Category: Unreal Engine 4

Last night, David Wyand gave a talk on Turtle VR and the technology behind it at TorontoVR.  He gave a summary of using UE4, Coherent UI, Google Blockly, Oculus DK1, and Razer Hydra in producing the code block programmable drawing application.

Photo by UnrealEngineTO

Photo by UnrealEngineTO

The event was packed as Oculus came by to demo their consumer Rift and Oculus Touch.  It looked like most people played Bullet Train, a demo made by Epic using UE4.

The Vive preview version of Turtle VR was also available for attendees to try out thanks to Globacore.

Today Turtle VR 1.0 is now available for the public to download and try out.  Turtle VR is a virtual reality experience that allows you to use a virtual tablet, Google Blockly, and a programmable turtle to creating drawings in VR in real-time using command blocks.  You may download Turtle VR and find out more at the Turtle VR home page.

Building a program block by block

Building a program block by block

Create fractal patterns in 3D

Create fractal patterns in 3D

Turtle VR is a new virtual reality experience created by Gnometech. With a tablet style interface combined with Google’s Blockly, we are able to drive a programmable turtle in real-time while in VR. Draw and explore geometry using the blocks Turtle VR provides, and browse through the provided catalog programs. Block-based programming makes it easy for anyone to get started.

 

 

The Turtle VR demo will be available for free following Oculus Connect 2. It requires a Razer Hydra and Oculus Rift to operate. We would love to get this running on the HTC Vive or Oculus Touch!

Technology Used:

  • Unreal Engine 4
  • Google Blockly
  • CoherentUI
  • Speedtree

Turtle VR is a beginning for us.  A prototype of a more extensive VR experience we have been planning for a while.  We look forward to sharing more once we get the Turtle VR demo out the door.

Last night, David Wyand gave a talk on Circumpaint, UE4, and the Oculus Mobile VR Jam at TorontoVR. He gave a summary of the VR Jam, and talked about the challenges in creating a Finalist VR Jam entry using Unreal Engine 4.

Photo by Stephan Tanguay

About 60 people attended the event at the Globacore headquarters, which included a talk by Denis Lirette about Globacore’s newest game, Power Core VR.

Brad Herman, Head of DreamLab at DreamWorks Animation, and one of the Oculus Mobile VR Jam 2015 judges, had some nice things to say about Circumpaint over on his web site:

Circumpaint is pixel art painting with your head. At first I was not expecting much, if I want to make art I would really like to use my hands. I ended up animating a pixel dragon breathing fire, it was silly but cute. It made me laugh and want to play a bit more. The developer clearly understand the limitations of trying to paint with your head, I appreciate the choices that they made to deliver a surprisingly satisfactory experience.

Thanks, Brad!

The GearVR Mobile Jam 2015 submissions are now closed and voting has begun.  I’ve submitted the final version of Circumpaint, an app that lets you paint and animate on a dome that surrounds you, and would love it if you could go vote for it:

http://vrjam.challengepost.com/submissions/36498-circumpaint

The following video is part of the final submission and demonstrates creating an animation in Circumpaint:

Creating Circumpaint was a lot of fun, but also a lot of work.  Game Jams are all about the trade offs between features, bugs, and time.  There is never enough time.  If there is enough interest in Circumpaint from the community or judges then I’ll look into releasing it on the GearVR store as a full application.  But for now, sleep…

Dome

A look at the dome you paint on, and the user interface.  This is the lowest resolution for the dome.

SamsungControls

Circumpaint supports both the GearVR touchpad and back button, as well as the Samsung EI-GP20 controller.  Using the controller provides a number of painting shortcuts.

UIPanel

The Paint tab provides everything you need to paint and animate.  From here you may also change the dome’s resolution at any time.

ImageStrips

Two images created within Circumpaint, flattened out into image stripes.  The left one was created at the lowest resolution using the C64 palette.  The right one was created at the highest resolution using the N64 palette.  Within Circumpaint these images surround you, and you turn your head to to check out all of the details.