Oculus Quill: A Tool for Creating VR Universes

Get to know this design program and learn to paint within a virtual world

Federico Moreno Breser (@jackmcfly) is a digital artist and animation director with more than 20 years of experience in the industry. In 2005, he founded Mcfly Studio, one of the most well-known animation studios in Argentina, where he is from. In 2012, he launched a magazine called Moushon! and, three years later, he created Luty Art Studio–an art department dedicated to developing art and concept art for the film, animation, and video game industries.

He’s worked with such clients as Disney, Ford, UNICEF, Netflix, and TVE, among many others, and on a wide range of projects, including creating animated universes using Oculus Quill–one of the most useful programs used in animation and virtual reality.

Below, Federico walks us through the essential information to know if you want to get to grips with how this program works.

Minimalist interface

When you first use this program, you’ll find a minimalist interface staring back at you. It will allow you to easily open and create projects.

For the sake of practicality, Federico has decided to share a project that has been specifically designed to explain how this program works:

In this simple illustration of the program’s controllers, you will see that, apart from a couple of commands, both offer more or less the same functions. You should know that to use Quill, the grip and the trigger buttons–both on the left-hand and right-hand controllers–are essential. These are used to carry out most actions.

How to navigate

Quill allows you to navigate the interface in two different ways, which you can combine using. The most simple and more organic way is to move the camera by moving your head. The other is by pressing down the grip button on the right-hand controller and moving it so that the hand substitutes your head as the camera axis. Regarding the latter technique, if you also press the left-hand grip, you can zoom in and out of your scene.

The menu

To access the menu, press the Y button. It will automatically drop down, and you will be able to see different tabs with tools that will be useful when working on your projects:

How to paint

Let’s go back to the controllers. The right-hand trigger button has different functions, but the first and most important one is painting. If you continue to squeeze it while you move your hand as if you were using a brush, you can paint any shape you want over your project.

Regarding this point, it’s important to point out that when Federico says “paint”, he is also referring to modeling. When you create a project in 3D, you automatically create shapes with volume.

Finally, to delete, you just need to press the B button on the right-hand controller and use the marker to select the shape you want to erase. Or, if you want to create a fade, go to the toolbar and choose a brush so you can use the delete function to create interesting effects.

If you want to learn more about how to use Oculus Quill to create characters and scenarios using virtual reality, sign up to the course, VR Design and Modeling with Quill. Federico will help you to use this tool to take your projects to the next level.

English version by @eloiseedgington.

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