Disney’s summer internship program results in a new VR tool aimed at 3D animation.
It’s no secret that Disney is constantly looking for new ways to boost the efficiency of their creators. More importantly, the massive American conglomerate actively fosters creativity within its workplace, regularly experimenting with new technology on potentially groundbreaking projects.
Most recently, the technical team over at Walt Disney Animation Studios developed new dynamic VR tool that could possibly shift their animation team away from long-established animation techniques towards a more state-of-the-art method that could very well be the future of Disney’s animation tool sets.
Watch the presentation video.
eferred to as PoseVR, the unique application lets you animate characters in a VR environment similar to how a stop-motion animator would manipulate a physical puppet, frame-by-frame, to create the scene — only now you are working with a poseable rig inside of VR.
Users put on the VR headset and can immediately reach out, grab the 3D character, and begin manipulating any part of its body by putting it different poses in the virtual environment. And since you are using your hands, the interaction with the model feels much more natural than using a single input device, such as a mouse or stylus. Think of it like playing with playing with a virtual action figure.
PoseVR was developed through Disney Studios summer internship project. The team, composed of Jose Gomez, Wayne Unten, and Alberto Abril, and one very lucky summer intern, worked tirelessly with the goal of creating influential new tools that could assist Disney artists in creating brand new content using the limitless possibilities of VR technology.
PoseVR, along with various other tools, such as the VR paint and the animation tool, Quill, was used to produce Disney’s first-ever VR short film, Cycles, which debuted at Siggraph 2018 in Vancouver Canada earlier this year.
Source: Bobby Carlton, VRScout
Image Credit: Walt Disney Animation Studios
