Oculus’ VR Drawing Tool Quill Allows Artists To Create Immersive Illustrated Worlds

Oculus has announced its virtual reality drawing tool, Quill, that allows illustrators to paint scenes in virtual reality, will be available as a free beta when the company’s motion-sensitive Touch controllers are released in December.

Quill was developed specifically to realize writer/director Saschka Unseld’s vr film, Dear Angelica, which previewed at Sundance earlier this year. Unseld worked at Pixar, where he directed The Blue Umbrella, prior to becoming the creative director at Oculus.

The news about Quill being released in beta was mentioned in an Oculus blog post, which also detailed how Dear Angelica’s art director Wesley Allsbrook utilized the tool during production. Oculus also plans to soon showcase various artists’ work with Quill.

Oculus makes clear that an artist can achieve different painterly effects when using Quill, and that an artist’s brushstrokes are scalable, controllable and shapable after they are made. To show another example of work using the software, Oculus has highlighted the following piece by Carlos Felipe León, who created an oil painting-style store that can be navigated in three-dimensional space. Below are screenshots from the project:

The Oculus Touch controllers will be released on December 6 at a cost of $199.

It appears that the full version of Quill and the release of Dear Angelica on the Oculus Rift will follow at some point in 2017.