Moho Forum

Picking up from another forum thread re: VR.....Saw this Google VR animation today. Will Moho ever be able to output to this format!
Not sure what to make of VR to be honest. I found myself dragging the screen around endlessly and not paying any attention to the story or the animation at all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... EePFpC9qG8

Cheers
D.K

Yeah, GoPro 360 has interactive videos like that, or they can be exported as reframed/overcaptured, where the editor decides what should be focused on (but has 360 degrees of footage to choose from and can even zoom out to crazy virtual distances).




I'm not sure what use a story medium would have for the interactivity, but reframe/overcapture is amazing.

VR tech is pretty cool but Moho will need to beef up its 3D capabilities (i.e., the UI, particle system, and the camera itself) and become more like a 3D animation program to output to any VR movie formats. I'm not against that; the fact that Moho's rigging and animation tools resemble tools I use in 3D animation packages is one of the reasons I grew attached to it so quickly.

That said, it can be a real pain in the butt to design a show for VR. I've worked on a few 360 presentations for E3 and other tradeshows, and not having the fourth wall to hide behind means you have to build out the entire environment. And this was for theatrical 360 presentations, which is complicated enough, but rendering for free-roaming VR adds a whole other world of difficulty. (Naturally, design and quality considerations will determine the level of headache you may experience.)

Anyway, until better 3D support happens, it's easier to use Moho to generate 2D content for a 3D animation program or game engine (i.e., as mapped cards), and render your VR content from there.

Personally, I'd rather see the devs focus on making Moho a better 2D animation package (i.e., better drawing and FBF tools, higher color depth support, better GPU and modern CPU support, etc.,) before paying any attention to VR output.

Wes, I need to talk to you. I emailed Mike a few months ago and he never replied. My PC crashed and I lost all my saved PWs and I can not log onto the other forum I need your image size script and a new pw, my email is the same.

Thanks

stephen

I really do like the VR experience but for storytelling dunno? Maybe it needs a complete re-think. Greenlaw, your use for a tradeshow I can understand something being created as a showcase and I think this maybe where VR would be more useful rather as an animated medium, showcasing environments and objects, not really for storytelling. Otherwise it's like playing a 3rd person shooter without a weapon.

Wes nice examples thanks! The paranormal experience makes my point exactly. I found myself looking around searching the environment which completely destroyed my story experience. I am quite a fan of the Paranormal movies but this wasn't reminiscent of the experience you get with a fixed screen environment. Not saying it's bad, it's just different and induces a different experience.

D.K

I PM'd you Steve.

Yeah, David, I had the same problem with looking elsewhere when the action was happening. Neat, but a storyteller really needs to direct the viewer focus.

I went to a VR storytelling symposium once not so long ago. The examples we were shown were not impressive and the speaker was fluffing his own feathers and really had nothing to say that would inspire any way of seeing past the most obvious flaws that have been mentioned here.
When storytelling is about controlling what people know and see and when that happens, VR has to either lock you in to a rail ride or give the power over to the viewer. Also basic cinematic devices like tracking sideways (I have noticed) make the viewer feel sick instantly. whereas moving forward and/or panning is fine. You do get aclimatised and better at dealing with it but I think for narrative purposes, a Hard Core Henry approach gets tiresome pretty quickly.

I would suggest a good way to start would be sitting the viewer down as an audience member to watch a stage/ movie presentation, to let them settle in and limit their expectations. SUre have the visuals 3D like any old blockbuster and locked into the stage arena, ( just really big like Imax).
I watched some of the latest planet of the Apes on a VR headset, and it would be awesome if the resolution and screendooring was eliminated.

When the audience is comfortable and involved in the unfolding story, rather than expecting to wander around looking behind the curtain or whatever, you could be gimmicky and break the forth wall then. I can imagine a few stories that could lend well to this kind of trickery, but this kind of gimmick would only work a couple of times before the audience would be expecting it and get annoyed by it's lameness.

Haing said that, after plyaing that resident evil VR game, which was so incredible as apposed to Skyrim VR which was 'meh', done properly, interactive VR is absolutely absorbing, when it is realistic and tactile. I'm not sure how well 2d plates in 3D space could hold your attention.
If Moho could render a 360 view, we can just have the plates face camera and give it a go.
I'm willing to try anything.

Thanks Wes.

chucky wrote:...Also basic cinematic devices like tracking sideways (I have noticed) make the viewer feel sick instantly.

Oh, God! Tell me about it. I went on a roller coaster ride at Sea World last year where I wore VR headgear. The whole idea sounded kinda dumb to me but I thought I should check it out first before judging it. The image res was a bit crude and it was disconcerting to look down and not see my lap or my hands, but the novelty was amusing. Then the ride started. It began well enough but at some point, I turned my head and the headgear lost its tracking, so for the rest of the ride the movie played like a side-scroller while I physically moved forward (and up and down and in loops, etc.) I immediately got nauseated and had to close my eyes until the roller coaster stopped. My daughter Sienna sat next to me was crying hysterically. Her tracking was fine but she hated being completely immobilized...the ride made her feel claustrophobic.

Oh, and that was the other thing; because of the roller coaster's harness design, you could hardly turn your head, so there wasn't much point in making this a VR ride.

Anyway, the experience kinda turned me off from VR for a while.

Then at work, not long after, I got to try out a neat Voltron VR game just before they released it. That was actually a lot of fun, and it didn't make me feel sick at all.