I’m already using Fall Guys’ excellent creative mode for evil
Fall Guys' devious new creative mode breathes fresh life into the battle royale sensation.
Creative looks to woo audiophiles, gamers with its Sound BlasterX AE-5 sound card
Sound cards long ago went from necessary part of a PC build to optional component. However, Creative's newly announced Sound Blaster X AE-5 is packed with high-end specs and features that will appeal to hardcore PC enthusiasts.
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Sound BlasterX H7 Tournament Edition review
Creative’s Sound BlasterX H7 Tournament Edition keeps what gamers loved about the original while tweaking certain elements for better sound, making for a solid headset in its price range despite some stiff competition.
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Creative unveils improved Sound BlasterX H7 Tournament Edition gaming headset
On Thursday, Creative unveiled the Sound BlasterX H7 Tournament Edition gaming headset, which offers even better performance than the original while keeping the same comfort and durability.
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Free 56-Page Guide From JauntVR Shows How To Make A 360-Degree Video
Cinematic VR company JauntVR has established itself as one of the leading 360-degree production companies, with collaborations spanning from ESPN to ABC News, and they’ve put together a lengthy document to help others capture
JauntVR, which announced a slew of titles at the Sundance Film Festival this weekend including a VR re-imagining of the cult classic “Lawnmower Man” film, announced on their blog the availability of “The Cinematic VR Guide: A Guide To Best Practices Shooting in 360-degrees”. The guide includes over 50 sections covering lighting, framing, types of cameras, and post-production. There are even some parts that address directing the action and minimizing motion sickness.
As the cost to produce 360-degree video falls and quantity of cinematic VR experiences increases, hopefully a guide like this will help quality keep pace. As stated in the blog, “many of the old rules of cinematography no longer apply” so even the most well versed in traditional film could benefit from a few tips. This is only the beginning, though, as Jaunt plans for this guide to serve as a “living document” that is continuously updated as new technology and techniques surface.
Producing the content is a significant part of stepping forward as a major force in any creative field, but putting together a document such as this and paying it forward is a way to solidify that space especially in the minds of those just now getting involved. It will be interesting to see how such a guide is accepted by the rest of the creative community buy hopefully it, along with initiatives to make 360-video clearer, will result in high-tier production.
Tagged with: 360, 360-degree video, camera, creative, Guide, JauntVR, media, VR
MasterpieceVR Launches Today With Cross-Platform Collaborative Sculpting and Painting
Virtual spaces offer players, enthusiasts, creatives, and professional entities near infinite work spaces for many interests. A great deal of popular existing experiences like Tilt Brush and ScluptVR are of a more creative slant, giving users virtual chisel and paint brush so that they can formulate the brightest and even some of the darkest creations within VR.
While there are applications that offer collaborative experiences in creative VR, Brinx Software is attempting to go the extra mile with cross-platform teamwork for their new program: MasterpieceVR. We had an opportunity to get an early hands-on with the program in December, but now it’s available for download on Steam — entirely for free for a limited time.
MasterpieceVR is a robust creative platform with over 12 different sculpting tools, over 12 paint brushes, and the option to work in a handful of realistic or dream-like environments. Mechanically, it’s almsot like a combination of Tilt Brush and Oculus Medium. MasterpieceVR‘s biggest hook, though, is the ability to work in real time with other creatives around the world.
Whether using an Oculus Rift or HTC Vive, 2 users are allowed in a virtual space at one time and regardless of platform they can team up to make things together. Via email correspondence, Brinx Software CEO Jonathan Gagne also confirmed that the player count will increase to 4 in the next few weeks and grow steadily over the life of the platform.
No matter who you decide to work with, the Brinx Software team has made a pointed effort to create a program where “ease of use is a key differentiator and strength” as so put by Gagne. “In fact, this technology allowed us to teach an eight-year old child how to model in less than 60 seconds. With a vision to build the future of VR, we are enabling people around the world to translate creative ideas into 3D works of virtual art. There is nothing that lets you collaborate like it on the market today.”
MasterpieceVR is available on Steam for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. For a limited time, it is available for free and we don’t have information on when and to what extent that will change.
Tagged with: Brinx Software, creative, Jonathan Gagne, masterpiecevr, medium, platform, Sculpt, tilt brush
‘Mindshow’ CEO: VR Lets Animators Do What ‘Would Have Cost Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars’ Before
There are various mediums for creators of different kinds within the VR ecosystem and Visionary VR’s Mindshow is giving users a platform to create and share animated narratives through virtual reality. We reported on the software back in April, where it left an impression on us as VR’s “missing character animation and storyrtelling tool”, and CES 2017 has brought us a bit closer to the masses getting their hands on it.
At the event we ran into CEO of Mindshow & Founder of Visionary VR, Gil Baron, and discussed the application with him along with some of the other reveals at CES as they related to the creative platform.
Pixar is an incredible heavyweight when it comes to animation, their place in Hollywood affording them a massive budget to create their works. For aspiring creators, even the simplest tools force users to typically invest tons of time and money into something that’s not guaranteed to reach an audience at all.
“VR allows us to do something that, before this, would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and takes months of time,” Baron notes in our interview on the show floor. “Now, anyone can do it…What Pixar does is frame to frame perfect. It’s a profound art-form…this is something different. A lot of writers, improv comedians, even educators who want to be able to create content and don’t know how have looked at this and said, ‘Oh my, this is a whole a new way and there’s no one between me and my audience anymore.'”
Baron was also excited by the potential of HTC Vive’s newly revealed tracker or “puck”, noting how it will open new layers to animating in VR by tracking different movements and welcoming additional users in the same space.
Mindshow.com links to all of their social media which has been and will continue to post content created within the program and they have a number of creators that are working on new content. They’re in closed alpha, which you can apply for on the website, and will be rolling into open beta soon.
Tagged with: animation, CES, creative, Creator, htc vive, mindshow, visionary vr, VR
Choose Your Own Creative Venture In Storyboard VR
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.
Tagged with: creative, development, platform, Storyboard VR, tool, VR