Choose Your World’s Hues In Color Space On Quest And Rift

The world might seem to be changing in ways you and your family are struggling to understand. In Color Space, though, the environment is serene and colorless, inviting you to take control one decision at a time.

First, which color do you want? Now, where to put it?

Color Space is available now on Oculus Quest and Rift for $10 and adapts the timeless appeal of coloring books to the complete sensory control of VR. Just pick a color and a place to put it. From Lighthaus Inc, the project is produced by David Sarno and engineered by Anna Krasner with pioneering VR artist Danny Bittman working as creative director and composer. Bittman’s been experimenting with a range of VR tools over the years to develop workflows that are efficient, perform well in headsets, and remain visually pleasing. You can visit some of those works in places like the Museum Of Other Realities, but in Color Space you get the chance to partner with the artist to colorize 10 alluring scenes from the available palettes.

According to Bittman, the design process for the 10 worlds included at launch started in Gravity Sketch and Tilt Brush, with refinement of the meshes completed in Gravity Sketch. The skyboxes are made in Tilt Brush and baked into 360 images. AnimVR was also used “extensively” in prototyping for the project, according to Bittman. The creators are planning to talk soon about how they made the software.

You can find Color Space now on Oculus Quest and Oculus Rift. Check out the trailer below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RZt7Bgby8E

Will you or your family be escaping to this world of colors anytime soon? Let us know in the comments below.

The post Choose Your World’s Hues In Color Space On Quest And Rift appeared first on UploadVR.

Gravity Sketch Comes To Oculus Quest With Rift Cross-Buy

Art creation software Gravity Sketch is now available on Oculus Quest.

The software supports cross-buy with Oculus Rift so if you buy Gravity Sketch for one headset you can use it with the other. Gravity Sketch sells for around $30 and joins Google’s Tilt Brush as one of the few asset creation applications available on the standalone VR system.

The description for Gravity Sketch on the Oculus Store says it includes a number of creation tools as well as the ability to import images and export objects as .OBJ files. Skilled artists like Danny Bittman are already praising the software’s arrival on Quest.

I recently visited a simulated art gallery in the Museum Of Other Realities using a PC VR headset and found a corner room produced by Bittman with Gravity Sketch. The central piece in the room allowed visitors to teleport, shrink down and walk around inside the artwork. More colorful pieces were arranged around the perimeter of the room. You could either walk up and explore these miniatures as a full size person or shrink yourself down and see the works in the distance through a colorful forest at the center of Bittman’s room. The entire room used so few triangles it might run on an Oculus Quest.

While not quite an end-to-end production relying only on VR specific tools, the use of Gravity Sketch artwork in a multiplayer space like the MOR hints at the kind of future Facebook is working toward with the headset. It is only a matter of time before an artist produces and shows their work entirely on all-in-one VR computers. With Gravity Sketch on Quest, creators are one step closer to making this possible.

The post Gravity Sketch Comes To Oculus Quest With Rift Cross-Buy appeared first on UploadVR.

Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan Creates VR experience for new Single “Aeronaut”

Musicians have been experimenting with virtual reality (VR) and 360-degree video for the last couple of years now with the latest to utilise the technology being ex-frontman for Smashing Pumpkins, two-time GRAMMY Award winning artist William Patrick Corgan (aka Billy Corgan).

Corgan collaborated with teams from Isobar and Viacom NEXT alongside San Francisco based filmmaker and VR artist Danny Bittman to create an immersive VR experience for his new single Aeronaut off the recently released solo album Ogilala.

Billy Corgan Aeronaut

The teams created a hologram of Corgan using Microsoft Mixed Reality Capture technology, capturing his three-and-a-half-minute performance in volumetric video at Microsoft’s Mixed Reality Capture Studios. They then used Unity and Google Tilt Brush to create a world around him.

Aeronaut was a thrilling collaboration, bringing together innovators from across the VR industry to realize an incredible artistic vision. We’re honoured to bring this experience to life, and help connect audiences to Mr. Corgan’s music unlike ever before,” said Chaki Ng, Senior Vice President and Head of Viacom NEXT in a statement.

“Orchestrating this entire venture has been nothing short of inspiring,” commented Dave Meeker, VP, Isobar US. “This project allowed us the opportunity to bring together some of the most technical and creative minds in the industry to help us realize Corgan’s vision. When we first sat down with Billy over a year ago, we had only imagined an experience where we could bring all these players to the table. The collaborative spirit that has driven the making of this video is a testament to the excitement we all have for the future of immersive experiences.”

To begin with BMG Records, Isobar and Viacom NEXT have released a 2D version of the music video (seen below) for Corgan fans to watch right away. The actual VR version will initially be made publicly available in early 2018 for Microsoft’s Windows Mixed Reality headsets, with additional versions for other systems to follow.

Viacom NEXT has created a few music videos in its time, having collaborated with musician Hot Sugar on The Melody of Dust or how about premiering music experience Withdrawal by Atlantic Records recording artist Max Frost at Microsoft Build earlier this year.

As more musicians delve into the world of VR music videos, VRFocus will let you know.

New Worlds To Visit And Games To Play In VR This Weekend (2/17/17)

New Worlds To Visit And Games To Play In VR This Weekend (2/17/17)

Keeping up with everything new happening in VR is getting more challenging with each passing week. We track new releases on Oculus, Steam/Viveport, and PlayStation, but there is also a constant flow of new 360-degree video projects as well as live events and short demo experiences being broadcast in VR with increasing frequency, not to mention incredible hand-made worlds being shared more rapidly as well as meetups being planned in social VR experiences.

Take artist Danny Bittman’s Painting Within a Painting as an example of this new medium’s growth beyond the boundaries of existing distribution platforms. Bittman is exploring interesting ways of creating both 2D and 3D art using VR, and he says he spent around 100 hours creating this world by hand in Tilt Brush, letting “you explore an immersive painting of a sci-fi mountain range, and then paint paintings of that painting.” You can check out the creation for yourself in Tilt Brush, as he’s offered up the world for visitors to check out with instructions included for setting it up.

360-Degree Projects

The Oscars are next weekend so if you haven’t had the chance to see Pearl yet, be sure to give yourself a few minutes to check out the 360-degree version of the Oscar-nominated animated film.

We also found ourselves laughing pretty hard at the idiot gang from It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia performing a “badass” jump in 360 on YouTube. You almost feel like a part of the group until they do something awful to you, which is pretty much exactly what the show is about so it is a fitting extension in VR.

Also check out this clever Internet Surfer video.

NBA All-Star Weekend

NextVR is showing highights from most of the events at the NBA’s All-Star Weekend, including the dunk and three-point contests. When the cameras are placed in the right spots we’ve found NextVR’s VR broadcasts to be among the best, and the various events held during All-Star weekend could let you see the action from some fun vantage points. Check it out on Daydream or Gear VR via the NextVR app.

IMAX VR in Los Angeles

If you happen to be in the Los Angeles area, we’d recommend picking up tickets to check out the IMAX VR center that opened recently — they have a good selection of experiences to try out in the sampler for walk-around VR.

New For Gamers

And speaking of those new releases list, we’d highly recommend checking out DiRT Rally on PlayStation VR, Syren on Rift and Vive and Harbinger Trail on Gear VR. Onward players should check out the field guide and if you’re a long-time fan of video games looking for a stroll through a bit of nostalgia, there’s a virtual world made from a map from The Legend of Zelda you can visit. The Art of the Fight also just exited Early Access as a full release, making it a great option for fans of competitive shooters.

Social VR

AltSpace has its full calendar of events lined up to watch with others inside VR, including a SpaceX Falcon rocket launch party in VR early Saturday morning. The company is adding Daydream support and support for non-VR Android phones as well — so there are more ways than ever to jump in and meet with people.

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