Media has always been a bridge to experiences we wouldn’t otherwise be able to see, whether via text, video, or photography. 360-degree media have given us dynamic looks into many different settings that may even be dangerous, but what of the people exploring in those dire conditions?
Noel and Lynn Hanna, Northern Ireland natives currently living in South Africa, are the first couple to reach the summit of Mount Everest on both sides and serve as the guides for the upcoming ClimbEverest VR. Virtual reality filmmaker Przemek Siemion and his team withstood dangerous elements to bring us the VR experience and he spoke with Upload about the process.
Mount Everest isn’t a place where someone can traverse comfortably and is certainly not a place to inhabit for long periods of time.
“Starting from altitude that drastically limits your physical abilities – you are out of breath, way slower in movement, often with a headache,” Siemion says. “Harsh climate, extreme temperatures, strong winds – it all affects your body.”
As conditions changed on the mountain, the script they started the trip with changed too but, thankfully, Siemion says they were in good hands with their expedition leader who was responsible for making decisions that provided the best environment to proceed in.
Though it was certainly a chore to move around and record as they wished, that didn’t stop Siemion from enjoying the trip. He said they worked through 20 hours days so that the next day is a clean slate, but also found time to appreciate the beautiful scenery he was exposed to.
“It was as if the mountain was allowing me to be there and challenging me at the same time,” he says.
Not only does the mountain present a challenge to the people attempting the climb, recording in VR requires a wealth of new tools and the audio and video equipment have to be able to withstand the harsh climate as well. Even worse, the team wasn’t able to fully test everything as some of the cameras only arrived a day before departure. Thus, the team reached new levels of flexibility and came up with the new ideas on the fly as they worked toward their goal.
The result of their hard work is scheduled to be released early 2017.
While we may be a ways off from having full length virtual reality or 360-degree feature films and even further than that from having them debut in movie theaters in some way, that isn’t stopping big names from getting behind the formats. 20th Century Fox partnered with a production group for VR and 360-degree projects based on their different properties and we previously reported on the New York Times and Milk(Vr) collaboration that yielded a collection of shorts with appearances from major acts like Natalie Portman and Don Cheadle. Now, a major actress is making her way into the new immersive media by lending her voice to an animated VR feature.
Baobab Studios previously created the animated VR feature INVASION! directed by the same person responsible for Madagascar and narrated by Ethan Hawke. Their second feature, ASTEROIDS!, will feature the voice of Elizabeth Banks who’s known for her role as Effie Trinket in the Hunger Games series of films and is directed by Baobab’s co-founder and Chief Creative Officer Eric Darnell. The animation puts viewers in the role of a helper bot who’s flanked by a couple aliens, Mac and Cheez, and fellow robot Peas as you attempt to prove yourself on a mission in outer space. It’s set in the same universe as INVASION!, where the aliens previously made an apperance.
Cheez is voiced by Banks and will add to a film that is an official selection for the Sundance Film Festival that takes place in Park City, Utah from January 19th to the 29th.
Having a growing VR presence in such a major festival such as Sundance while also having a billed actress with the pedigree Elizabeth Banks brings is a testament to the potential of the medium and hopefully it will continue to evolve at a rapid pace. A sneak peak at the film is available on Samsung Gear, Google Daydream, and the Oculus storefront starting today.
As more filmmakers dip a toe into VR, the sheer volume of 360-degree video releases can be overwhelming. Samsung today just released its top five most viewed videos on its Samsung VR service in 2016, including
This is a nice preview of what National Geographic is capable of given the recent announcement of their “Live 360” offerings on Facebook. The inclusion of the floating “TURN AROUND” logo in the water to direct the viewer’s action feels effortless, but also right out of a horror movie –it’s very cool.
The Great Christmas Light Fight
From: ABC and Experience360VR
Given the time of the season, it would be remiss not to end on a festive note. This experience makes a case for how to create 360-video for the masses. The host even instructs you how to “look around” and mentions a few choice exhibits. With the glittering decorations and colors, it would be hard to find a better pairing than 360-video and Christmas lights. And in some ways it makes sense – wasn’t Rudolph an early tech adopter?
Created by the Madrid-based team Future Lighthouse, “Tomorrow” is a thrilling experience that almost borders on metaphysical. The sweeping sound design is what really makes this a perfect piece of content. Even though you are watching passively, you still “move” through the experience, which helps reflect the theme of the piece (society’s next step in evolution) but also makes the viewer feel like they are going on a real journey.
The Fiancé
From: The New York Times and MILK(vr), Written and directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood
At the forefront and what looks to be a massive shift in media, many creators and enthusiast are keeping their eyes peeled for the latest and greatest tools. Stand-alone 360-degree cameras and mobile phone accessories are steadily entering the market, raising the bar every step of the way. In April we reported on the new Orah 4i, an impressively compact all-in-one 360-degree live streaming camera, and now you can pre-order the camera for yourself.
Sporting events, concerts, and more are live streamed through a collection of newer and old companies and usually require a complex set-up of equipment to make it happen. With more equipment comes more complications, but Orah is a simpler solution with two components. The camera itself records 3D sound from 4 microphones and 4K video (Ambarella video processor and Sony EXMORE image sensor) with a 30fps live output and it’s all processed through a stitching box. It includes a 3.5mm jack for external output, saves recorded footage to an SD card, and can output live to any CDN (content delivery network). The device is priced at $3,595 which may shock, but we’re at an early stage of adoption for these tools and this particular camera is combining a lot of elements into one.
We previously reported on social vr platform vTime introducing a recording option that could open up avenues for creative content including virtual podcasting. A natural branch of that conversation is live-360-broadcasting of live-action podcasts and similar content, and Orah opens the door for that. Anyone willing to invest right now could get a leg up on other early adopters and trendsetters. There’s risk, no doubt, but the trajectory of growth and interest in 360-video content and VR headsets could make for massive reward. Pre-order the Orah 4i here.
Last night at the Upload Collective in San Francisco the Nokia Ozo team completed part two in their two part 360 video masterclass. The purpose of the class is to teach aspiring immersive filmmakers how to perfect and grow their art form for this fledgling medium.
The Nokia Ozo is a professional-grade virtual reality camera created by Nokia. It produces high quality 360 content complete with native pipelining software for stitching and live broadcasting. The focus for the Ozo, according to Nokia, is placed upon creating a simple, powerful and repeatable process for filmmakers of any skill level.
In part one of the masterclass oscar-winning VFX artist Alex Henning explained how to stage and create more effective 360 content. In part two, accomplished VR live stream producer Juan Santillan explained how to bring live content onto VR platforms.
According to Ozo’s head of product for VR, Devon Copley, “Juan is amazing. He’s the guy that put Coachella in live 360 VR. He’s shot everyone from Radiohead to LL Cool J in VR.”
The classes were broadcast live via YouTube 360 and you can check out the archived version below:
About the educator:
Juan Santillan
Juan Santillan is the CEO and Co-Founder of Vantage.tv, a platform for virtual reality live events and fans. Vantage.tv empowers artists and events to expand their reach using its technology to create virtual reality events with engaging social VR features for fans, turnkey VR distribution and monetization tools. Juan brings over 8 years of experience creating software and content for immersive experiences in sports and entertainment prior to Vantage.tv; including being the executive producer of immersive projects for Nascar, Wimbledon, PGA Tour, The Black Eyed Peas and AT&T events.
Founded in 2015, Vantage.tv has already recorded and created in-venue live VR broadcasts for more than 120 performances including such iconic music festivals as Outside Lands, Coachella, Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits providing fans with the best seat in the house.
We’ve seen 360-degree media permeate into various entertainment mediums and industries. Companies use them for marketing and promotion, documentary creators are testing it out, and even news networks have gravitated to the format for new ways of reporting. We recently wrote about 20th Century Fox partnering with Felix & Paul for 360-degree and VR content for the film studio’s properties, but we also reported on the reality that 360-degree media still has a long way to becoming a media standard. One barrier to that transition is the frequency that users come across the media format. Being available on YouTube certainly pays dividends, but embedding and creating it on different content management systems and web pages will help to expose audiences, and WordPress is taking a significant step forward.
Announced on its blog, WordPress is now allowing users to create and publish 360-degree video and photos on any WordPress.com websites. The move is an effort to make the process as easy as adding text or photos and the examples they include in the blog post work well and look clean. The examples include standard 360-degree video and even some panoramas that embed and operate smoothly. Such a move will inspire more to include the media on their sites from here on and may even motivate some to create WordPress sites specifically focused on collecting and creating 360-degree footage.
Painting in VR can be an amazingly freeing experience for an artist. You dance, and 3D art appears. But, if you only need to paint on a two-dimensional virtual wall, it doesn’t make sense to move your brush in three dimensions. You could try, but the brush would either go through the wall, or there’d be an awkward space between the wall and where your painting actually ends up. Up until now, this has been very frustrating. However, with Tilt Brush 8.0, this two-dimensional problem is no longer an issue.
In this update, Google introduces Guides, a new object library containing three-dimensional rulers which allow you to draw on flat surfaces. The update also enables advanced users to render 360-degree videos of their sketches by following these instructions. Below is an example of how the 360-degree videos look:
Intro to Guides
Think of Guides like magnetic objects that you can scale non-uniformly. You have the option to use either a square, sphere, or capsule guide, and place or pin them anywhere in your scene. You’re allowed to use as many as you want at once, and can scale them up to be much larger than regular objects or images. Guides can be found in your Settings window next to the Media Library icon.
Once you have placed your first Guide into a scene, your brush tip will automatically magnetize to whichever side of the Guide that you’re closest to. When you pull the trigger to start painting, your brush will then lock to that Guide and allow you to draw on its two-dimensional surface. Every stroke you make from then on is layered on top of the other strokes placed before.
If you don’t want your brush to automatically snap to the Guides when you’re working on the rest of your sketch, you don’t have to throw it away. Instead hide all of the Guides by toggling the Eyeball Button in the floating Guides menu.
Ways to Utilize Guides
The Canvas
Guides unlocks a lot of doors for artists — and makes it easier to draw doors too! One way to use the square Guide is by stretching it out like a canvas; that way, you could potentially draw an entire piece of art in just 2D. Or, if you’re building a scene in an alleyway, you can now set up a square Guide as a wall, draw some bricks, and then make a graffiti painting, all on the same plane. This allows you to make art that was only possible with computer software like Adobe Illustrator, since each stroke can be scaled up and down like a vector graphic
Floors
Before this release, the Teleport tool didn’t always work because the floor could easily be drawn at the incorrect height. But now you can scale out one massive square Guide and place it on the floor so that your ground textures will always snap to the same plane. You can create some interesting flat textures this way, like a stone path, a hardwood floor, or dirt. With this, you can now accurately map out an entire self-contained VR experience which people can explore without losing a sense of presence; no more legs being cut off by the floor. Here’s an example of one of the self-contained experiences that I’m working on now.
Backdrops
Far away things don’t have to be three dimensional, which make Guides great for drawing assets like mountains, since you can paint them with a high amount of detail now. You could even import images that you have taken in Google Earth VR, and then trace on top of them. I’m planning to write more about this in the future, so stay tuned. Here’s what one of my flat backdrops looks like from the front.
From the side, you can see that everything is flat. Notice that everything isn’t on one Guide either; I actually use five flat Guides for this one image, which causes the mountains to parallax around each other when the viewer moves their head. To make skies before 8.0, I would design gradients in Photoshop, and then import them into Tilt Brush, but I was able to create the sky in image above with a Guide too. Now, achieving any kind of shading like this is more feasible in Tilt Brush.
Building Design
It’s simple now to block out a building with Guides, which you can then draw walls and details on top of. You won’t have to worry about your lines being angled wrong. This is great for 3D design outside of Tilt Brush, because this new level of accuracy will make it more feasible to use Tilt Brush exports as reference models. Modelers won’t have to guess how you meant to draw something anymore. And since your floor will be level, you can teleport around your building to get a sense for how it will actually feel if you plan on making the building, or porting it into a VR experience.
Text
Before, writing text was frustrating in Tilt Brush, but now you can write words that could pass as typed text. This could open up new story telling possibilities, and would allow for signs and logos to be more realistic. This also means that it’ll be easier for you to handwrite notes to remind yourself about things that you want to add later. Here’s a quick example that I made.
Before You Begin…
Right now, there isn’t a Guide layer system, so every time you draw a stroke, it will always go on top of the strokes made before. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make your own layers by placing several Guides on top of each other. This idea is a little tricky to explain, so check out this video of me setting up this system.
Intersecting Guides Error
You’ll notice that when your brush is close to multiple Guides at once, it tends to jump around. This will make skinning the walls of a house impossible since you can’t actually start the wall in a corner. So, the best practice is to always make your Guides larger than they need to be so you can start drawing on a section that isn’t too close to another Guide.
That’s what I’ve discovered about Guides so far, but if you come up with a new trick, you should share it in the Tilt brush Artists Facebook group, where you might find advice from other artists as well. I’m excited to see what these new features will allow us to create!
Twentieth Century Fox is no stranger to virtual reality or 360-degree media, having used the mediums for promotion of their recent sci-fi blockbuster The Martian. Thus, it’s no surprise that the film studio and distributor and their Fox Innovation Lab is partnering with a company specializing in virtual reality to develop more experiences for the studio’s properties.
Fox and the Innovation Lab are teaming up with Felix and Paul Studios to co-develop immersive productions. Utilizing proprietary 3D 360-degree camera systems, Felix and Paul Studios have produced content for movies like Jurassic World, and impressive performances like Cirque du Soleil, and they’ve even collaborated with Lebron James and President Barack Obama. They handle a great deal of production in house including designing and processing the audio content through their Headspace Studios division. Ryan Horrigan, the CCO of Felix & Paul, spoke highly of the partnership in a prepared statement.
“The Fox Innovation Lab has long understood that virtual reality requires an entirely new language of storytelling, enabling audiences to engage with characters and stories in ways never before possible,” he said. “Fox continues to take a major leadership role in this new medium and we are thrilled to have the opportunity to co-produce premium cinematic VR experiences and series that will captivate audiences worldwide.”
Twentieth Century Fox president Mike Dunn adds, “Felix & Paul Studios is a visionary studio that represents the highest caliber of immersive and engaging experiences, and their vision for bringing virtual reality to mainstream audiences makes them a perfect partner to help realize the possibilities for the future of consumer entertainment, from both a creative and technical perspective.”
The first productions from this partnership will be announced early next year. There could certainly be some interesting properties represented, including Logan, War For The Planet Of The Apes, Hidden Figures and more, but we’ll have to wait to find out.
Today, Facebook is taking the first step towards making its live streaming applications more immersive with the announcement of “Live 360”.
According to a blog post published today by by product manager Supratik Lahiri and software engineer Chetan Gupta, Facebook will be releasing its first ever live, 360 degree video through a partnership with National Geographic. According to the post, “On Tuesday, December 13 at 12pm PT / 3pm ET, we will be launching Live 360 video on Facebook with National Geographic, live from the Mars Desert Research Station facility in Utah.”
The full synopsis of the event is as follows:
“Over the past 80 days, eight space scientists from around the world have lived in pods simulating every aspect of life on Mars, including total isolation from humanity. As part of our global effort around MARS, National Geographic will be live on Facebook in 360 degrees as the scientists emerge from the pods. We will take you behind the scenes to explore the living quarters, see how the scientists suit up in their space suits, and take a rover out for a spin across the Martian landscape. This first Live 360 will also include a Q&A with a line-up of science experts, writers and thinkers, and will take questions from the Facebook audience.”
This is an intriguing event in its own right, but even more interesting is what this will mean for the average Facebook user. Right now, it seems that only certain Pages will be given 360 Live access as the service begins its initial rollout. A mass release for everyday profiles is not slated to begin until next year.
According to the blog post, “Live 360 video will be available to more Pages via the Live API in the coming months, and we look forward to rolling it out more broadly for all Pages and Profiles in 2017.”
Beyond being an immersive platform for video games and a tool for businesses, virtual reality is growing into an important means of telling stories. 360-degree videos and VR have been used in investigative journalism, new documentaries, and other similar narrative-driven experiences. In these early stages, a lot of work has to been put into developing the engine these experiences inhabit which stalls the creative process. The team at Artefact has developed a platform that allows artists, designers, and more to get straight into producing their ideas in VR and Artefact’s UX Designer Paul Hoover demoed the tool for us to show the possibilities.
When shaping Storyboard VR, which allows users to import 2D assets into explorable VR spaces, Paul tells us they found themselves inspired by programs like InVision and Sketch. Those tools allow users to quickly produce prototypes for web and mobile platforms, which is what Storyboard VR is to be for virtual reality.
“They are excellent in creating mock-ups that are polished enough to help suspend disbelief, yet do not require too much development time,” Hoover says. “As designers of digital experiences, we could not imagine our life without them. So when we started working on VR and MR projects, we wanted to have a similar tool that allows us to experiment and iterate quickly.”
What I was shown during the demo inspired ideas of virtual museums or encyclopedia entries, film and animation storyboarding, presentations, and dynamic ad spaces for brands. As Paul took me through different mock-ups though, I saw fluid virtual shopping ideas, elements that allow for weather visualization, and even space for choose-your-own-adventure games with all of the different layers or slides on which you can create and manipulate.
“If you are in the early stages of imagining a VR experience, it will be the perfect tool as it does not require development skills or 3D assets,” says Hoover. “As with traditional storyboards, Storyboard VR is about mapping out the story and figuring out early what will work and what won’t.”
A tool such as Storyboard VR could be instrumental in setting a standard for some types of virtual reality content and give plenty of people that don’t have a lot of VR experience the chance to tell their stories. Storyboard VR will be available in early 2017 and you can sign up on Artefact’s website to receive more information.
