At Sundance earlier this year, Oculus Story Studio revealed Quill, an in-house production tool that uses the company’s Touch controllers to create VR illustrations. At GTC 2016 next week the studio will explore the technical challenges faced while creating the program.

Quill is the name given by Oculus Story Studio to the tool that allowed them to create Dear Angelica, the studio’s latest VR short film (which has been toured but not yet released). Similar to Google’s Tilt Brush, the app lets users paint and draw in 3D using motion input controllers.

At GTC 2016 next week, Oculus Story Studio VFX Supervisor Inigo Quilez will take to the stage to explore the technical hurdles that arose when creating the app:

Rendering Challenges in Quill: A VR Sketching Tool

At this session, you’ll learn how the Oculus Story Studio created Quill, their VR illustration production tool for their incoming short movie “Dear Angelica” on top of OpenGL 4.5. Quill stresses the GPU due to the high poly count required for accurate and smooth illustration vector work, the need to do live edits in the data sets to meet the artist’s workflow, and the natural constraints of stereo high resolution rendering at 90 fps. We’ll review the choices of rendering algorithms that enabled us to hit the performance and quality required while allowing the artists express the visual look of the movie. We’ll go through the architecture of the software, and the algorithmic decisions and modern OpenGL features employed in the creation of Quill.

The session will be held on April 4th at 2:30pm PT, the first day of GTC.

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Hosted in San Jose, CA, from April 4-7, GTC 2016 is all about GPU computing. And this year, the company is making virtual reality a top topic of the event, with a dedicated VR track featuring 45 talks and sessions from speakers across the industry.

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Dear Angelica is set to release on the Rift later this year, but there’s no word yet on whether or not Quill will be released publicly or remain an in-house tool for the studio.


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Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • And Oculus can use it whenever they want in their ads without your permission. Have fun.