Google Blocks democratizing VR creation

Nov 5th, 'Cross Platform Blues'

Oct 25th, 'Blocksoween' model kit for Google VR

Google Blocks for the Oculus Touch has captured my imagination in a way that no other content-creation tool has in Virtual Reality thus far, in large part due to the fact that nearly anyone can make 3d content in seconds. The robot above is one of a handful of creations that I have made over the last few weeks since Google Blocks was released. While the 3d technician in me wished that the tools in the app were more robust, that detail would come at the cost of complexity, and the low bar to entry is the most appealling part of this app. That makes the UX designer part of me smile, though the interface and use of tool are still a little rough, even compared to other Google VR tools like TiltBrush.

There's only  a certain level of complexity that's possible; even the scale has a upper and lower limit, but I've already found that elements that you've made and saved as a file can be imported as groups. The app is a little finicky about how those groups can be edited; you can change colors and parts of polygons, but you cannot edit the groups or delete elements of a group. 

Mad about Modo

We all know that Maya is a program of amazing depth for 3d, but lately it's been dragging me down; lots of crashes and unpredicability, especiallly when using it on a Mac laptop, had me on a quest for a better option. I decided to dig back into Modo, which I had tried a while back, to see whether it could work for my needs, which most of the time is modeling and rendering, very little animation. The good vibe I have had with the Foundry's Mischief made me optimistic about what Modo could achieve. 

To run it through its paces on the modelling side, I picked up and starting modifying assets  that I have for a book project that i keep coming back to. The interface is a little daunting, but so far the model or item selections and modifications are pretty powerful, though sometimes my external files need more tweaking than I would like. As I build more content in Modo in the future, I am sure this will become much more manageable. 

The other big need for me is on the rendering side. Mental Ray in Maya produces excellent results, but often I need to see what the elements within the render look like right now, or make changes very quickly, which aren't features that Maya is very strong at, at least not on my system. I am still getting used to the toolset within Modo, but so far I am pretty pleased with the way that the render look overall; I will need to work on how to cut down the time. The render below took 14 minutes on my MacBook Pro with 8GB or RAM, and then took another 10 minutes to edit in Photoshop to make the image.