Famously, the Oculus Rift's Touch controllers won't ship with the VR headset. While the Facebook-owned Oculus VR finalizes the controllers, developers have found a new way to use it through Quill, which could be a hallmark for a headset that doesn't intend to focus on gaming forever.
Quill isn't another accessory needed to fully experience Oculus headset. It's a program that allows a different way to use the platform's Touch controller.
Using the Oculus Rift's motion sensors and Touch controller, Quill enables the user to paint within a virtual space and create live art. The audience can follow and dissect VR brush stroke as the artist makes them.
For now, Oculus only intends to make Quill available to developers and for its in-house graphic artists. The company will offer Medium, a VR sculpting tool, to consumers and developers alike.
An unplanned pregnancy, Quill was born of Oculus Story Studio's efforts to create a VR movie, "Dear Angelica," for the Rift, according to Inigo Quilez, the studio's visual effects supervisor.
"We were trying to transform 2D illustrations into VR and it wasn't looking good enough," Quilez says. "So I was like, 'No one is doing anything about it.'"
So Quilez asked for a two-week sabbatical, during which he did something about it. He coded Quill, as part of a hackathon project.
Quill became the answer to the challenge that had been hindering illustrator Wesley Allsbrook's progress on converting her 2D illustrations into 3D for VR, which was key to her job of bringing the protagonist's dreams to life in "Dear Angelica." When she saw Quill, her boyfriend's life changed.
"And as soon as he had shown me this thing I was like 'OK, well, it's time to pack up all of my stuff and dump my boyfriend and move to San Francisco because obviously I want to do this with these people,'" the graphic novelist said.
The studio is open to sharing the new tool to peers who want to try and find out what is the leverage of Quill as a new art medium, according to Max Planck, Oculus Story Studio's technical director.
"We want to be inspired back," Planck says. "Any good filmmaker is inspired by other filmmakers."
Check out the Quill concept in the video below.
