The standard design paradigm is: input (draw, sculpt, etc) with your dominant hand, hold the menu with your non dominant hand.
Now: a small experiment.
Put down your phone. C’mon, do it.
Now: show me about how big a microwave is.
Now: describe a voluptuous figure.
Now: Imagine a wire in front of you, bend it into an “S.”
Now: Imagine an action figure. Pose it like an “X.”
Etc…
Our hands are so often smarter than we are - and they work as a team. They’re Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen. Allowing double the input will in many cases: more than 2X your speed and grace.
One potential UI solution: a single button on the non dominant controller to switch between input and menu modes.
Play Station Dreams (The whole package. An entire 3D//game making creative suite. Uses the PS move controller’s and doesn’t actually need VR, though I prefer it.)
Each takes a different approach to creating in VR and has specific strengths and weaknesses. There’s a lot of overlap in approach, you pull your hand through the air to make a mark of sorts, but each has novel tools, the most interesting and powerful I’d like to highlight here.
The Move Tool - Adobe Medium
The move tool allows you to stretch your virtual clay. A simple concept that exists in 2d applications but takes on another level of power when you’re allowed to apply your stretch to the clay in and out of space, twisting and bending it to your will.
The tool has two modes: Normal, and elastic.
Elastic lets you stretch the clay while retaining the overall volume. You can apply squash and stretch effects, bend and twist shapes (like muscles or drapery) without distorting their volume.
Normal: You can modulate the strength of the move tool for different effects. When you want to fully extrude geometry, set the brush to 100 strength.
The Volume Tool - Gravity Sketch
The volume tool is very powerful. What it lacks in precision in makes up for with incredible speed. When you’re goal is to block out ideas rather than create geometrically perfect forms for production, it’s remarkably fast.
Similar to the auto fill functions in drawing applications, but with an extra dimension.
Combined with gravity sketch’s version of the move tool (which allows you to push and pull from vertex points) you can stretch the volumes to fine tune and shape them through space.
Real time animation blocking // FX animation - Quill
By grabbing a Layer and recording it's motion in real time you're able to puppet complex animation. You can quickly block out movement and animation with precise timing by simply making the gesture with your hand. This is how I did the bulk of the animation in my short film.
Flecks - Dreams
Some things computers are very good at: precision, duplicating, the undo button. But one thing that has been incredibly elusive in all but the most high budget CG productions has been soft edges. Study the paintings of all the great masters and you’ll observe a meticulous control over the variety and placements of edges. Flecks allows you to easily implement expressionistic edge control and texture to your 3D world.
You can paint with flecks using a brush tool. But also, you can vary the “looseness” of your geometric shapes, rendering them with more to less density of flecks to achieve different effects.
Softened blades of grass will blend into the rest of the foliage, and clouds will turn to whispers. It opens up a new world of visual possibilities for 3D scenes.
New applications for these tools are being discovered every day. It’s an exciting time to be involved and see the tools (and new workflows they empower) evolve before our eyes. Don’t hesitate to say “hi” or put me on to new developments - I’d love to hear from you.