Animating Quill Brush Strokes like Dear Angelica

Creating a VR short similar to "Dear Angelica," which utilized Quill for its unique art style and immersive storytelling, involves several steps and tools, including potentially integrating with game engines like Unreal Engine for final production. Here's a general direction and some guidance to get started:

Familiarize Yourself with Quill

Quill, developed by Oculus, is a VR illustration and animation tool that allows artists to create detailed virtual environments and narratives directly within VR. Start by:

• Learning Quill's Basics: Dive into tutorials available on the Oculus website or YouTube to understand how to use Quill for drawing and animating.
• Experimentation: Spend time experimenting with Quill's various brushes and tools to get comfortable creating in 3D space.

Understanding the Animation Process in Quill

For animations similar to those in "Dear Angelica," focus on:

• Frame-by-Frame Animation: Learn how Quill handles frame-by-frame animation, allowing you to create detailed animations that can play back within VR.
• Exporting Animations: While Quill primarily focuses on creating within VR, it has capabilities for exporting animations. You might need to explore plugins or updated features for exporting in formats that are compatible with other software.

Integrating with Unreal Engine

Unreal Engine was likely used for "Dear Angelica" to bring the animations created in Quill to life in an interactive VR experience. To use Unreal Engine effectively:

• Learn Unreal Engine Basics: Familiarize yourself with Unreal Engine, focusing on importing 3D assets, setting up VR environments, and creating interactive elements.
• Exporting from Quill to Unreal Engine: Look for the most recent guides or community advice on exporting Quill animations to be used in Unreal Engine. This may involve exporting to a universal format like FBX or Alembic if Quill supports it directly or through a conversion tool.

Creating Scenes that "Draw In"

• Animation Techniques in Quill: Explore Quill's animation tools to create the effect of scenes drawing themselves in. This might involve animating the growth or appearance of brush strokes over time.
• Dynamic Loading in Unreal Engine: In Unreal Engine, use scripting to control the playback of animations from Quill, simulating the "drawing in" effect as the viewer progresses through the VR experience.

Best regards,  Cyfrania Services 

Quill has a timeline feature. Here's a hands-on by Goro Fujita https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsAzVWyQGso

baroquedub Thanks! I'll play around with it a bit more. What I wasn't sure if, after using the timeline, is there a way to export the animation (drawn over time) out to be used in an app or video (ala Dear Angelica)? 

I am also very interested in knowing this, it's quite easy to hit record on the time line and record the brush strokes in real time as you paint them. Then hit play and they play... BUT! They don't stay 😞 ...since the longest time the "animation stroke" setting allows is 1 second

Why!!!???

If it would allow infinite or longer times, it would be much more interesting... and that "Dear Angelica" effect would be almost there!

Dingenonma great finds on the video references. Thanks for sharing. Houdini it is 🙂