using VR, you would feel a vibration as your hand passes inside the mesh. That might be enough, but just being able to position your hand in 3D space would help carve out the shapes you want a lot easier than it would be with just a 2D screen.

Being able to touch clay and feel (as opposed to see) the parts of the form that protrude out too far is one benefit that real clay will always have. Creating a maquette of a character is a really a special and strangely intimate experience, especially as it approaches full-size. But the logistics of doing work like that is immense and not within most people's means unless you have a large studio space.

There are some very interesting solutions to haptic feedback that are pretty much spot-on as far as physical resistance is concerned. I go to SIGGRAPH every other year or so, and a few years back I got to use a haptic system which is best described as a wire-frame cube made of metal, with a metal sphere suspended with 8 wires connecting to each corner of the cube. The metal cabling was attached to very strong and accurate motors, which not only detected the position of the ball in 3D space but would also provide resistance. The resistance was so strong that I literally could not push the ball through the solid object displayed on the screen (unlike the magnetic levitation system I got to try out, which would turn off and have to cool down if you put too much resistance on the 3D surface), and it was accurate enough that I could feel wood grain texture as I rolled the ball across the surface. Really, really cool tech, but as you can imagine, it's limited in the space it occupies and you have to navigate around the 8 wires suspending it. Also, because it was a ball, there was no buttons or things like that which you could use for commands.

Some other stuff I've learned about the Rift recently: you can already use multiple cameras/sensors to provide better coverage of your headset, meaning that with enough you could probably get near room-sized tracking with just that, but the tracking has to be pretty accurate to not get sick, so a proper 15'×15' sensor space like what the Vive has now would still be nice.

Even though getting up and would be fun, there is already a sit-down 3D sculpting application available for the Rift and the Razer Hydra controllers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnqFdSa5p7w It's called VR Clay and actually looks pretty good! This might be a bit more practical than waving your hands around a room, but hey, looks like the tech is already out there!