It's surprisingly powerful. The scale-shifting means it's very easy to work on something at toy soldier scale, and then shift it to be an epic hall or similar. And being able to immediately visualise the space you've created in VR, without having to work on a 2D screen then throw a headset on, is a major improvement on current VR authoring.
(I'm the developer of Left-Hand Path, a VR RPG that's been in production for a year or so, and so have authored rather a lot of VR content.)
Blocks is obviously not trying to be a pro modeling tool, but it might still end up being useful for some professional applications. And it certainly shows just how powerful a pro modeling tool in VR could be.
I'm excited to get home and try this.
3D modeling really is an area where VR is just way more pleasant to use than any other option, at least for beginners :)
Would be much happier if some indie devs took up this space.
Think my main worry is the existence of the big players making things like this on a whim or acquiring things like this on a whim then dumping them (Let's be real here no way will google still by supporting tilt brush in 5 years) puts more indie devs off exploring this space.
Got any links?
Sansar
Modbox
Anyland
Tvori
Diorama Worlds
StageX
Google Blocks
High Fidelity
Tilt Brush
Medium
Quill
Rodin
MakeVR
Metaverse Construction Kit
3DSunshine
Country of One
VR Home
MyDream
Shape Lab
- I'm working on a feature matrix but rest-assured several of those are mature, well-suppoted and by smaller developers.
If you want a tool that will be around in two years, Oculus and Google are still a better bet. I wish the market for creative tools were better, but I don't see the prospects for small developers getting any better in this space.
Interesting that it is a mesh building tool with a voxel representation.
Can you do any type of scripting or animation with it? So many things needed. I want displacement maps, and collision hulls, and ...
Right now there aren't any tools for animation or anything else like that. Just basic object creation, extrusion and feature manipulation.
* FBX export? * scripting/animation? * Displacement maps, collision hulls, etc.
Would also like to know.
Edit: Okay thanks for the clarification! I guess I wouldn't be surprised if Google has it working internally on their own standalone Daydream hardware.
There's a bunch of hacks you can do around 3DOF, but the experience would be severely crippled without 3D tracked controllers.
Since 3 DoF systems are widely-viewed within the industry as being time-limited, most designers with long-range plans for their work will build for 6 DoF first and foremost, and maybe develop a 3 DoF version if the basic concept and funding stream allows.
Being a general authoring tool rather than a specific title, Google's VR Blocks fit squarely (sorry) in the Do 6 DoF First category.
Then I would spend my days waving my arms around to make code instead of typing on the keyboard. It'd be great.
Funny definition of "vaporware"...
> I don't even really think I have seen a news story or anything about VR for the last 18 months apart from Sony's crappy offering.
1. Microsoft's Windows VR platform announced and launched to devs.
2. Bethesda announced 3 major AAA VR titles at E3: Fallout, Skyrim and Doom
3. Valve's innovative Knuckles controllers are in the hards of developers
4. Several new headsets announced - 3 for the new Windows VR platform, another Steam VR compatible headset from LG and some standalone headsets.
5. The Rift and Touch is now under 449 Euros
6. Apple announced SteamVR support and their own VR framework for Metal
That's just from memory.
But as far as hardware goes 3DOF is just a stepping stone; we only use it because it's easier to make. Once good, efficient 6DOF is available we can pull 3DOF out of it whenever we need to.
Can a device similar to Google Glass hold enough compute and storage to create a compelling VR experience?
It's the least we could do, if we're not going to return to the Moon in our generation.
Not currently, but I'd be happy enough with a wireless link to a PC driving something like this: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/hologra...
Sigh. My crusade against over-use of acronyms by people who want to save themselves 2 seconds typing continues!
This is a really interesting move.