VR Animation with Quill

Introduction

360 Alley enjoys working with new technology, and as one of the company’s artists, I’m interested in seeking out new ways to use technology to make better digital art in more efficient ways. So, while we do a lot of work on augmented reality projects as a company, I’ve also started to do a lot of research and work in the relatively new world of virtual reality art. Specifically, using the VR program Quill to create 3D drawings and animations.

How does VR work?

Quill runs on the Oculus Rift and Rift S VR Headsets. The typical VR hardware setup includes a headset with goggles that allow you to see the virtual space around you with 3D depth perception, and two controllers to hold in the left and right hands. Through various methods of motion tracking, the headset and controllers feed the computer an accurate reading of the positions of the user’s head and hands in real space, and this gives them the ability to use their body’s movements to look around and interact with objects in the virtual space. There are many potential applications for this tech, but as artists, this hardware mostly excites us because of the ways it provides new and simpler ways to create digital 3D assets. VR gives you the ability to move and see in 3D as you create a 3D object, instead of the traditional method of creating 3D art by viewing and interacting with the 2D interface of a monitor. Just that baseline change in hardware makes so much of the process feel a lot more comfortable, intuitive, and efficient. For a quick demonstration of why VR can be beneficial for 3D artists, check out this video.

Drawing Strokes

Everything in Quill is built by drawing and manipulating strokes. Using the VR controller as a three-dimensional pen, a line mark is left suspended in 3D space. Once the line is drawn it can be manipulated by other more traditional 3D tools. Tools like select, grab, inflate, and paint all give you the ability to quickly make adjustments to your strokes even if they don’t come out exactly correct when you first draw them.

Building 3D Forms

That’s all well and good for creating 3D sketches and line art, but what if you actually want to make a fully fleshed out 3D object that doesn’t look like it’s made of lumpy spaghetti? While Quill does not offer built-in tools to create 3D primitive forms by default, it is relatively easy to make them yourself with the tools that are there. For instance, by drawing a curved stroke, and then selecting, duplicating, and rotating that stroke along its center axis multiple times, you can build a sphere in seconds. I personally have built a group of Quill primitives that are saved in their own project file. When I want to make a character or something else with a lot of different shapes, I import the file and edit my primitives rather than drawing everything stroke by stroke from scratch every time.

Animation

There are VR art programs that allow for more traditional methods of sculpting, but the biggest reason that many VR artists gravitate towards Quill is because it is one of the only ones that has a great array of animation features. It allows for automatic animation between keyframes like most 3D software. Thanks to Quill’s 3D drawing features it’s also possible to do frame-by-frame work just like you would in traditional 2D animation, allowing the option to heavily edit or even completely recreate a form from scratch every frame, if that’s what the animation requires. This is especially exciting because it allows the easy creation of deformed frames like smears and extreme squash and stretch that tend to be difficult to make with the limitations of standard 3D character rigs. It’s possible to use VR controllers to record motion capture animation from hand movement, which is incredibly useful for getting timing and spacing down quickly for simple or subtle movements. When combined, these three main methods along with a lot of other smaller and more specific tools and features, Quill can allow for remarkably fast and intuitive 3D animation work.

Part of the Pipeline

For a variety of reasons, it is difficult for Quill pieces to achieve the high levels of visual polish and technical efficiency that many modern AAA video games and movies aim for, so it is unlikely that it will be used to create finalized assets for most professional ventures anytime soon. However, Quill excels in creating rough 3D assets and animation from scratch very quickly, and with a lot of flexibility. In a typical professional project, this makes it an excellent tool for concept art and pre-vis work. What’s more, it is possible to export Quill projects into other 3D file formats, including USD/USDZ, FBX and Alembic. These files can then be opened and further modified in any other 3D programs like Maya, Blender, and Unity. So you can take your work from Quill and build directly on top of it in a more traditional program, or even just use it as a finished asset if the project allows.

Conclusion

While it may not be the ideal program for every project, Quill has been a game-changer when it comes to getting stylized 3D work finished quicker and easier than ever before. I’ve been able to complete fully animated projects that once would have taken me a month in just a few days. We’re excited to put this newfound efficiency and technology to good use in future 360 Alley projects, to provide our clients with a better service and new creative options.

All of this was just me touching on the most important and basic features to introduce the topic, since this type of software is still relatively new and unknown to most people. If you are interested in learning more, I highly recommend looking at the tutorials and classes of Goro Fujita and the Virtual Animation Group.