Moss war und ist ein Hit auf der PSVR – am Ende des gelungenen Mäuse-Spiels deuteten die Entwickler bereits ein „zweites Buch“ und damit eine Fortsetzung des Spiels an. In einem Blog-Post von Sony äußert sich nun ein Entwickler von Polyarc zur Gestaltung der Maus Quill und gibt an, dass man mit Volldampf am zweiten Teil arbeite.
Moss: Fortsetzung mit Mäusin Quill in Arbeit
Der exklusive PSVR-Titel Moss hat des Indie-Studio Polyarc hat sich zum Hit gemausert, im März erklomm Quilldie Spitze der PSVR-Charts in Nordamerika und Europa. Rick Lico – verantwortlich für Animationen bei Polyarc – plaudert im PlayStation Blog über seine Arbeit und die Entstehung der Maus-Heldin Quill. Lico beschreibt, wie das Team die Maus in das Spiel brachte und wie wichtig die Interaktion mit dem Spieler in der VR sei. So könne Quill beispielsweise Augenkontakt halten. Die wichtigste Möglichkeit, eine Beziehung zwischen Spieler und virtuellem Wesen aufzubauen, wäre aber Touch.
Im Blog stellt ein User dann fest, dass es hoffentlich keine drei Jahre dauere, bis das zweite Buch und damit die Fortsetzung von Moss erscheint. Lico antwortet darauf, dass das Team mit Volldampf an der Fortsetzung arbeite, damit es nicht so lange dauert. Einen genauen Termin kann der Entwickler naturgemäß noch nicht nennen, auch der Umfang eines zweiten Buches von Moss ist ungewiss. Eine Umsetzung für 2D-Monitore gibt der Entwickler allerdings eine deutliche Absage: Das Studio konzentriere sich aus Begeisterung auf VR, verrät Lico.
Quill, Oculus’ VR painting and drawing tool, recently saw a major update which added animation tools to the software, allowing users to create animated sequences directly in VR. A resident artist at Oculus has taken to the tool to show the incredible potential of drawing and animating in VR.
Formerly a visual development artist at Dreamworks, Goro Fujita is a talented artist in his own right, with his name in the credits of films like Megamind (2010), Madagascar 3 (2012), Penguins of Madagascar (2014), and Boss Baby (2017). Fujita joined Oculus Story Studio (where Quill was built) as art director in 2014, and though that department closed, he stayed on as an artist-in-residence when Quill’s development was picked up by Facebook’s Social VR team.
Following Quill’s update which added animation tools, Fujita has been creating and sharing animated artwork made in VR, using his talent as an illustrator and animator to show the incredible potential afforded by the medium. His Twitter feed is a trove of Quill micro-shorts, which show how with little more than a short animation loop, simple but thoughtful sound design, and strong art direction, you can convey action, emotion, and immersion from just a few seconds of animation. Here’s a handful of my favorites from his recent works:
Animating transformations is so much fun in VR. So much easier than with traditional methods. I did reuse some assets from my short film like the junk piles and the fences. Which helped to build this quickly.
Strong Winds
Love using the anim brush to paint dynamic cloth simulations :D Super fast and super effective.#Quillustration painted and animated in #VR using #Quill
This is a POV test. I strongly believe character POV’s in VR are a powerful story telling tool as you can relate to the characters in a way that wasn’t possible before. And the craziest thing of all is the speed #Quill allows you to create…This took about 1h30min to complete… pic.twitter.com/PK1UwJBdb2
Ok….the race is on!!! I combined @KurtChangArt ‘s cardboard plane with my cardboard race car and then grabbed the airplane and puppeteered it around while capturing the screen. And man….how quickly you can get dynamic shots like this… holy crap! All done in #Quillpic.twitter.com/7s2b9p6B9N
Wind Vane painted and animated in VR using #Quill. Note it took me 1h30min to create. VR opens a whole new door for creators! pic.twitter.com/amk9eu55Wn
This piece is particularly neat because it’s a collaboration; Fujita had initially drawn the side of the door with the man holding the roses, and artist Kurt Chang responded with the other half of the door—Fujita combined the two into a single scene, together telling a micro-story.
“First Date Extended Edition”@KurtChangArt followed up my “First Date” piece with what’s happening behind the door. I decided to merge our pieces together and it fit perfectly. So fun to do collaborative #VR paintings in #Quillpic.twitter.com/WYM2mQst55
You might be wondering why working in VR is much different than working either in traditional 2D or 3D. Let’s talk about a couple of reasons.
Working in VR the way that Fujita does is like a mashup between traditional 2D animation and 3D animation. For one, Quill allows users to draw and sketch with volume, in three dimensions. Traditional 2D animators have to have a strong internal concept of what an object (a cube, let’s say) would look like on all sides and how it should be represented as a 2D object in any given frame, taking both perspective and volume into account.
In order to hand-animate a 3D object in 2D, the artist must draw discrete frames showing the object’s different sides being revealed as it rotates and moves through space. Animating this way affords the artist deep control over the look and feel of objects—which can lend itself to a more ‘textured’ and ‘human’ feel compared to traditional 3D animation—but one major problem with this approach is that the frames can’t be easily reused for additional shots and angles because the artist is effectively creating a flipbook of 2D drawings in a sequence, not a 3D model. And since the subject isn’t a 3D model, the artist must also manually draw any lightning onto the subject (which is extremely difficult in cases where both the subject and lights might be moving). This is one major reason why traditional 2D animation is time consuming and expensive.
Traditional 3D workflows of course fix a lot of these problems. If you want to animate a cube, you’d create a 3D model of the cube first, and then move the cube itself to animate it rotating. Since the model is already built, you can move it and view it from any angle without needing to draw or build new views of the object, and computer rendering precisely handles perspective, volume, and lightning. This saves a ton of time, but reduces the amount of control that the artist has over the look and feel of the animation, which is one reason why traditional hand-drawn animation (like The Lion King) looks so much different than computer animation (like Toy Story).
Working in VR with a tool like Quill, artists get many of the time-saving benefits of 3D animation while retaining much of that essential control over the look and feel, which comes from 2D animation.
VR allows artists to literally draw in 3D, since they are working with controllers with can track their movements with six degrees of freedom (vs. just three degrees of freedom with 2D animation). That means they can draw their subject directly in 3D, and get the benefits of being able to then view the model from any angle, instead of needing to animate each side of the object individually.
In many of Fujita’s works above, you can see that beautiful hand-animated look, but also see how he makes use of the benefits of 3D animation by creating multiple shots from different angles to extend short animations into dynamic moments which feel much longer than the number of animated frames would imply—that means more content with less creation time. The ‘Cardboard Race’ piece above with the cardboard car and cardboard plane is a great example of this in action. You’re actually looking a short animation loops with a few small tweaks (like the position of the car and plane) which would have taken a lot of extra work if those shots had to be redrawn from those angles with a traditional 2D process.
In many of Fujita’s tweeted works, he talks about how quickly he’s able to compose these micro-shorts, with many of them taking just 30 minutes to 1 hour and 30 minutes to complete. “Never imagined I could do daily [VR] animations,” he wrote in one tweet, “VR opens a whole new door for creators!” he wrote in another.
– – — – –
Image courtesy Goro Fujita
Fujita has been open about his artistic methods and VR artwork, and actively shares his knowledge through live-streamed sessions where you can watch and learn how he illustrates and animates in VR—check out his Patreon if you’re interested in seeing how he does it.
[Update] Die Maus Quill im zauberhaften Spiel Moss legte auf der PSVR Ende Februar einen Blitzstart hin – allzu überraschend ist es also nicht, dass das knuffige VR-Spiel die Charts im März erobern konnte: In Amerika und Europa belegte Moss den 1. Platz. Auffallend ist zudem das gute Abschneiden der alten Titel Job Simulator und PlayStation VR Worlds. Das legt nahe, dass Sony viele neue PlayStation-VR-Besitzer gewinnen konnte. Bemerkenswert ist auch das gute Abschneiden von Bravo Team in Europa, das auf dem 2. Platz landete. Uns konnte der im März erschienene Shooter im Test allerdings weniger überzeugen.
Originalmeldung vom 9. März 2018:
Moss konnte in nur zwei Tagen die PSVR-Charts entern und belegte im Februar 2018 den 7. Platz. Das Action-Rätsel-Adventure um die knuffige Maus Quill erschien erst am 27. Februar als Download für Playstation VR und gehört zu den schönsten Virtual-Reality-Titeln überhaupt. In unserem Test holte sich Moss die Höchstwertung.
Moss: Kleine Maus Quill stürmt in die Top Ten
Das Maus-Adventure Moss erschien am 27. Februar 2018 – so blieben nur zwei Tage im vergangenen Monat, um in die Charts aufzusteigen. An der Spitze stehen die alten Hasen Superhot VR und der Job Simulator. Moss belegt den siebten Platz noch vor dem recht neuen Sprint Vector. Das etwas andere Rennspiel landete im Februar auf dem 9. Platz.
Wer Moss noch nicht gespielt hat – mit der kostenlosen PlayStation VR Demo 2 kann man in das Spiel hineinschnuppern. Das Adventure überzeugt vor allem durch seine fantastische Präsentation und den niedlichen Animationen der Maus. Dabei spart das Abenteuer nicht mit teilweise knackigen Rätseln und der einen oder anderen Action-Einlage, bei der man schwertschwingend Käfer platt machen muss. Moss wird ausschließlich mit dem DualShock Controller gespielt, der von der PS-Kamera getrackt wird. Dadurch ergibt sich eine eigene Steuerungsmöglichkeit, bei der man mit dem Controller praktisch in die Welt von Moss eingreifen und unsere Mäuseheldin beispielsweise packen, in die Luft heben und damit heilen kann.
Nach der Spielzeit von drei bis vier Stunden wünscht man sich dringend eine Fortsetzung, die der Indie-Entwickler Polyarc wohl auch plant. Ein Erfolg von Moss sollte die Chancen auf einen zweiten Teil jedenfalls deutlich erhöhen. Moss ist für 30 Euro im Sony Store erhältlich.
Die kleine und bezaubernde Maus Quill ist die Heldin im Adventure Moss. Der exklusive PSVR-Titel konnte uns in einer frühen Phase schon auf der Gamescom 2017 überzeugen, Chris schloss Quill sofort ins Herz. Aber kann uns das Action-Adventure mit hohem Rätselanteil auch in der finalen Fassung begeistern?
Moss: Quill im Wunderland
Am Anfang des Spiels steht ein Buch. Sobald man es aufschlägt, offenbart sich die Geschichte rund um das Königreich Moss. Ein neues Kapitel beginnt mit einigen Seiten, die zum größten Teil animierte Bilder zeigen. Schon hier kann der schöne Grafikstil begeistern. Hinzu kommt die hervorragende deutschsprachige Sprecherin, sodass ihr schon richtig märchenhaft eingestimmt seid, bevor ihr als Leser in das Buch eingesaugt werdet und die Reise beginnt.
Die VR-Welt von Moss ähnelt ein wenig einer Puppenstube, in die man hineinschaut – mit dem Unterschied, dass ihr direkt in der Welt seid. Ihr könnt – und müsst manchmal – einen näheren Blick werfen oder „um die Ecke“ schauen, um Dinge zu entdecken oder Plattformen auszumachen. Die Welt der Maus Quill fasziniert von Anfang an durch die wunderschöne Grafik, die auch auf der PlayStation 4 ohne Pro bestens zur Geltung kommt. Aber vor allem ein Element zieht einen in den Bann: die Maus. Quill ist unglaublich detailliert modelliert und großartig animiert. Wenn sich Quill das Wasser abschüttelt, könnte man dahinschmelzen. Niedlicher kann eine Maus gar nicht sein. Das betrifft auch die Geräusche, wenn Quill sich beispielsweise ächzend irgendwo hochzieht. Der Soundtrack von Moss erinnert an Filmmusik und wird oft dezent, dann aber teilweise wieder mit dramatischem Effekt eingesetzt.
Die Leser-Perspektive
Moss wird mit dem PlayStation DualShock Controller gespielt, der über das Licht der Rückseite von der PS -Kamera getrackt wird. Im Spiel sieht man die Position durch eine Art magischen Leuchtkreis. Um zu interagieren, drückt man die Schultertasten – und kann mit der passenden Bewegung beispielsweise Plattformen drehen, Säulen versenken, Quill heilen oder Gegner packen und ziehen. Das klappt meistens ganz gut, wobei beim Test ab und zu Tracking-Probleme auftraten. Immer einwandfrei funktioniert hingegen die Steuerung der Maus, die man per Analogstick durch die Welt führt. Für Aktionen von Quill nutzt man lediglich zwei Buttons: Mit der einen Taste kann Quill springen, mit der anderen zückt die Maus das Schwert. Ab und zu darf sie auch einen Schalter umlegen.
Die Lernkurve ist zwar flach, trotzdem kann manches Rätsel Kopfzerbrechen bereiten.
Das Abenteuer beginnt …
Das erste Kapitel von Moss beginnt im Wald und führt nebenbei langsam in die Spielmechanik ein – überhaupt hat das Spiel eine flache Lernkurve, sodass auch Nicht-Hardcore-Gamer das Spiel einfach genießen können. Noch. Denn nach dem beschaulichen Waldkapitel wird Moss langsam fordernder und die Rätsel rätselhafter. Irgendwann werden die Kämpfe auch härter, allerdings überwiegt der Rätselanteil im Spiel. Abgemildert wird der Schwierigkeitsgrad deutlich von großzügigen Rücksetzpunkten. Im Prinzip bewegt man sich von einem Raum in den anderen, wobei der Übergang mit einem Seitenblättergeräusch unterlegt ist –– man befindet sich ja in einem Buch. Verliert man das Leben von Quill, bleibt der letzte Zustand der Rätsel-Plattformen erhalten, was Frust verhindern kann.
Frust kann höchstens am Ende aufkommen. Denn je nach Erfahrung und Spielstil ist die Freude nach drei bis vier Stunden vorbei und man muss Abschied nehmen von Quill und der Welt Moss. Hoffnung macht allerdings, dass der Entwickler Polyarc im Spiel von Moss Buch 1 schreibt – warten wir also auf eine Fortsetzung.
Einige kleine Mäkeleien gibt es aber doch noch. Neben dem manchmal nervenden Tracking-Fehlern könnte es bei den Gegnern mehr Varianten geben. Irritierend fand ich am Anfang, dass einige Dorfbewohner den Weg kreuzen, man mit ihnen aber nicht interagieren kann. Auch der Zutritt in die Häuser bleibt einem verwehrt.
Fazit
Moss ist tatsächlich der erhoffte Hit geworden und versprüht AAA-Qualität. Detailreichtum, Animationen, Sound und Grafik befinden sich auf höchstem Niveau. Die Spielzeit von drei bis vier Stunden mag kurz klingen, jedoch kann man sie in der VR wohl kaum schöner verbringen als mit Moss. Damit haben sich Quill und das Spiel fünf Freddies redlich verdient. Da beißt die Maus keinen Faden ab. Moss ist im Sony Store für 30 Euro erhältlich, eine Retail-Fassung hat der Hersteller noch nicht angekündigt.
Update: This was originally written for and filmed on the PSVR version of Moss, which released earlier this year, but now that the game is releasing on Rift and Vive we’ve republished the series for people that will be playing the game on PC for the first time.
Original: Moss is finally out on PSVR and even though it’s short, only coming in at around 3-4 hours for a single first playthrough, it packs a lot of charm, challenge, and fun into those few hours. If you tally up all the times I died and got stuck on puzzles then Moss easily took me close to 4 hours total.
Since the game features a lot of really complex (and often difficult) puzzles we’ve put together this playlist of gameplay that walks you through the entire game from start to finish. The first two videos also doubled as livestreams that we did this week, while the last three are straight gameplay videos.
You can see all five of the walkthrough videos embedded down below right here, but if you’d rather just watch them all in a playlist on YouTube directly, then you can totally do that too. Here’s the Moss Walkthrough playlist link.
Are walkthroughs something you’d want to see more of from us? Are you playing and enjoying Moss? Let us know if so on either point down in the comments below!
Moss, the promising puzzle platformer from indie studio Polyarc, has finally arrived on PlayStation VR. You’ll guide Quill, an undeniably adorable mouse, on the start of what could become a grand adventure.
Moss is a third-person platformer, played with the PS4 controller, which mixes in some VR-specific gameplay in the form of reaching out and controlling some parts of the game world (using the motion-tracked controller as if it was your hand), and being able to look around the world (with the headset’s tracking) to get a better angle on hard to see paths and secrets.
The platforming gameplay is basic: you’ll be guiding Quill as she runs, jumps, and shimmies along and over ledges. There’s also some combat thrown into the mix, a very light weight smattering of attacking and dodging. Between the jumping and the slashing mechanics, there isn’t a terrible amount of depth, but to its credit, the mechanics are all quite tight.
However, this is the kind of game that only lets you jump on platforms or grab onto ledges that it says you can; sometimes you might want to grab onto what looks like an obviously useful ledge, only to find that it doesn’t have the tell-tale signs of ‘a ledge you can grab onto’, which can be a little annoying as it stifles any chance of platforming creativity. But maybe I’m just still mad that, 15 years later, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time series somehow still hasn’t been surpassed as the pinnacle of freestyle platforming and combat. But that’s a rant for another time.
At the beginning of the game you’ll be introduced to Quill. I say “introduced” because you as the player act as an entity in the world, a helpful spirit that characters refer to as “The Reader,” which makes sense within the game’s expository context, where you ‘read’ the tale of Quill from a book. In fact, during the game’s story moments, you’ll appear back in the library and flip the pages as short story segments unfold. At the end of each story segment, you’ll flip over a page and get sucked back into Quill’s world.
The whole game is contained within this idea of a book, chapters, and pages. From your static third-person perspective, you’ll move Quill through an area, generally exiting on the right, and then things will fade to black (with the sound of a page turning) before a new scene loads and you see Quill approach from the left.
Each scene is an artfully constructed diorama, with great composition and lightning, especially in the earlier parts of the game. You can expect to have Quill hop across platforms, fight some baddies, and occasionally require your help for solving interactive puzzles, which involve you reaching into the game world (using the tracked controller) to lend a helping hand.
Objects that you as the player can interact with are marked with a unique style to help you understand that they’ll be useful for puzzle solving. You might lift up a platform so that Quill can make a jump, move a statue to somewhere important, or spin a spiral staircase into the right position to get her where she needs to go. The puzzle difficulty felt like it hit a nice sweet spot for this kind of game, there was some occasional head scratching, but nothing that became frustrating.
This is all well and fun, and pretty unique as far as traditional platformers go. It’s well executed, but I couldn’t help but feel like my interactions with the game world (as the player), and with Quill, never quite ascended into something truly special. Beyond slowly moving some things, touching Quill to heal her after she gets hurt, and grabbing enemies to mind control them, there’s not all that much meaningful direct interaction between the player and the game world. I think one issue being that I was able to reach into the world, but the world never really reached back at me in a way that truly mattered.
That missing something was also prevalent in Moss’ combat and platforming. There’s only three enemy types in the game, and not enough combat variety between them. There are moments where you’ll do some platforming and fighting, but I never felt they achieved a graceful rhythm together.
Where the game makes up a lot of ground is with its excellent art & sound direction and heaps of polish. Moss is undoubtedly one of PSVR’s best looking games, and Quill herself is impeccably animated and terribly cute. Great attention to detail can be seen throughout, but just to point out one bit: if Quill is standing on a spinning platform, you can see her body (and especially her big ears) physically react to the spinning force. You can also reach out and give her a nice head scratch, which is adorable.
As far as story goes, Moss begins formulating an interesting world before your eyes. There’s a lot to soak in as you go throughout the world; you aren’t a giant, Quill is just small, and her adventure is actually set in a regular sized world which happens to have lots of little mouse-sized structures. So you can expect to see regular sized things like trees, and more. You’ll be introduced to a different spirit who helps Quill along her quest, as well as Quill’s uncle who is said to have ‘seen some shit’ back in his day. The world that Moss starts to construct seems very interesting, but all ends up feeling underdeveloped by the end of the game… like a half-written book.
Image captured by Road to VR
See… the end of the game, which took me only about three hours to complete (even with finding the vast majority of bonus collectibles), drops big hints that Moss is just the first book of many adventures that you’ll one day go on with Quill. But rather than an entire book, Moss left me with the feeling of being just a chapter or two. The climax came too quickly, and ended up not feeling like much like a climax (neither story-wise nor gameplay-wise). Instead of a proper denouement, you’re hit with a cliff hanger and lots of dangling threads that seemed like they were going somewhere but veered off page without ever being mentioned again.
It seems very much like Polyarc wants to bring regular episodic content to Moss in the future. At $30, perhaps this could have been anticipated, though I think it might have been smart for the studio to make this explicitly clear to players by calling the game something like ‘Moss: Chapter I’.
Immersion
Image courtesy Polyarc
Moss is a beautiful game. Polyarc’s skill with Unreal Engine 4 is clear, and it seems they smartly constructed the game in a way that allowed them to spend the most time on the parts that you’ll spend the most time with (like Quill and scenes she’ll traverse through). Specifically, with the key story elements being relegated to short, flat sequences, Polyarc was presumably able to limit the amount of time spent animating story sequences, and instead give Quill herself an extra helping of polish.
Indeed, her animations are excellent across the board, and little touches like being able to cut down blades of grass and chop sticks were welcomed. Quill occasionally recognizes you as the player, like giving you some encouragement when solving a touch puzzle, or squeaking to get your attention to give you a hint, which is both adorable and welcomed interaction that adds a hint of depth between you and her.
Image courtesy Polyarc
The game’s environments are easy to get lost in. Polyarc’s choice to center the game around a tiny mouse means they can make very effectively make artistic use of scale. Indeed, you’ll see the tinpuy villages and buildings of Quill’s scale set against of background of a normal sized world.
It’s neat looking for tiny details (like where Quill might be able to jump up and grab a ledge), and then take a step back and realize that there’s a huge tree towering over your head. Elements of the life-sized world are scattered throughout, and sometimes feel foreboding, but unfortunately they never end up really interacting with your gameplay.
Especially earlier in the game, each scene is a beautiful little diorama, and it’s a shame that you don’t spend more time in them, since it’s clear how much care went into them. For instance there’s an adorable and quaint village that you’ll pass through, and even though it begs for further inspection and exploration, you go on your merry way, never to see it again. I wanted to know and feel more about the world of Moss than I was given.
Comfort
Image captured by Road to VR
I played the game seated throughout.; from start to finish, Moss’ fixed perspective makes for a perfectly comfortable game (jitter from PSVR’s tracking notwithstanding). I was easily able to play the game in large chunks without a hint any nausea.
Using the motion-tracked PS4 controller as a way to reach into the world is a neat idea and generally executed well, though sometimes the tracking got jumpy in the heat of an important moment (like trying to heal Quill), which could be a little frustrating.
Ideally you have absolutely nothing between you and your PS Camera, because a coffee table (and objects on it) could block your tracking. The glass surface of my coffee cable seemed to cause the tracking a bit of trouble, and there are moments where if I hadn’t cleared it completely, I certainly would have knocked over any latent beers and had a fun mess to clean up. Mark my words, this will happen to someone (if not many people).
Ähnlich wie Googles Tilt Brush und Blocks will Quill 3D-Künstler in die virtuelle Welt locken und Anwender direkt in VR ihre Kreativität ausleben lassen. Google hat für das 3D-Programm Blocks zwar Animationen versprochen, jedoch noch nicht freigeschaltet. Nun kommt Quill für die Oculus Rift dem Konkurrenten zuvor und Künstler können mit dem Zeichenprogramm in der virtuellen Realität Animationen erstellen.
Quill mit neuer Animationsfunktion
Gerade das Erstellen von 3D-Objekten und Kunstwerken ist eine der starken Möglichkeiten von VR: Anstatt mühselig Objekte auf 2D-Ansichten auszurichten, kann man direkt mit den Schöpfungen im dreidimensionalen Raum interagieren. Besonders faszinierend ist es, in der VR in raumfüllende 3D-Objekte zu schlüpfen. Das kreative Tool Quill versteht sich als Zeichenprogramm, mit dem man Dinge in die virtuelle Luft malen kann. Ursprünglich verwendete Oculus die Software für die Produktion von Dear Angelica, entschied sich dann aber dafür, sie für Oculus-Rift-Besitzer zugänglich zu machen.
Nun gibt es ein großes Update des Zeichenprogramms, mit dem man die Werke direkt in der virtuellen Realität animieren kann. Ein Video zeigt die fantastischen Möglichkeiten, die sich dadurch ergeben. Dabei ist beispielsweise Edward Saatchi von Fable überzeugt davon, dass Quill die gesamte VR-Szene aufmischen kann. So benötige man kein 25-köpfiges Team und ein riesiges Budget, um VR-Filme zu erstellen. Mit Quill reiche ein Team aus zwei bis drei Menschen aus, um einen Kurzfilm zu realisieren.
Der Chefentwickler von Quill, Goro Fujita, hat nach eigener Aussage für seinen Film A Moment in Time lediglich drei Wochen gebraucht, um ihn mit der Software zu umzusetzen. Ansonsten hätte er ein Jahr dafür gebraucht. Dabei habe er sich wie ein Magier gefühlt, seine Ideen zum Leben zu erwecken. „Quill könnte die Art und Weise verändern, wie Menschen Kunst kreiieren und konsumieren“, sagt Fujita.
Quill kostet regulär im Oculus Store knapp 30 Euro, die Software liegt aber seit Jahr und Tag als kostenlose Zugabe der Oculus Rift bei.
If you happen to be a fan of Oculus’ painting app Quill but wish it could do even more then you’ll be happy to hear that a new update has been launched today offering creators the chance to animate their designs.
Developed for the creation of the now defunct Oculus Story Studios’ Dear Angelica, Quill has always offered a unique look for artists and their work. Now they can take that one step further by creating their own animations. In a Facebook blog post the Quill team explains: “Starting today, artists can bring those drawings to life directly in Quill for the first time with new animation tools and VR-native workflows, including support for free frame-by-frame redrawing, copy-and-re-pose animation, an animation brush, and more.
“We’ve already seen some incredible artwork created with Quill, including the Emmy-nominated Dear Angelica. But with today’s new animation tools, production time for projects like this will be slashed dramatically. While testing the tools, our resident artist, Goro Fujita, was able to complete his animated short film ‘Beyond the Fence’ in just three weeks, an undertaking that could have lasted over a year with traditional 3D animation software.”
While having the option to animate will certainly be a boon to those who need it, the Quill team isn’t stopping there either. Plans are already underway for more features, including ‘the ability to discover and watch animated Quill stories in Facebook Spaces’, to make the content even more social.
Check out the launch trailer below to see the new feature in action and as more updates are announced, VRFocus will keep you posted.
Quill 1.4 Update Changelog
Added animated paint layers and animation clip panel.
Added animated brush settings to control how strokes are drawn while clips are playing.
Added round capped brushes.
Added auto width and transparent taper options to the previous pressure-sensitive options.
Added brush volume grid to help with depth perception.
Improved performance and memory use of drawings with lots of layers.
Added ability to import a Quill drawing in document open tab.
Added flatten group functionality (use merge button on a group).
Added automatic stabilization to video captures.
Implemented Alembic export of animated paint layers.
360 viewer locked image layers can now be scaled and rotated.
Selection transform now shows gimbal tool.
New option to repeat duplicate selection transform to new animation frames.
Changed non-dominant hand thumbstick push down to toggle showing transform gimbal instead of auto-select transform object.
Fixed video clips capturing at incorrect speed on heavy scenes.
Fixed flipped layers rendering back instead of front faces.
Fixed crash when deleting the selection while transforming it.
Fixed crash with selection tool when non-paint layers were selected.
Fixed crash when starting two-hand transform during one hand transform of the selection.
Fixed crash during the application exit process that could in some instances could cause an infinite crash loop.
Facebook’s VR app Quill is getting a major update with animation tools that can bring hand-made creations to life.
Quill was born during the development of Dear Angelica, an immersive story which puts you in a series of 3D scenes sketched in VR by hand. You can move through these scenes listening to audio which completes the impactful storytelling experience. But the Quill-based work, which was nominated for an Emmy, lacked animation which could make that kind of story come to life in a whole new way.
That missing piece arrives today.
The new version of Quill might open up an entirely new avenue to artists who can tell stories with the help of VR. Its creators see Quill as able to dramatically speed up the time it takes for a character or scene to go from an artist’s imagination to animation. In the years to come, could Quill become a necessary tool in the pipeline for animated movies?
“Those who don’t know how to work in VR will be at a disadvantage,” Quill Lead Engineer Inigo Quilez.
The overall idea is that creators using Quill can save time that would’ve been lost as an animated character or scene went through a number of iterations. It takes time to conceptualize, model, light and put a single shot in motion for an animated movie, and if one person working in Quill can condense that process down so it is faster than a mouse and keyboard (as well as pencil and paper), then a paradigm shift could be at hand for artists.
This is precisely the bet being made by Fable, the new startup which emerged when Facebook shut down its experimental VR storytelling division Oculus Story Studio. The founders or Fable (former members of the Story Studio team) plan to use tools like Quill to produce stories more quickly, and with fewer people, than ever before.
Fable director Ric Carrasquillo, who is working on a pair of projects based on Quill called Derailed and Origin, explained in an email how straightforward the animation features are:
Animation in Quill is simple enough to approach like a flip book but robust enough to handle full drawn pose-to-pose animation and stop-motion techniques. The familiar interface is fantastic to use in VR and the option to live animate while in playback mode is revolutionary. I can quickly animate complex patterns using just rhythm and intuition. It opens up the opportunity to introduce serendipity into what can usually be a very rigid process. The opportunity to push beyond what we’ve come to expect visually in a VR environment using hand drawn techniques is extremely exciting.
Fable co-founder Edward Saatchi also offered some thoughts about the tool:
The new Quill animation features are game changers far beyond what we had from Dear Angelica. Many studios, like us at Story Studio for Lost and Henry and even Wolves, used pipelines that would be familiar to folks from Pixar or games with 15-20 staff members for a year for one movie.
With Quill animation and made in VR we’re witnessing the beginning of what Fable feels is an unstoppable trend – that VR movies should be made using VR tools and ‘engines’ instead of using the tools of other mediums which carry the assumptions of their history. Quill was just made for VR – and it shows in the content – which has a unique VR-ness. This will empower smaller teams [of] 2-3 people to make their own short real-time VR movies. It shouldn’t cost millions and 10s of employees to make a VR movie, and with Quill animation features, and made in VR generally, it won’t.
According to Oculus, Quill’s update includes “new animation tools and VR-native workflows, including support for free frame-by-frame redrawing, copy-and-re-pose animation, an animation brush, and more.”
Quill’s Lead Designer Goro Fujita said he was able to create an animated short film in three weeks with Quill he estimates would’ve taken a year to make with a traditional 3D animation pipeline. Fujita said the way Quill brings to life his ideas makes him feel like a magician. Here’s another project Fujita built using an earlier version of the animation features:
Facebook plans to integrate Quill creations with Facebook Spaces, so multiple people can go inside these stories together.
“Quill could change the way people create and consume art,” Fujita said.
Quilez suggested there’s still work to do to improve the animation functionality but when that’s complete they’ll consider adding other features that could make Quill an even more expressive and complete software creation tool.
Quill, Facebook’s VR painting tool, has been a great way to sketch in VR since its launch back at the end of 2016, but today a new update transforms it into something entirely new. Now, with tools for animating Quill artwork directly in the app, users have a new dimension for artistic expression: time.
If you’ve ever made a stick figure flip book using the corner of a notebook or a stack of sticky notes, you already understand the fundamentals of key frame animation: arrange a sequence of slightly changing pictures back to back and watch them come to life as you quickly flip through.
Image courtesy Facebook
That’s the foundation of today’s Quill update, which Facebook says is the biggest to date. The program now includes a set of animation tools which will let you draw and arrange discrete frames into animation sequences. With helpful tools to visualize previous frames and quickly create new ones, artists will be able to express not just a moment in time, but an entire scene. This video gives a glimpse of the new tools in action:
Facebook says that the in-VR animation tools bring major time savings compared to using a combination of VR and traditional animation software. With direct access to animation tools in the app, the update should make VR-drawn animations—like this impressive piece from artist Nick Ladd that we saw last year—easier and faster to produce. Facebook claims that the company’s VR resident artist, Goro Fujita, was “able to complete his animated short film Beyond the Fence in just three weeks, an undertaking that could have lasted over a year with traditional 3D animation software.”
Image courtesy Facebook
The company also says they’re working to integrate Quill content with Facebook Spaces, so that artists can share their work, and friends can watch stories together; a sensible move considering Quill is being developed under the umbrella of the Facebook Social VR team after the shuttering of Oculus Story Studio, where it was originally conceived. There’s no mention of when Facebook Spaces viewing will be deployed, but the company says they’re in development of that and “many more Quill updates and features” for the future.
Update (2/8/16): An earlier version of this article stated that Quill is being developed by Oculus. While the tool was originally built by the team at Oculus Story Studio, its ongoing development was formally moved to Facebook’s Social VR team after the Story Studio group was closed down in 2017.
