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I think VR will change the way digital artist create

tbowren
Honored Guest
I am the Lead Technical Artist on an MMO at Carbine Studios in Aliso Viejo, CA. For the last 8 years I have been creating art tools, supporting artist, and generally keeping the content pipeline flowing. My primary tasks are to let the artist be the best artist they can be and make sure the programers get the data they need. Last year at E3 I heard about the Oculus Rift and have been trying to get a hold of one ever since. Not so much to play games with it (although I cant wait to get Skyrim working! and our own game hopefully ) but to create art tools with it. I checked daily for the kickstarter to come online and am backer 0000022. It is safe to say I have thought about the Oculus Rift every day, many times a day since last August.

More and more I see a shift to talented artists who want to work with their hands, stand at their desk, and have a more direct connection with their artwork. They almost never want to enter numbers into the computer and freak out when I bring up a command terminal. Some of them actually use their own money to purchase 24" cintiques because it feels more natural than using a mouse, even in 3D.

I talk to the 40+ artist here about how I see VR being used for content creation in the near future. They will be able to manipulate objects in one hand while panting in 3d with the other. They will see their dungeon and buildings in first person and adjust geometry with their hands like the short film "World Builder". Character riggers will be able to paint weights on a character that is the same scale as they are, reaching out to lift the arms, twist the neck, bend the elbows.

A few years (decade) ago Zbrush came onto the scene and totally disrupted character modeling industry. Instead of hiring computer users who could sculpt, we now hired sculptors who could use a computer.

For various reasons, the realm of content creation has largely been left to Autodesk but just like Zbrush came in and kicked over the apple cart, there is a ripe opportunity for a VR application to do the same.

In the last year I have been working with the Razer Hydra ,Leap Motion, and Kinect, for input ideas. I have played with engines such as Torque3d, Ogre3d, openFrameworks, Cinder, Unity, UDK, and our own inhouse engine to get a feel for how to create assets in those environments. I'm very excited to finally get my Rift (soon) and start to pull it all together and see if I can get some of these ideas prototyped.

I look forward to this forum being a great place to exchange ideas and share work.

Tony
34 REPLIES 34

SiggiG
Protege
Great topic, and I do share your enthusiasm for seeing new tools appear 🙂 I look forward to playing around with my Leap Motion kit in VR and look forward to see what MS will do with the new Kinect 2, but I worry that haptic feedback might hold this field back for quite some time. Have you given any thought to that problem?
CCP Games, EVE: Valkyrie developer | @SiggiGG

DeeKej
Explorer
I couldn't agree more. Sure, games are what will give this a push to the spotlight (or I guess it already has!), but I'm convinced that tools and the like is what will be what really gets VR into the mainstream. Imagine the day we have displays that allow us to see the virtual worlds as with life-like quality, and haptics that allow your hands to "touch" objects with the same details you feel in reality.. You wouldn't need much more to have a completely immersive experience when modelling/painting/typing etc. Add to that floating menus and whatnot, and you can get an amazing workspace in the environment of your choosing.

Edit: Also, imagine what impact this could have on things like meetings, lectures, conferences... I get goosebumps just imagining it. 😄 /end edit

We're not quite there, but soon. Very soon.

Me and some fellow students will be spending our summer trying to build these kinds of worlds and tools. Can't wait to see what will emerge from that. Can't wait for our uni's department to get our four Rifts 😄
//Computer Game Design student

nihilian
Honored Guest
I'm with you on this! VR will definitely change human-computer interaction.

I think the resolution and motion tracking tools are well on their way to ideal specs.
But one of the major areas of VR that seems to be lagging behind is physical feedback.
It'd be much much more convincing, to play games or to sculpt, if there are physical resistive feedbacks during collision, and not just vibratory like we have right now.

I have some high concept ideas but they're the type of stuff that might take engineers with knowledge of meta-materials to actually produce.

I'm also very excited to see what kind of content creation tools you're designed, if there are any opportunities to test some of these I would definitely volunteer myself.

Consider this my application. 🙂
http://artofze.wix.com/portfolio

cybereality
Grand Champion
Yeah, I totally agree. I think one of the big challenges with creating 3D assets is working with 2D input devices. A mouse is great for Photoshop, but not so great with 3D content creation tools (like Max, Maya, etc.). The 3D mice help somewhat, but still aren't the end solution. I would love to see what could be done with something like the Razer Hydra or other 3D input devices.
AMD Ryzen 7 1800X | MSI X370 Titanium | G.Skill 16GB DDR4 3200 | EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 | Corsair Hydro H110i Gigabyte RX Vega 64 x2 | Samsung 960 Evo M.2 500GB | Seagate FireCuda SSHD 2TB | Phanteks ENTHOO EVOLV

craigotron
Honored Guest
I played with a $30 iOS game/plastic gun today, and I think we all are already walking around with a very good input device - our phones. It seemed VR ready, off-the-shelf.

MrGeddings
Explorer
Good thoughts, I hope also that it provides more thought not just for artists but games themselves, I mean to be honest the level of artistic detail in most games today is really mind blowing if you think about it, even in games that dont have state of the art graphics like World of Warcraft, still has a lot of good nice, art assets, but the problem is i think in most games today players are so focused on , killing the bad guys, and "completing the goals" you really do lose a bit of that exploration with most people today. They are so fixed on rushing through the content to get to the top level or the most kills etc. I think VR would bring back a bigger focus to artists work. Maybe they will actually notice their surroundings more because it feels more real. And game designers will put more of a focus on the world itself as a character instead of just a sort of backdrop to get from one goal to the next :-).

DeeKej
Explorer
I think this is relevant to the topic 🙂

http://www.roadtovr.com/2013/04/03/gdc- ... arter-4495

First attempt at a CAD-program for use with Razer Hydra (and Rift once they get theirs).

aabel
Honored Guest
"cybereality" wrote:
Yeah, I totally agree. I think one of the big challenges with creating 3D assets is working with 2D input devices. A mouse is great for Photoshop, but not so great with 3D content creation tools (like Max, Maya, etc.). The 3D mice help somewhat, but still aren't the end solution. I would love to see what could be done with something like the Razer Hydra or other 3D input devices.



Actually the mouse is terrible in photoshop and fares better in traditional 3d content tools like max and maya. It's not fun or ideal but it works.

Right now the best solution available is the cintiq or the Yiynova. Having your hand and eye cooridinate just about as accurately as they do in tradtional media and having pressure sensitivity is the best thing going right now for content creation.

The hydra with it's lack of pressure sensitivity has a major up hill battle and will really only be suitable for some tasks in content creation, I don't see 3d modeling being one of those tasks. Animation on the other hand where 3d rotation is what the job is about is ideally suited for a device like the hydra and really where Sixense should be expending their efforts in my opinion.

tlopes
Honored Guest
I look forwards to seeing the awesome art that artists produce for VR (and in VR?). Heck, when I first got my dev-kit I spent around twenty minutes staring at barrels from different angles in the Tuscany demo. 😛