The SouthernGFX team tests the Oculus Rift with the touch controllers
We’ve been testing out the Medium sculpting application on Oculus Rift with the touch controllers. As a result, our team has sparked the possibility of implementing this innovative technology into our workflow sometime in the near future.
Our previous uses of Oculus Rift have normally led to some negative feedback, such as causing motion sickness and a lack of dynamic controls. With the introduction of the touch controllers, we’ve felt much more comfortable using the hardware. They give you an anchor and ground you in the virtual world/real-life as well as give you a much more fluid approach to a virtual reality experience with more possibilities.
Check out this speed-sculpt created within the Medium application by Glen Southern all within 40 minutes!
At the moment, we’re still trying to get to grips with what can be done with the software – there’s a few tools missing which the developers could do with implementing, such as a pull/move geometry tool and some sort of clay build up brush. A few extra sliders for brush settings like hardness, fade and brush spacing. And the ability to conform to the modelling surface would be a great addition.
From this sculpt, we’ve managed to generate a ‘proof of concept’ method for making the Medium sculpt 3D print-ready. So to summarise, this sculpt was created in virtual reality with the use of Oculus Medium and the touch controllers. The framework was then transferred over to Preform for scaling and then was 3D printed with a FormLabs Form2 printer. The raw model had a poly count of 4 million right out of Medium, which would be decimated lower for any future work.
The idea here was to just prove we could get a print out from VR to 3D print and its definitely worked better than we imagined!
We’ll be blogging more as we delve further into this amazing piece of kit so stay tuned.