Sunday, August 1, 2021

Oculus Medium Research

 


Oculus Medium Research


For this summer research project I wanted to explore virtual reality sculpting. I looked into a couple of programs and focused in on Oculus Medium, that is now called Adobe Medium. For the purpose of research and implementation I did not update the original program to the Adobe version to get a basic understanding of the original program for Oculus. While researching and jumping into the program blind I found a lot of helpful and interesting features that Medium provides for digital sculpting. In this brief research paper I will cover a few topics, first what is medium and how it works, why did I want to use this program and what will I use it for moving forward as a 3D digital artist, and some references and artists that I’ve come across while researching and using Medium.



How it Works and Main Features


When I jumped into medium my first impression was that of frustration. There is a short 6 part tutorial on how to use the basic functions of the program like how to pull up the brushes and use stamps, how to capture video and basic layer functionality. I did have some success with just clicking through menus and having a knowledge of other 3d modeling programs. But I did find a great youtuber series that goes into greater detail if you want to jump into the program. I wont go through all of the features but just a few of the basics to get you started in the program.


Main Menu and Tutorial select


Transform Setting Menu



    Jumping in you have your two oculus controllers, one will be your active brush and the other will hold your menus and alternative brushes. There are a variety of brushes, your basic sculpt brush that adds geometry in the air or onto an active surface, a cutting tool to split a sculpt into multiple pieces, a smoothing brush to reduce details, a move brush, a flatten brush to get smooth planar geometry, a paint brush to adjust color, inflate, and corkscrew brush that pulls geometry out in a spiral pattern.



 With just these tools you will be able to start sculpting and creating models but there is also a menu of stamps and brush setting for each type of brush.



Clay Settings and Stamp Selection


     There is a large library of stamps that come with the progam initially. There are mechanical pieces, standard shapes and even human anatomy body parts and multiple facial expressions. But medium has the ability to add and share custom stamp libraries to get you started with basic shapes to jumpstart your sculpt.



    Some of the main features of the program that are similar to other 3D modeling programs is the ability to do multiple transforms such as scale, rotate, and translate. You also have layers like photoshop where you can adjust the resolution of the clay sculpt up or down, duplicate, rename etc. You can also adjust your environment settings to something you are more comfortable with. You have the ability to adjust the sun color and brightness in the scene, you can toggle the skybox and ground plane on or off and you can even add a bloom effect. Along with this you are able to adjust the material of each of the sculpts per layer to a default material, metallic or emissive and adjust each of the materials diffuse color, occlusion, and specularity.

Color Selection





     There are simple rendering options in Medium as well like adding lights to your scene and being able to export shots directly from your headset view or a camera on your free controller. If you were interested in exporting your entire process there is an option to record and export video as well. 



Why I wanted to use Medium, and how I’ve used it so far



I wanted to get into medium because it combined multiple interests of mine, I like traditional sculpting, as well as digital sculpting in Zbrush, and I want to learn more about VR in general. I did try Gravity Sketch briefly but that program was more nurb based modeling and I wanted a more traditional sculpting feel to create VR experiences and models. 


For the last project of the semester I decided to use Medium to create a proxy base for a robot walker that I created in Maya. I used a variety of stamps and the clay and smooth tools to block out a simple rock and sand base that I will continue to sculpt and refine in Zbrush.


Rock Base in Medium




     In the future I would like to create full VR environment proxies or full sculpts in the program. I could also utilize the sculpts to do paint overs in photoshop and I would like to continue practicing in VR to get better at hard surface modeling. My main goal moving forward in the fall is to use medium and a proxy program for 3D printing. Since 3D printing programs are able to handle higher density models, and I am able to adjust resolution directly in medium and decimate directly through export, this could be a quick and new way to create physical 3d prints with higher detail.

    Overall I am excited and eager to use Medium more and explore new ways of modeling. There are a lot more tools to learn and I look forward to updating to the latest version of Adobe medium now that it is integrated better into the adobe suite as is Substance Painter.
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