Quill is a brilliant VR drawing and animation app originally born within the now shuttered Oculus Story Studio. The app continued on after the group’s closure, but with seemingly few long term plans for the app, Facebook has decided to spin it out by handing ownership over to its original creator. As part of the transition, Quill’s proprietary file format is being open-sourced.
In the early days of Oculus the company started internal groups like Oculus Story Studio which was tasked with exploring cinema through the lens of VR. One of the films the group released was Dear Angelica (2017), which was played back in real-time with a unique painterly look. That VR film was made possible by an internal tool that allowed artists to use VR headsets and controllers to draw and animated in 3D. Eventually Oculus moved to release the tool to the general public for VR drawing and animation; that’s the short story of how Quill came to be.
That’s why it’s something of a shame that Facebook has announced it’s giving up on the app. Seemingly uninterested in any long-term play with the brilliant tool, the company is handing off ownership.
But only time will tell if this is an end or a new beginning. Thankfully Facebook opted to give Quill away to its original creator—Iñigo Quilez and his company Smoothstep—which will maintain the app going forward. The app will continue to be available on Rift under the name Quill by Smoothstep. The Quill Theater viewer app on Quest will continue to be available but generically rebranded as VR Animation Viewer.
While Smoothstep hasn’t said much in the way of its long-term plans, the hand-off from Facebook came the same day as a new patch for Quill, version 2.9, which made some small improvements and fixes.
Seemingly in an effort to unbind Quill from its proprietary nature, the hand-off has also brought an open-source version of Quill’s unique file format called IMM. Facebook says it hopes the move will bring an “expanded creator and audience ecosystem for VR animation.”
Indeed, one of Quill’s key challenges was distribution. Unlike making a flat film which can easily be viewer via built-in players on literally billions of devices, the proprietary nature of Quill has meant that native playback of the artwork is ‘stuck’ on Oculus headsets only. The only other approach is exporting to a more interoperable format and then use other tools to render and distribute your project.
Now that IMM has been open-sourced, it should be possible for people to build IMM players for more devices, which could mean more wider distribution. We’d love to see a version built with WebXR so that Quill works could be seen easily by a wider range of devices from VR headsets to smartphones. With the open-source format, it’s also possible that other VR artwork tools could support exporting to IMM.
With Quill in the hands of Smoothstep, the app could also overcome another issue: platform exclusivity. Because Quill was made by Oculus, there was little hope that we’d ever see a version for other VR platforms, like PSVR or SteamVR. With the app now owned by an independent company, that might be a real possibility for the future, which would give more artists access to this excellent tool.
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The path of Quill is strikingly similar to what happend with another VR art tool that was also started at Oculus, Medium. Apparently not interested in any long-term plans with the tool, Facebook opted to sell off the project to Adobe, which has recently incorporated it into its latest 3D creation tools.
Quill is a brilliant VR drawing and animation app originally born within the now shuttered Oculus Story Studio. The app continued on after the group’s closure, but with seemingly few long term plans for the app, Facebook has decided to spin it out by handing ownership over to its original creator. As part of the transition, Quill’s proprietary file format is being open-sourced.
In the early days of Oculus the company started internal groups like Oculus Story Studio which was tasked with exploring cinema through the lens of VR. One of the films the group released was Dear Angelica (2017), which was played back in real-time with a unique painterly look. That VR film was made possible by an internal tool that allowed artists to use VR headsets and controllers to draw and animated in 3D. Eventually Oculus moved to release the tool to the general public for VR drawing and animation; that’s the short story of how Quill came to be.
That’s why it’s something of a shame that Facebook has announced it’s giving up on the app. Seemingly uninterested in any long-term play with the brilliant tool, the company is handing off ownership.
But only time will tell if this is an end or a new beginning. Thankfully Facebook opted to give Quill away to its original creator—Iñigo Quilez and his company Smoothstep—which will maintain the app going forward. The app will continue to be available on Rift under the name Quill by Smoothstep. The Quill Theater viewer app on Quest will continue to be available but generically rebranded as VR Animation Viewer.
While Smoothstep hasn’t said much in the way of its long-term plans, the hand-off from Facebook came the same day as a new patch for Quill, version 2.9, which made some small improvements and fixes.
Seemingly in an effort to unbind Quill from its proprietary nature, the hand-off has also brought an open-source version of Quill’s unique file format called IMM. Facebook says it hopes the move will bring an “expanded creator and audience ecosystem for VR animation.”
Indeed, one of Quill’s key challenges was distribution. Unlike making a flat film which can easily be viewer via built-in players on literally billions of devices, the proprietary nature of Quill has meant that native playback of the artwork is ‘stuck’ on Oculus headsets only. The only other approach is exporting to a more interoperable format and then use other tools to render and distribute your project.
Now that IMM has been open-sourced, it should be possible for people to build IMM players for more devices, which could mean more wider distribution. We’d love to see a version built with WebXR so that Quill works could be seen easily by a wider range of devices from VR headsets to smartphones. With the open-source format, it’s also possible that other VR artwork tools could support exporting to IMM.
With Quill in the hands of Smoothstep, the app could also overcome another issue: platform exclusivity. Because Quill was made by Oculus, there was little hope that we’d ever see a version for other VR platforms, like PSVR or SteamVR. With the app now owned by an independent company, that might be a real possibility for the future, which would give more artists access to this excellent tool.
– – — – –
The path of Quill is strikingly similar to what happend with another VR art tool that was also started at Oculus, Medium. Apparently not interested in any long-term plans with the tool, Facebook opted to sell off the project to Adobe, which has recently incorporated it into its latest 3D creation tools.
Epic Games recently acquired 3D object hosting service Sketchfab and Quill has been used to create a range of animated projects like Dear Angelica. After Tilt Brush was open sourced, a number of other projects used the code to built art-based VR apps and we’ll be curious if creators will rally around the Quill file format in a similar way.
New VR headsets like Quest Pro, an Apple device, and a next-generation VR system from Sony are expected to launch in the coming years. We’ll be following closely how tools evolve for creating content in VR that might be integral to those future systems.
Baobab Studios is one busy studio of late. Having just released the first part of its musical animation Paper Birds for Oculus Quest, it’s now been revealed the team are working on a new project for 2021 called Namoo.
Image credit: Baobab Studios
First reported by Deadline, the virtual reality (VR) animation is being directed and written by Erick Oh (Heart, How to Eat Your Apple). The studio is utilising Oculus’ Quillfor the project with hand-painted characters and environments.
Namoo is the Korean word for “tree”, with the narrative taking viewers on a journey through a man’s life, from budding artist to grandfather, celebrating his tree of life.
“Erick Oh is an exciting, emerging director in animation, and from the moment he first shared his vision of Namoo with us, we knew we wanted to work with him. His wondrous artistic sensibilities are a natural fit for what we do at Baobab in that he crafts deeply personal films which connect with viewers both emotionally and universally,” said Maureen Fan, co-founder and CEO of Baobab Studios to Deadline. “We are very proud of Namoo and look forward to sharing it with audiences very soon.”
Paper Birds – Image credit: Baobab Studios
“Baobab Studios is a great place to make films because they are willing to push boundaries in the name of art. I think that is why their films resonate so well with audiences and critics alike,” said Oh. “Making Namoo was a joy because they were true collaborators who listened and gave me creative freedom to achieve my vision for the film.”
If you love VR animation then this isn’t the only film to look forward to from Baobab Studios. The second part of Paper Birds is due for release next year and so is Baba Yaga, another Oculus Quest title. Both feature well-known actors voicing roles, Jojo Rabbit star Archie Yates is in Paper Birds whilst Baba Yaga has an all-star female cast including Kate Winslet, Daisy Ridley, Jennifer Hudson and Glenn Close.
Namoo is slated to release for Oculus platforms in 2021. As further details are shared, VRFocus will keep you updated.
Today the developers of Moss, Polyarc, announced a $9 million Series B venture funding round led by Hiro Capital to expand into AR game development. Even still, the developer tells us they’re still committed to making a sequel to Moss.
Anyone that has spent any time inside a VR headset and browsed any of the major storefronts from Oculus Home and Steam to the PSN store have likely seen Quill, the main character from Polyarc’s Moss advertised somewhere. She’s cute, charming, and full of character despite never speaking a word and is the cornerstone of what made Moss such a great experience.
The Series B fund raise is led by Hiro Capital, followed by Vulcan Capital, an existing investor, and Galaxy Interactive via its Galaxy EOS VC Fund, a partnership with EOSIO blockchain software publisher Block.one.
Notably, this fund raise is specifically announced as being targeted at AR game development. This seems odd at first given their experience in VR development, but sounds like it’s all part of their vision for the industry.
“We see VR and AR as a continuum, and there are great games to be made all along that spectrum,” says Lincoln Davis, Publishing Director at Polyarc, in an email to UploadVR. “We’re excited for the opportunity to keep pushing the industry with new ways to experience physical interaction, emotional feedback, and object persistence.”
Since we’re still waiting on an official reveal for their next VR game, presumably Moss 2, it still came as a bit of a surprise. Will this impact Moss 2’s development at all? Is that an AR game now?
“As you covered in the past, the team is excited to continue Quill and the player’s story in the world of Moss,” says Davis. “And we can’t wait to share more.”
That’s reassuring then. There hasn’t really been a big, breakout success in the AR space for gaming yet. Pokemon GO isn’t really true AR and the small games developed for Hololens were mostly just tech demos. Magic Leap has a handful of games, but it was never really designed as a gaming platform.
I asked for more details on their AR plans regarding whether it would include a Moss AR game, new IP, which platforms, etc., but Davis simply said that “has yet to be determined” at this time.
Let us know what you think down in the comments below! For more on Moss, check out our full walkthrough video series.
John Carmack has made another interesting comment on Twitter today regarding Quill animations on the Oculus Quest. This comes after his revelation last month that he had a version of Minecraft VR running on Quest at one point, but could never get the schedules to align between Facebook and Microsoft to send the game into production.
Animations made in Rift creation tool Quill are frequently highlighted on Oculus TV in Quest, where users can subsequently view the creations using the standalone app Quill Theatre. A new remark from technical VR guide at Facebook John Carmark indicates that this feature is more popular than people might expect.
The Quillustration support in Oculus TV on Quest has turned out to be more popular than I expected. Quickly constructed scenes with simple animation and full 6DOF exploration have become an interesting new canvas for a lot of talented artists.
The tweet was actually a comment attached with a retweet from Goro Fujita, who tweeted a video of a stunning animation he made in Quill and rendered in Octane. It features a Vulture moving idling with some very nice light effects, as you can see below.
Vulture – Daily Quillustration built and animated in VR using Quill rendered in Octane
The Vulture animation is just one example of many creations that get featured on the Oculus TV homepage, which can be opened directly in Quill Theatre. Although artwork created in Quill can be viewed in Oculus TV/Quill Theatre on Quest, there is currently no way to create Quill artwork on the standalone headset. The Quill creation tools are still only available for Oculus Rift on PC VR (unless you use Oculus Link).
Studio Syro, an indie VR animation studio, released the first installment of their short film series called Tales from Soda Island yesterday. Built entirely in the Oculus Quill, the series kicks off with one of the most charming VR experiences you’ve probably ever seen.
The first episode is called ‘The Multiverse Bakery’, and is now available on Oculus Quest via the Oculus TV app and Quill Theater on Rift. A second episode is said to arrive soon.
The sub 10-minute short mashes up 3D animation—created in the Quill creation app—and brings it to life with spatial audio and special effects.
The story follows a curious character called ‘The Baker’ who is busy assembling all sorts of ingredients for something special.
Without spoiling the story further, suffice it to say Studio Syro has taken many of the hard-won VR design concepts and applied it to Tales From Soda Island. Transitions are cinematic without being immersion-breaking, intense visuals deftly grab your attention, and audio (best with headphones) makes the short feel like a living, breathing world.
“The creative process is way more efficient and fun than traditional workflows,” artist Dan Franke says in an Oculus blog post. “In Quill, you can jump straight into doodling a character in 3D space and designing a scene with easy and super fast iterations. The duplication workflow also speeds up the process a whole lot. With the modeled assets, you can freely move in the space and search for interesting angles, where to place the viewer. But other than designing a composition for the traditional 2D output in VR, you have to be mindful of space and build the scene all around the viewer.”
Quill is a 3D creation tool that lets you physically paint or sculpt in VR. Since its release in 2016, it’s been a creation platform for loads of talented artists, however thanks an update in early 2018 that lets you animate 3D VR paintings, its attracted even more talent.
Thanks to the publishing platforms Oculus TV on Quest and Quill Theater on Rift, you can watch high-quality animated experiences from creators; we suggest checking out the work of Goro Fujita, Daniel Martin Peixe, Liz Edwards, and Nikolai Lockertsen for a start.
A few months back, Facebook launched a selection of Quill creations on Oculus Quest via a handy new tool named Quill Theater. From this week, you can finally use the same feature via the original app on Oculus Rift.
Quill Theater offers some of the best work from well-known VR artists like Goro Fujita and features short VR stories, all at the touch of a button. With Quill’s 2.4 update, you can finally access all of this content on the platform it was all actually made on, the Oculus Rift. Check out a quick look at the feature in the trailer below.
We are super excited to announce that Quill Theater is now integrated in Quill!
With Quill 2.4, you can upload and view your Quill creations and publish directly to VR. You can now explore stories and worlds on Oculus Rift or Oculus Quest. Jump into “The Remedy” by Daniel Martin Peixe, “Alex’s Sci-Fi World” by Matt Schaefer and many other creations from this amazing VR creator community.
Learn how you can share your Quill creations here:
https://creator.oculus.com/media-studio/documentation/quill/
Details on today’s new features:
https://quill.fb.com/features/
The app now allows direct saving via the Oculus Media Studio with a new ‘Save to VR’ option.
We’ll look forward to checking out some of our favorite Quillustrations with Rift’s higher fidelity, then. That’s especially true of some of the great story-led efforts that have arrived on the platform in recent months like the brilliant short film, The Remedy. Facebook is also promoting a new series, Alex’s Sci-Fi World: A New Quill Animated Series, which we’ll be checking out today.
Elsewhere, the update also fixes an issue with spawn areas and sound attenuation. This is actually Quill’s second update in a month; update 2.3 arrived on March 5 and brought plenty of big fixes along with it. More details of those are here.
Perhaps noproject to date shows the potential of Quill—Oculus’ VR illustration and animation tool—quite like The Remedy. Created by veteran animator Daniel Martin Peixe, The Remedy is a roughly 10 minute long story which establishes a very effective comic book-like experience by stringing together various Quill scenes to tell a complete narrative. Peixie shared with us a glimpse inside of the production process which brought the film to life.
Guest Article by Daniel Martin Peixe
Daniel Martin Peixe is a character animator and illustrator at Walt Disney Animation Studios. With twenty years of experience in 2D and CGI animation, his recent work can be seen in critically-acclaimed films like Tangled (2010), Zootopia (2016), and Moana (2016). Peixe has been a mentor for the professional online animation workshop Animsquad since 2017. He is the writer, director, and creator of the VR short film The Remedy (2019), created entirely within the Quill VR illustration tool.
How to Watch The Remedy
If you haven’t had a chance to watch ‘The Remedy’, we recommend doing so for context. The short is available in Quill Theater on Oculus Quest, here’s how to find it:
Ensure your Oculus Quest is running firmware 12.0 or later
In Oculus TV, you’ll find ‘The Remedy’ under “An animated Story Created in Quill”.
The Remedy project started with the idea of using Quill illustrations as if they were comic book panels. Looking at my own Quill illustrations, I kept thinking, ‘I wish I could press a button and see what happens next!’ I also wanted to experiment using traditional cinema editing in VR, mostly for action scenes. I pitched this idea to the Quill team and to my surprise they were already thinking of ways to expand the timeline toolset in the next update, aiming to make Quill a full fledged VR storytelling suite!
Soon after, I was officially commissioned to work on this project—a short story in VR using the latest Quill 2.0 beta with the timeline tools—I was over the Moon! It was an amazing learning experience; this turned out to be my rough production workflow, which I’ll talk about in more detail below:
Pre-production
Script writing
Rough storyboard thumbnails in 2D
3D storyboarding with in VR, layout and staging
Editing storyboards in VR, using transitions, cuts and adjusting timing
Organizing layers and labeling each one
Adding ‘stops’
Sending the rough assembly to the Music and Audio team
Production
Visual development, research reference photos
Final in-film text dialogue rendered in Photoshop and exported as PNG
2D color reference sketches before painting key scenes in VR
Drawn and build sets and characters, speech bubbles and panels in VR
Frame by frame animation
Adjust final timing and transitions
Adding special animated effects
Send to Music and Audio team
Final audio mix
Optimization pass
Technical checks for Quill Theater playback on Oculus Quest
As I started writing the story, I focused on something simple with a minimal number of characters. Also, I knew I wanted exciting action scenes but before writing those I tried to make sure there’s an emotional connection with the main character and clear motivations for the heroine to go on an adventure.
I did many different drafts of the script until I landed with something I was happy with and moved on to storyboarding. Some storyboards started as 2D sketches I did on my phone; the small screen allowed me to quickly put down any ideas I had for camera angles, scene staging etc. With these little scribbles as a reference, it was much easier later to do the VR sketching in Quill.
Preliminary 2D Sketches
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During this process it was important to start establishing the scale of the scenes in relation to the viewer, as well as the staging and planning for the ‘focal point’ of each scene to make sure that when there’s a ‘cut’ people don’t get lost or disoriented. I wanted the audience to be their own ‘cameraman’ in some scenes, like the one where the wagon leaves the house and you see the title. Planning all this with rough sketches was crucial, to make sure that some of the more experimental scenes would work before I jumped in and began modeling the assets.
The transform keys in Quill allow you to create smooth animations and fade in and outs, setting a couple of keyframes on the group layers. This was super useful for adding ‘camera moves’ which I did by moving entire sets instead of moving the actual Quill camera. Like the ‘escape from the volcano’ scene where the character is on a static layer animated jumping from one platform to the other and the set moves toward the audience, giving the impression that the audience is moving forward.
The ‘stops’ (where viewer input is required to continue the story) were a new concept that we weren’t sure that would work, but I had the feeling that it would make it feel more like a comic book where viewers could take in the scene around them before continuing.
Picking where to put the stops was a natural choice in some cases, for example, the establishing shot where the heroine is in front of the volcano temple entrance. The audience might feel like spending a bit more time taking in the environment. Just like a double page in a comic book, it is a big featured moment, and you are invited to explore all the details until you’re ready to move on. In other cases the stops are helpful in case you want to spend more time reading the speech bubbles. And then in other cases I chose to not have any stop or pause, because I wanted the audience to feel the thrill of the action.
Once all the story scenes were sketched out I adjusted the timing and made sure I was happy with that because it was time to deliver the project to the audio and music team so they could get started.
The next step for me was cleaning up scene by scene and adding the color, details etc. For the key scenes I did a 2D color key sketch outside of VR. That was super helpful in order to establish a clear goal for the scene in terms of mood, color palette, and lighting.
2D Color Keys
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While most of the scenes in The Remedy are viewed from a third-person perspective, there were several scenes which I thought would be especially powerful in first-person. Thanks to VR, that perspective truly puts the audience in the shoes of the character. The ‘book’ scene—where the main character pages through an old book that sets up some important elements of the story—was important to me because being in a first person view it acts as a close-up shot, and the audience is welcome to lean in closer to explore the details of the book. In the ‘plant temple’ scene—where the main character finds the objective of her quest—I used first-person so that the audience could feel the same as the protagonist, admiring all the magical healing plants still growing on that orchard, and the sense of awe exploring how big is the temple. At the very end I included another first-person scene where I put the audience in the skin of the bad guy, looking up at the heroine as she holds onto the satchel—and his fate. Many of these shots would also work in 2D cinema, but in VR they become much more impactful!
When modelling assets I tried to keep an eye to the stroke count and the general density of the detail, since I knew there could be a chance for this project to run on Oculus Quest. Using the straight line tool as a base for most structures was the way to go. And also being smart about where to add detail and where to leave things more simplified. In most scenes there isn’t even a set or background, just the characters and a color gradient. This was completely intentional since I wanted the audience to focus on them and not be distracted by detail in the background.
I knew that I wanted most of the animation to be simple from the start. I didn’t plan to do full animation for this project, but I realized the action scenes needed some extra detail to really sell them. The most complex animations were achieved with a rough sketch first, with the timing and most in-betweens drawn.
Then I posed the character by constructing it from separate, previously drawn parts. I grabbed each part, and using the rough anim as a guide, I positioned them on each frame.
This allows for a very traditional animation approach, and with the use of Grab tool I was able to duplicate and deform the pieces seamlessly. The animation also becomes layered or what was known as ‘limited’ animation in certain parts, meaning that I would divide the character and while some parts of the character are still moving other parts remain still, on a separate layer.
The whole team at Oculus became really excited to learn that The Remedy, would be playable on Quest! The Quill team lead engineer was able to squeeze the whole project into a small size, and he ran some extra optimizations to make sure it would play well.
The last stretch of work was very exciting because we started to hear the amazing musical score from Facebook’s sound designer coming to life. Due to the ‘stops’ feature, sound engineers had to come up with two types of scores: the first was timed with an average guess of the time it takes to read the speech bubbles and to progress through the story—that way if you wait for too long in a paused moment, the music continues and slowly fades into the atmosphere sound effect—the second type of score was for the more linear moments with a fixed timing.
As I was finishing the last scenes, sound design was catching up with me finishing up the music. The team did an incredible job with the sound effects that make everything feel much more grounded.
This has been an amazing learning experience. I wore many hats and learned a lot in terms of storytelling, visual development, color, writing, and staging. But also huge learning in how to make the most out of Quill’s amazing toolset. I loved working on The Remedy and I cannot wait to create my next VR film with Quill!
At one point, it looked like Facebook and Oculus’ Quill software was all but forgotten. This week, the VR app got one of its biggest updates yet.
Quill 2.0 is now live and free for Rift owners. Whereas the VR art experience started life as a Tilt Brush competitor, this update continues its journey to becoming a self-contained storytelling tool. Previously it was possible to make short, novel animations using the platform. Now, though, Quill’s animation timeline has been expanded upon to include new features like that you synchronize sound, make transitions between shots and even more. The goal is to allow creators to make longer form VR narratives.
You can see a group of animators talk over the changes in the video above. Also new in this update are transform and opacity keyframes that can help speed up animation. Stops, meanwhile, can pause the events of a story while keeping certain looping animations alive. Elsewhere there are new additions to Quill’s audio offerings and the arrival of sequence layers. You can read more about it on the Oculus Blog.
It’s a promising update though, sadly, there’s still no sign that Quill might ever arrive on Quest. Back in March Oculus stated that its other VR art app, Oculus Medium, wouldn’t be coming to Quest. At the time the company said such an app required “the power and memory of a PC.”
Since then, though, we’ve seen experiences like Tilt Brush and Gravity Sketch land on Quest. Here’s hoping they help Oculus change its mind.
