‘Quill’ is Oculus’ Professional VR Paint Package, Powered by Touch

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At the Sundance Festival today, Oculus launched a new virtual reality application that harnesses the motion controlled accuracy of the company’s Oculus Touch controllers to let you paint in virtual 3D space. The results, are quite impressive looking.

Tilt Brush was and is the unlikely hit in the HTC Vive’s early line up of titles. The experience made full use of the SteamVR motion controllers and HTC’s encouragement to move freely in VR.

Now, Oculus have released footage of a new application named ‘Quill’, a tool developed by Oculus Story Studios specifically to ease creation of VR experiences, within VR. The tool was built for OSS’s brand new VR film experience Angelica, which also debuts at Sundance this week. Oculus told us that:

“The Story Studio team built Quill, an internal production tool, that allows illustrators to paint entire scenes in VR using Oculus Touch. This technique frees artists from the traditional flat canvas of pen and paper and lets them create directly in VR.”

Road to VR’s Chris Madsen went hands on with the new application, and had this to say:

“…you can make the point of your virtual pen/brush really really small for extremely fine detail. I was painting all kinds of detail in an inch square space.”

“I could duplicate a color already used by hovering my pointer in a color line already painted to match that color. Also I could grab a painted piece and rotate it with my hands and wrist and also change scale by grabbing with button and pushing my arm forward or backwards. Other menu options can be accessed via left hand but I didn’t play with those advanced features.”

We’ll have more on Quill and Oculus Story Studio’s brand new VR film Angelica, soon.

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Based in the UK, Paul has been immersed in interactive entertainment for the best part of 27 years and has followed advances in gaming with a passionate fervour. His obsession with graphical fidelity over the years has had him branded a ‘graphics whore’ (which he views as the highest compliment) more than once and he holds a particular candle for the dream of the ultimate immersive gaming experience. Having followed and been disappointed by the original VR explosion of the 90s, he then founded RiftVR.com to follow the new and exciting prospect of the rebirth of VR in products like the Oculus Rift. Paul joined forces with Ben to help build the new Road to VR in preparation for what he sees as VR’s coming of age over the next few years.
  • dashmaul

    So, is this a different app than Medium?

    • Kevin White

      Yes, Medium is more about volumetric sculpting. Quill looks somewhat similar to Tiltbrush, which is a lot like 2D painting in 3D space.