This mech was created in Gravity Sketch, rendered in Octane with retouching in Photoshop.
Gravity Sketch isn’t the first artist’s tool for VR. That honour went to Google’s Tilt Brush, the VR painting app that the greatest number of us will have tried – which allowed us to roughly paint with strokes and sparkles in three-dimensional space like a toddler with their first art set and no canvas.
Oculus itself followed its own 3D modelling app, Medium. This has a simple toolset – at least compared to traditional modelling and sculpting software – though it hasn’t prevented some artists from creating some very high quality work (check out these models by ex-ILM/Valve character artist, now-in-house Oculus employee Giovanni Nakpil.
Gravity Sketch is a different class of application. Starting out as a VR sculpting tool for car and shoe designers, there’s a potential for grace and solidity to the models you create that’s lacking from Google and Oculus’ tools.
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You can draw freehand in 3D space using smooth curves, then extrude surfaces into 3D space – or extrude as you draw around a centra access. You can grab and move points to adjust splines.
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And you can use both controllers together to create a surface like pulling a ribbon through the air.
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While the startup behind the app is based in south London, I first encountered Gravity Sketch at the launch of the iMac Pro in New York in December. Apple was demoing the software to show the VR capabilities of its new all-in-one workstation when connected to an HTC Vive (on Windows the app works with both the Vive and Oculus Rift).
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Back in London I spoke to Gravity Sketch co-founder Oluwaseyi Sosanya and ILMsenior concept artist Jama Jurabaev about why the former wanted to create it, and what the latter’s been using it for.
Oluwaseyi – Seyi for short, pronounced ‘Shay’ – comes from a background in manufacturing, working at Taiwanese white-label electronics manufacturer Pegatron that produces items like PlayStation and Xbox controllers. Seyi came to London for a joint masters course at what’s now the Dyson School of Design Engineering at Imperial College, where he met Mexican industrial designer Daniela Paredes Fuentes. The two decided to create a tool that could bridge the gap between sketching in two dimensions and 3D output.
“Sketching [objects] in 2D is a three-dimensional idea represented through the laws and principles of perspective,” says Seyi. “The clearest, easiest way to navigate any kind of three-dimensional idea is to actually see it in 3D. And that’s what virtual reality and augmented reality offer.”
This was in the early days of VR – before the Vive let us get off our chairs and walk around in virtual space. While waiting for VR technology to catch-up – and to fund the development of Gravity Sketch beyond a modest grant from the James Dyson Foundation – Seyi and Daniela worked at Jaguar Land Rover.
With this beginning, it’s no surprise that Gravity Sketch was initially aimed at car designers (as well as footwear design, which has similarities in its creative process to that of car chassis). Its tools draw on the traditions of automotive design – tapping into long-standing techniques including the tape drawing that underpins ribbon-like dual-controller sculpting process.
However, the tool has also proved popular with artists and designers working in the industries Digital Arts covers, creating models that will stay digital forever in films, games, TV shows, ads and animations. Jama Jurabaev is a concept artist at ILM London, where he’s worked on Avengers and the forthcoming Ready Player One and Jurassic Park 2. He’s also created tutorials about creating art in VR, which you can purchase from his website.
In the video below, Jama takes you through the creation of a mech in VR.
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Source: Digital Arts