Category: chocolate

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Viacom Next VR Studio has now Closed

It’s always a sad day when a virtual reality (VR) closes its doors, yet no company is ever totally immune. VRFocus has seen it happen with Sony Interactive Entertainment’s (SIE) Guerrilla Cambridge in January 2017 and Oculus Story Studio a few months later. This week another VR company has ceased to be, Viacom Next, the VR division which spear headed several unique and novel experiences.

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Viacom Next was well known through various projects over the last few years, having worked with two-time GRAMMY Award winning artist William Patrick Corgan (aka Billy Corgan) on an VR experience for his new single Aeronaut, Withdrawal by Atlantic Records recording artist Max Frost, The Melody of Dust by Hot Sugar, and Smash Party VR for HTC Vive in conjunction with Titmouse and many more.

The closure was first announced by the studios creative director David Liu on Twitter, with Liu saying: “Sad to say that Viacom NEXT is no more. Our super talented devs, artists and designers are looking for a new home if you’re hiring. Please DM me.”

Then a spokesperson issued the following statement reports Variety: “We remain deeply committed to developing immersive experiences for consumers through groundbreaking augmented and virtual reality. As part of our efforts to coordinate Viacom’s approach to next-generation platforms and solutions across our brands, we are absorbing Viacom NEXT into our Global Emerging Opportunities Group.  A number of Viacom NEXT’s creators and engineers will join this group, however a small number of employee positions have been affected. We appreciate these colleagues’ contributions and are making every effort to assist them through benefits and support, including severance and outplacement assistance.”

Smash Party VR screenshot 2

It’s all part of a cost cutting move by Viacom, which has seen almost 100 employees laid off across multiple divisions.

Check out some of the experiences mentioned to see the legacy Viacom Next leaves behind, and if Viacom does plan on supporting VR in the future, VRFocus will let you know.

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Tyler Hurd’s Psychedelic VR Music Video ‘Chocolate’ Now Available on Vive and Rift

Chocolate, the latest virtual creation from the mind of Tyler Hurd—the VR animator and director behind BUTTS (2015) and Old Friend (2016)—launched today on the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift.

Chocolate is a real-time VR music video set to a catchy, building electronic track of the same name by artist Giraffage. The short three minute experience is a quick but trippy and polished delight, placing you at the center of a psychedelic stage with choreographed animation happening in coordination with the beat.

I previewed Chocolate during its showing at Sundance earlier this year and found that it got me moving to the beat and kept my attention over the course of the music video; it also compelled me to show several others so they could experience the crazy and colorful visuals and the toe tapping beat.

Read Our Chocolate Preview

Today Chocolate has launched to the public on Steam (supporting Vive and Rift) and the Oculus store (supporting Rift), priced at $2 for the first week and $3 thereafter. The experience is also ‘Subpac Optimized’, meaning that it’s been specially tuned for those using the Subpac bass backpack.

The post Tyler Hurd’s Psychedelic VR Music Video ‘Chocolate’ Now Available on Vive and Rift appeared first on Road to VR.

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Chocolate Brings You ‘Ridiculous Joy’ Through Music, Dance, and Cats

Chocolate Brings You ‘Ridiculous Joy’ Through Music, Dance, and Cats

Tyler Hurd is quickly becoming known as the “weird VR guy.”

The young virtual reality filmmaker first broke onto the scene with Butts — which is a hilarious and whimsical musical romp about exactly what you think it is. His followup to that was Old Friend — another musical that combined hilariously animated characters, over the top colors (heck, over the top everything), and music that won’t leave your head no matter how hard you try.

Hurd is currently attending this year’s Sundance Film Festival where he is debuting his latest piece called Chocolate. It’s a gritty, in-depth look at what happens when money, status, and pride become more important than the people we hold dear. Nah, just kidding, it’s about shooting cats out of your hands.

Describing Chocolate to people that have not seen it may get you a one way ticket to a nice, quiet, rubber padded room. You take the role of a slightly robotic ancient deity surrounded by your tribal worshipers. The music begins and they dance. They dance to earn your favor so that you might bestow upon them that which they crave the most: cats, lots and lots and lots of cats.

Once the tribal dancing has adequately pleased you, your hands will become Mega Man-esque cannons that begin to fire scores of cuddly, adorable cats into the air. This happens automatically on the beat but the position of the cats launch is determined by where you’re pointing the Oculus Touch or Vive controllers at that moment. There are a few other surprises in store for you inside the world of Chocolate but we’ll let you discover those yourself.

The entire thing is exactly as insane as it sounds but that’s what makes Hurd’s work amazing. In an interview with UploadVR, Hurd explained the he originally conceived of this ideas while listening to the song Chocolate by EDM artist Giraffage. The synth in the song made him think of cats and the strong beats led him to a tribal setting.

Hurd was then asked what it is he thinks ties all of these seemingly random works of VR art together. “I love when I show people something I’ve made and they just have to laugh,” explained Hurd. “People come up to me and say this makes me so happy, this is a happy maker and that’s just perfect…I’m trying to get people to that place of joy, that ridiculous joy…my focus is on characters and animation so I try to use that to just make people giggle like a child. If I’ve done that then I’ve won. If they’re smiling, they’re happy.” 

Though previously a solo act, Hurd was able to make this latest piece thanks to a investment from Viacom Next. With that additional capital he was able to bring in some fresh talent including an artist from Adventure Time to design some of the characters, a character modeler from Double Fine Studios, and a visual effects designer from Blizzard. Hurd’s previous works have taken him up to nine months to complete. Chocolate was finished in only six.

 

Hurd says that he is planning to release Chocolate to the public in “the next few months” and that the responses he’s been getting at Sundance to the undeniably unique creation have been “overwhelmingly positive”.

Hurd says he will continue to work as a VR artist and wants to keep making pieces that give people that “ridiculous joy”.

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Preview: VR Music Video ‘Chocolate’ by Director Tyler Hurd is a Slice of Pure Psychedelic Joy

VR music videos seem to be digging out a sweet spot of quick and fun VR experiences that use the depth of virtual reality to immerse viewers in music with powerful and impossible visuals. Chocolate, a new VR music video directed by Tyler Hurd, furthers the case for VR music videos with electro-kittens, masked dancers, and champagne.

Based on a song of the same name by electronic artist Giraffage, Chocolate turns the viewer into a metallic tri-legged robot with wobbly fingers that are oddly satisfying to shake. You’ll start out staring at your new robo-self in a mirror, and once you get passed your wiggly fingers, you’ll see that your three legs animate in a convincingly creepy way as you move about the virtual space. Indeed, this is a semi-interactive experience that’s rendered in real-time.

After you get a feel for your robo-body, the song starts and a psychedelic landscape surrounds you, complete with rolling neon hills and a troupe of masked dancers surrounding a giant mirror that you’re standing on. The dancers are wearing oversized Mayan-like masks with cat faces, and groove to the music in unison around you.

As Giraffage’s smooth and cheerful beat sets in and the dancers get to shaking their hips, it’s clear that Chocolate represents a successful departure in animation style from director Tyler Hurd’s prior VR works. BUTTS (2015) and Old Friend (2016) featured decidedly exaggerated and comedic animations that Hurd says were inspired by the likes of Ren and Stimpy (1991-93). Chocolate, on the other hand, takes a somewhat more realistic approach. The art style is still cartoonish by most measures, but the animations assume a more choreographed look that relies less on absurd body language and more on movements that speak to the beat.

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The dancers are just the start of the fun. A short while into the song and a tingle in your robo-hands hands causes you to look down just in time to see them transform into cannon-hands that shoot out metallic kittens. Yes, you shoot metallic kittens from your robo-kitten-cannon-hands. And it’s great.

As the kittens fly through the air, everything goes slow motion on queue with the beat as all the airborne kittens turn to you with their huge eyes and sing out the electronic melody in unison. You’ll go through a few kitten-cannon blasts before an interlude has the distant hills dancing like trippy rolling waves. And that’s when the floating cat heads and giant cat kings arrive… but I’ll leave it at that for now.

Immersed in all the action (literally the focal point of the whole setup), it’s hard not to want to clap your hands to the beat and groove with the dancers. Chocolate feels like a success in that it got me moving, kept my attention for the three minute song duration, and now I’m bumping to the original track as I write this article. But I’m excited to see Hurd and other pioneering VR music video directors take the interactivity to the next level.

Aside from getting to choose which direction to fire the kitten-cannons, and getting to look at my wobbly fingers, the experience wasn’t significantly interactive. I want to get deeper into the music by influencing or contributing to it in some way. At a minimum, it would have been great to have my own sound effect when clapping so that I could add my own beat to the song. 3D audio also would have formed a greater level of immersion by connecting the audio to the virtual objects that are supposed to be emitting it (like the singing kittens).

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Taking things further, some very light gamification (a skilled kitten shot through a hoop?) could have scored me an extra layer to the song, or perhaps given me access to an instrument as wild and creative as the robo-body I was already inhabiting. Or let me make up the dance moves while the dancers follow, like a choreographed call-and-response.

The music and the visuals already convey an urge to dance, now let me play with it all in a way that can only be done in VR.

This sort of interactivity will require a deeper collaboration between the director of the music video and the song’s artist, but it feels like the natural next step if the goal is to immerse the viewer both visually and sonically. Chocolate shows me that we’re getting there.

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chocolate vr music video (3)Executively produced by Viacom NEXT, Chocolate is making its debut at the Sundance Film Festival this week at the New Frontier VR Palace. The experience is built for the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, and will launch publicly in the first half of 2017. The creators have teased additional platform support in the future, likely coming to mobile platforms as a static 360 degree video.

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