Psychic VR Lab’s VR creation platform, Styly, is adding direct uploads for Google Tilt Brush creations, after news of Poly’s demise.
Operated out of Tokyo, Japan, Styly allows any user to jump in and start making 3D content almost instantly. These experiences can be viewed online via browser or fully inside VR via a native SteamVR app. By stepping in with Tilt Brush support, Styly will offer creators a new destination to publish their creations and share them with others.
As an online library of 3D assets and scenes, Poly played an important role in keeping content creation accessible on the platform. But, in December 2020, Google announced it would be shutting Poly down on June 30th of this year. While support for Poly will continue on the platform, Styly users can now export Tilt Brush creations as a glb file and upload them directly to the app. More info about exactly how to upload can be found here.
“The closure of Google Poly will drastically reduce the number of places where Tilt Brush artists can present their works, which will in turn affect the creative activities of many artists and will be a major issue for the culture of XR art,” said Ryohei Watanabe, CMO of Psychic VR Lab, in a prepared statement. “We have decided to officially support Tilt Brush with STYLY in order to support the creative activities of Tilt Brush artists in their continuous efforts to break new ground for XR art.”
Psychic VR itself raised a further $8.5 million in funding earlier this year, bringing its total raised to $18 million to date. Recently, the company launched a mixed reality version of its app for the Nreal glasses.
Google has been dropping support left and right for its virtual reality (VR) initiatives but others in the industry are either helping pick up the slack or giving users alternative avenues to explore. Tilt Brush recently went open-source and now web-based creative platform STYLY has announced official support for 3D models built in the painting app.
It was necessary due to the fact that Google Poly is closing this year, where artists could upload their models and then use them in STYLY. Now developer Psychic VR Lab is enabling artists to directly upload their creations to STYLY to remove that worry.
“STYLY has supported the Google Poly API for many years, offering a platform for Tilt Brush artists to easily create and distribute XR content. The closure of Google Poly will drastically reduce the number of places where Tilt Brush artists can present their works, which will, in turn, affect the creative activities of many artists and will be a major issue for the culture of XR art,” says Ryohei Watanabe, CMO of Psychic VR Lab in a statement. “We have decided to officially support Tilt Brush with STYLY in order to support the creative activities of Tilt Brush artists in their continuous efforts to break new ground for XR art.”
To upload your Tilt Brush artwork Psychic VR Lab explains that the: “3D modeling data created with Tilt Brush can be uploaded to STYLY after exporting it as a glb file.” For further information on the process follow this link.
The Japanese studio launched STYLY in 2017 as a web platform specifically tailored to the easy creation of VR experiences. A cloud-based solution, creators can use STYLY for any type of artistic projects, some have created music videos whilst others down the anime route. All of which are promoted every year as part of the NEWVIEW Awards held in Tokyo. In addition to VR, Psychic VR Lab added augmented reality (AR) support last summer, greatly expanding STYLY’s functionality. The studio recently held a successful funding round, managing to raise $8.5 million USD (¥900m JPY) towards expanding the platform globally.
VRFocus will continue its coverage of STYLY as well as its NEWVIEW Awards, reporting back with further updates.
Japan-based Psychic VR Lab has announced the close of an $8.5 million investment to grow its cloud-based XR development platform, STYLY.
Psychic VR Lab is the company behind STYLY, a browser-based tool which allows creators to easily build cross-platform 3D spaces which can be viewed in the browser or with VR and AR devices. The company says it’s primarily interested in promoting the creation of XR spaces involving art, fashion, and culture, and hosts a gallery of spaces created with its tool.
Last week Psychic VR lab announced it has raised $8.5 million in venture funding from the likes of KDDI Open Innovation Fund, DG Ventures, DG Daiwa Ventures, DK Gate, and others. The company says this latest investment has brought its total capital raise to $18 million.
According to Physic VR Lab, the new funding will be used to “strengthen the organizational structure” of the company and to accelerate usage of the STYLY in “converting various spaces to XR media.” Along those lines the company says it’s working with AR headset maker Nreal on an XR music exhibition called AGARTHA which will be hosted at MWC Shanghai this year. Physic VR Lab also hopes to attract greater development and usage from the Western audience.
Psychic VR Lab, the Japanese studio behind XR content creation app STYLY has announced the successful completion of a new funding round. The company managed to raise $8.5 million USD (¥900m JPY) from several key investors to help with its global expansion of the platform.
The round was led by KDDI Open Innovation Fund No. 3 (operated by Global Brain Co., Ltd.) and also featured DG Ventures Co., Ltd., DG Daiwa Ventures Co., Ltd., and DK Gate Co., Ltd. among others. This brings Psychic VR Lab’s total funding to approximately $18 million.
With the investment Psychic VR Lab will be expanding its team to help promote and commercialise STYLY. Thus bringing more creators onboard to showcase how the platform can be used for virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) content creation.
“The XR creative platform STYLY provided by Psychic VR Lab creates a high-quality XR space using only a web browser and enables instant distribution to devices such as smartphones, which will become the norm in the future. We expect that STYLY will become a driving force,” said Kazuhiko Chuman, General Manager of Business Incubation Development Department at KDDI CORPORATION in a statement. “In order to strengthen our products through joint commercialization of KDDI and the provision of 5G-related technology, we will work together to create a future in which XR will become commonplace.”
STYLY launched in 2017 as a web platform specifically tailored to VR experiences. A cloud-based solution, creators can use STYLY for any number of immersive projects which are promoted every year as part of the NEWVIEW Awards. Psychic VR Lab added AR support last summer, greatly expanding STYLY’s functionality.
“Psychic VR Lab is a top runner in the industry promoting the conversion of lifestyle interfaces to XR,” adds Masahiko Maekawa, DG Ventures Co., Ltd. Board Director. “In the XR industry, it seems that there were many hardware makers related to VR / AR, but it is impressive that Psychic VR Lab has developed an XR platform aiming for an OS in the XR era.
The company continues to expand its brand through various partnerships. Most recent of which was a collaboration with Nreal for the MR music exhibition, “AGARTHA,” at MWC Shanghai 2021. As STYLY continues its expansion, VRFocus will keep you updated.
Psychic VR Lab, the Japanese studio behind XR content creation platform Styly has announced a new app specifically for the Nreal Light mixed reality (MR) glasses. Called Styly for Nreal, the app allows creators to distribute their work via the recently released device.
Available through Google Play, Styly for Nreal enables Nreal Light users to view cutting-edge immersive artworks from artists around the world. The app is merely a viewing tool rather than a creative one, all the has to be created on Styly Studio, Psychic VR Lab’s web-based platform.
Psychic VR Lab won an award itself recently, winning VRFocus’ very own The Better-Than-Reality Awards last week. The public voted for Styly AR as the Best AR App, beating a strong lineup of rivals.
Whilst accessing the Styly app might be easy, at the moment the real difficulty is in acquiring the Neal Light. The smartphone connect MR glasses first arrived in South Korea during the summer followed by Japan. As for western shores there’s still a bit of a wait, Vodafone has confirmed it’ll begin distribution in Europe starting in the Spring beginning with Germany and Spain.
As Qualcomm unveiled earlier this year when discussing its XR2 5G platform, there is going to be an influx of these ‘XR Viewers’ like the Nreal Light. Smaller, lightweight devices which offer new communication and entertainment possibilities without the limitations suffered by mobile VR headsets like Gear VR.
As further updates for Styly and Nreal Light are released, VRFocus will let you know.
VR inspired videogames have come a long way since the 1990s with today’s games becoming more engaging with massive improvements in quality and the way we play them. VR games like Five Nights at Freddy’s VR: Help Wanted, a horror-based title, and Pistol Whip, a rhythm-action first-person-shooter (FPS) are both exhilarating and fun.
Through my experience, I have come to gain a better understanding regarding which game genres are most interesting to put into VR. Game genres that require player physicality and immersion like horror, action-rhythm, fitness, or puzzles games are really emphasizing the excitement of the experience. Personally, I am most interested in seeing more games that have great storytelling like adventure titles. In Japan, VR games have been on the rise. The other day Facebook Connect mentioned that Japan is one of the biggest VR game markets. Every day there are VR games developed in Japan being released or launched for Oculus Quest 2 by Oculus.
So… how can foreign games be accepted by the Japanese?
In the past, there haven’t been many videogames developed outside of Japan that were localized for the Japanese market, but since the release of Oculus Quest last year there has been a significant increase in foreign games adapted for the Japanese market. Most Japanese are not proficient in English, so it is extremely vital for games sold in Japan to be well localized.
In addition to language, there are other somewhat unusual characteristics that are also important. Japanese people prefer VR games to have a “unique” and “well-developed” worldview with captivating characters. This may be an aspect that is slightly different and unique from Western interests. This difference is partly due to how the Japanese understand VR.
To many Japanese, VR is a type of “supported reality”. In other words, VR to many Japanese people is not a complete creation of a virtualized reality, but instead, an extended or supported reality. Japan has a unique culture of anime, manga, and games. For many Japanese, this unique culture is an escape to an imaginary world where you can become anything or anyone.
In Europe and America, it is common to see avatars that resemble the creator’s real-life self, however, in Japan, it is more common to see avatars that are quite different in shape and attributes from their creators. This may be because Western countries view VR as a real-life simulator whereas Japanese people use VR to become something different from their real-life selves.
Ready Player One’s Oasis is close to what Japanese people want in VR. Many people are motivated to play games because they can use their own unique avatar. The well-known Beat Saber VR rhythm game became popular by spreading MR-like play videos on social networking sites, but in Japan, the number of videos of avatars playing on social networking sites is far greater than the number of videos of real people playing a game.
I am excited about the future of VR games and I look forward to seeing more Japanese and foreign games becoming popular in Japan.
Towards the end of 2019, Psychic VR Lab launched a new mobile app under its Styly brand which allowed you to view various artworks in augmented reality (AR). At the time the studio also noted plans to enable AR content creation at some point during 2020. That update has now arrived.
To build an AR experience you use Styly Studio, the same web-based software that Psychic VR Lab launched a couple of years ago for virtual reality (VR) content creation. The update allows you to select between AR and VR templates and then go about creating your scene without any programming knowledge to publish on mobiles and tablets.
Designed to be easy to use, Styly features a drag and drop editor to get you started whilst more advanced creators can import content from 3D modeling software such as MAYA or Blender as well as digital material from YouTube, SoundCloud, and Instagram.
Once the AR experience has been created there are a couple of ways it can be published and viewed. The easiest is directly through the Styly mobile app which is compatible with iOS and Android devices where users can search for scenes. The other method is via Styly markers (QR codes). Once your AR content is published, STYLY markers are automatically issued. These can then be scanned by the app to view the content. This is a great way for artists to showcase their work by printing the markers and placing them in locations like a gallery.
All the software under the Styly banner is free to use, Psychic VR Lab even created the NEWVIEW Awards to help showcase and celebrate artists work.
The studio has also added several other improvements to the software including a non-WebGL screen so users can view and configure scenes quickly. VRFocus will continue its coverage of Styly, reporting back with the latest app updates.
Making any sort of virtual reality (VR) content isn’t a simple process, from a piece of art using Tilt Brush or Quill to an actual videogame and all the complicated elements that process involves. It’s why Japanese studio Psychic VR Lab created STYLY, an online, browser-based solution for those creators looking to delve into this immersive space without having to go down the Unity/Unreal Engine route. When VRFocus attended the NEWVIEW Awards 2019 in Tokyo last year it was the perfect time to hear from two of the team looking to expand VR content creation both at home and abroad.
STYLY is a platform designed for artistic expression rather than making videogames. Freely available to use online or by downloading the app through Steam (supports Valve Index, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Windows Mixed Reality), you can start by exploring the thousands of VR spaces already available – like all the recent award winners – before delving into the creative side.
This is easily achieved through a drag and drop system so there’s no need to worry about coding. For those with the skills, STYLY can also be used with 3D software such as MAYA or Blender.
It’s not just VR that Psychic VR Lab is interested in but the whole ecosystem including augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR). In 2019 the studio released an AR STYLY app for mobile devices where you can view art pieces by spatial designer “Discont” who won the Parco VR content award at the 2018 NEWVIEW Awards. This is just the beginning as the app will introduce creative tools later this year.
So onto the interviews. First up is Yosh, Creative Director at Psychic VR Lab and the driving force behind many of the studio’s innovative projects including fostering VR designers at Bunka Fashion College and the NEWVIEW Awards. Yosh details how the awards came to be and the progress being made to encourage more people through various workshops and the NEWVIEW School.
For VRFocus’ second interview Psychic VR Lab’s CEO, Masahiro Yamaguchi talks in detail about the STYLY platform itself, what it can do and how he hopes it’ll encourage kids to unlock their imaginations. Yamaguchi has a very forward-thinking philosophy when it comes to immersive media, that it will eventually become ubiquitous in our everyday lives, cities will become digital canvases in ways we can’t even imagine.
As Psychic VR Lab continues to expand its digital vision VRFocus will keep you posted.
For the past two years, Japanese virtual reality (VR) developer Psychic VR Lab has held its NEWVIEW Awards to showcase the best talent using its free online creation tool STYLY. Accepting submissions from around the world – 2019 received 145 – the event took place in December hosted at Shibuya PARCO in Tokyo. VRFocus was lucky enough to attend and spoke with the winners to learn a little more about their quirky VR experiences.
Takkun Museum – NEWVIEW Awards 2019 Gold Prize winner
While there was a theme of ‘Design Your Ultra-Experience’, the main stipulation was that the online creation and publishing platform had to be used. Not only so everyone had access to the same tools but also for distribution; you can view all the artwork online yourself via the award website. Even with the same tools creators came up with some wildly different projects, some used photogrammetry while others simply used STYLY’s editing tools.
In total there were eight awards to allocate, with three artworks awarded a silver prize of $5,000 USD with one awarded the gold prize of $20,000.
The Gold Prize went to Takkun Museum, a piece the artist created to combine both memories and artworks of his son since birth. Viewers are able to look at the pictures the child drew and the toys he played with at different ages. “The sharing of future family photos maybe like this. Not only is it possible to experience the content given to the XR world but also to arrange and create and enjoy it for the individual, leading to the idea of a photo album service that is one step ahead, and the only point that I thought “I want to do it!” to,” said NEWVIEW judge Yumeshin Nemu.
VR Manga World for STYLY, NEWVIEW Awards 2019 Silver Prize winner
The three Silver Prizes went to VR MANGA WORLD for STYLY, Piece of String and ne.mui, each offering an imaginative take on the theme. VR MANGA WORLD for STYLY, for instance, puts you inside a comic, opening each scene as you climb a stairwell. Piece of String, on the other hand, was one of the few pieces to use photogrammetry as creator Wyatt Roy allowed viewers into his home using an idea he dreamed about. “I really liked this work. I myself had scanned myself using similar photogrammetry in a Toronto studio, but it was impressive to see this work in a very unique way,” said filmmaker and judge Nick DenBoer.
Then there were four smaller awards:
KMNZ Prize – C’est la vie, SHOGYO-MUJO
Hideki Matsutake Prize – Merging Memories
Parco Prize – ne.mui
Media Ambition Tokyo Prize – Piece of String
To learn a little more about these winners and their ideas and inspirations check out the interview compilation below.
The event wasn’t just a chance for Psychic VR Lab to showcase STYLY’s VR capabilities, augmented reality (AR) was also thrown in the mix as well. Having previously revealed AR integration would be coming to the app in 2020VRFocus saw that in action on the 5th floor of Shibuya PARCO with a piece called Discont viewed through Lenovo Mirage Solo headsets. For further STYLY updates, keep reading VRFocus.
Disclosure: VRFocus a media partner for the NEWVIEW Awards, with costs covered to attend the 2019 event.
At its busiest times, Tokyo’s iconic Shibuya crossing can see over 1,000 shoppers, business people and tourists scramble over the road. The lights go green and the tarmac morphs into a frenzy of hurried walkers and starry-eyed marvellers. From afar, it’s one of the city’s most captivating sights.
Inside Styly, though, it becomes the world’s biggest rave.
By scanning a nearby QR code on Styly’s free new mobile AR app, you can project an almost painful strobe lighting show on the scramble. Set against the backdrop of this bustling sea of people it projects a little extra fun on a location already so well-known to millions of people.
It’s just one in a dizzying array of experiences I’m shown made through the Styly platform across two days in Tokyo. Creator Psychic VR Lab is one of those companies that is incredibly bullish about the future of VR and AR. CEO Masahiro Yamaguchi at one point tells me he thinks everyone will be wearing a headset all day in the near future, and there’s little sign of bluffing. Psychic VR is prepared to try a lot of different things in an attempt to hold a stake in that hopeful horizon.
But what exactly is Psychic VR Lab? A month ago I hadn’t heard of them, and I’d bet you hadn’t either. Do a little digging and you’ll discover an outfit very reminiscent of a Silicon Valley startup; a seemingly generous amount of investment from a renowned Japanese investor keeps the lights on at an eccentric Shinjuku-based office, smothered in a leafy overgrown texture quite polarizing to anything else on the street. A video shown by the group conveyed an eclectic 2017 opening party including, among other things, intimate theatrical acts and demon-dressed DJs that, altogether, seemed not unlike a New Year’s Eve house party in Portland.
As if it didn’t already sound crazy enough, Yamaguchi also showed me a clothing line of futurist-styled coats and cloaks he envisioned people wearing to make their HoloLens and Magic Leaps look like fashion accessories. In fact, he wore one of them over the course of the entire two days and then handed me one at the end, too. Perhaps if we changed the way we look everyday, he suggested, we might not be so embarrassed about these clunky headsets intended for everyday use.
Suffice to say Psychic VR is on the wilder side of VR/AR believers. Everything they are doing starts with Styly, a web-based creation platform for VR and AR headsets (AR distribution is coming soon). Right now with a free account you can launch Styly Studio and very quickly create a primitive virtual scene to view either in a browser or a VR headset. A library of user and developer-created assets and the ability to add in YouTube videos and images makes it simple to make a VR experience, however janky, in a few moments. For example, I made this trippy Pokemon zoo in about 10 minutes. It is woeful but, you know, I made it (sometimes these things take a while to load, so bear with it).
With a more deft understanding of the platform, Styly’s developers created some simple interaction-based scenes like this rudimentary baseball game.
Like many other immersive tech companies with dreams for the future, though, Styly is also making its move into AR. Early implementations can already be seen across Shibuya, from the crossing all the way up to a brash new shopping center, opened mere weeks ago. Outside this towering building, you can explore a photogrammetric capture of an old Akira art exhibit that used to surround the site during construction. Inside, an intriguing hybrid VR/AR experience, shown through a Daydream Mirage Solo headset, offers a virtual gallery between the center’s escalators.
Later on, I’m dazzled by an office display in which Psychic pulls more AR/VR wizardry, including one incredible experience in which I explore a diorama-sized real-world location before it is scaled up to place me right inside of it. More traditional AR exhibits on a HoloLens include virtual information panels appearing next to products on a shelf. Granted these are developer-made instances of the types of experiences long-envisioned by others, but the promise of handing these tools off for anyone to create is a potent one.
The question is when, or more importantly if, all of this gains any traction. Styly’s SteamVR app has been available for over two years and hasn’t garnered much attention. The company touts that it had over 10,000 uploads to its platform, but with no curation on publishing many of these could be simply abandoned drafts. You’ll have to dig to find any diamonds in its rough online library (though the recommendations page is a good place to start).
But there are some creators making a case for the platform. The company’s New View Awards selected the best Styly-made experiences over the past year with the 25 finalists covering the spectrum from bewilderingly messy to genuinely impactful VR experiences. One excellent manga VR piece teased the potential future of VR comics, for example, while another used photogrammetry to immortalize memories of traveling. Of particular note was this year’s grand prize winner, Takkun Museum, in which a father brought the vibrant, endearingly scribbled creations of his son to life in a spectacular theatrical performance.
There is enough here for me to envision a path to validity for Styly. These are, of course, all different strands of VR and AR experiences that we’ve seen before. While a long way from something like Unity, their aim is to appeal to a new generation of creators with an accessible toolset. It’s an ambitious goal, and this isn’t the only horse in that race. At present it’s tough to call if the wide net Psychic VR is casting will spread Styly too thin to catch any one specific developer audience, or if its jack of all trades approach will find traction while it slowly catches up to mastering each one (Styly Studio is still very much an expanding platform).
The company’s long-term plans eventually include taking a share of sold experiences, among other strategies. We’ll keep an eye on it in the future to see if it gains any traction.
Disclosure: UploadVR was a media partner for the New View Awards and Psychic VR covered accommodation and food for the two-day visit.
