As early adopters of VR, we strived to experiment and experience as many different facets of VR as possible. One avenue we began exploring is content creation in VR, more specifically 3D animation. There are a handful of applications currently available that are designed for exactly this reason, creating motion captured 3d animation all from a vr system. We have used all from the original Vive, Vive Pro and currently use the Valve Index which also adds the capability to track all 5 fingers individually.
Using these applications allow for them to capture your motion and relate it to a wide selection of 3d modeled characters. For the majority of our projects, we have been contracting 3d model artists to create custom 3d characters to meet our clients requests. Though for the majority of environments, we’ve found there are plenty of stock environment 3d models where you are likely to find one to suit your specific needs. The plus about using pre-made assets is it saves a bunch of money as custom characters and assets will certainly up the project cost.
So far we have worked on 3 major productions. The first being a full 40 minutes of animation that featured a television screen that showed a real person on it, which allowed us to do an interview show where a 3d animated character interviewed a real person.
The latest project we just wrapped is a 90 minute epic, showcasing over 20 different environments and 10 different character assets. To save on production cost there was only one custom character created and all other character and all environments were pre-made assets.
We are looking for continue creating content using VR, and are eager to grow our services as well as capabilities. Since we started this 2 years ago, there have already been a slew of new features and software updates, that combined with our skill also growing, combines to create more polished projects.
We hope to connect with any interested parties, whether podcasts, comedians, musicians or anyone looking to create unique, interesting animated content for their brands, leveraging VR equipment to save greatly on cost for a medium that generally is quite a pricey endeavor.
Please see 3 samples of animated content created entirely using VR equipment and software below:
Vive Report 