figminxr - Tumblr blog

[figminxr]

December 26 2023

It's the day after Christmas and I am procrastinating transferring files off my headset. This happens............ a Lot. But it's a good excuse to devlog!

This video shows a bit of how I create assets for our graphic design, like this:

I create and arrange 3D models against a solid-color backdrop, and then either use the Quest's recording tools or the 4k camera function built into Figmin itself to get a good shot for the Graphic To Be.

The rest is just Photoshop, which is not interesting, but is, unfortunately, a skill.

I really liked how the present box came out for this one. The ribbon is made with a metallic material that looked so fun in motion that I added bounce physics to the box and let it loose in my home.

It is in fact bouncing in the above video, just off screen, plotting ways to escape through holes in the room mapping. If you see a rogue digital present box hopping the streets, stay calm and contact your local authorities.

In the event of a present encounter, Figmin XR advises:

Never approach a present; while it usually steers clear of confrontation, its behavior can be unpredictable.

Ensure there’s space for a present to exit the area easily.

Pick up children nearby as they may frighten more easily and run, triggering an attack.

Maintain eye contact with the present; keep facing it and slowly retreat.

Don’t run or play dead; move away back gradually (running, or any sudden movement, may trigger an attack)

Stay calm; talk to the present in a strong, firm voice.

Make yourself appear as large as possible by holding your arms or an object above your head to try to intimidate the present.

Remember, the present is more scared of you than you are of it! Stay safe, and happy holidays.

- Ewan

[figminxr]

What would one need to be able to use Figmin XR?

You would need one of the devices it runs on! Right now you can get Figmin on the:

HoloLens

Quest 2, Pro, & 3

Tilt Five

Magic Leap 1 & 2

Vive XR Elite

We also currently have a beta going for Figmin mobile, which runs on both Android & Apple devices. 👀 It's not an open beta at the moment - but if you're an artist curious about dabbling in the medium, feel free message about joining and I'll see if I can hook you up 👀👀👀👀

[figminxr]

December 19 2023

Today's log is:

Getting distracted by this toothless model I found on Sketchfab instead of working on my tutorial video.

Sometimes you just see something that you NEED to make life-size. And then you need to pet it. And spin it around. And hit your couch with it. Etc.

Anyways.

I'm still plugging away at various tutorial videos and futuristic artistic endeavors. I played around with using the mirror tool on a real mirror recently, which was an absolute delight:

Nothing's in a super-finished state atm because I burned out and only just recently realized it! So I'm going slow on purpose..... taking time to enjoy dragons and rainbows, for example.

BUT! Figmin mobile is coming along really well, for both Android and iPhone. A surprising amount of being a dev of emerging technology is just meetings. Emails. Google Meets. (So many Google Meets.) There's less UI design than I was expecting for mobile, so I've mostly been doing playtests with people.

All in all, everything's steadily trucking on and doing well - but most of it is stuff I can't share yet. 😉 All in due time!

- Ewan

[figminxr]

November 7 2023

🔺🟧🔵 More Shape Mania For The Masses 🔵🟧🔺

Draft 1 of the tutorial video is finally complete, and the toroids have been lulled back into a torpor... for now.

This is an early clip that I scrapped because I forgot to set the virtual light source to mimic the direction of my real light source. Eventually some algorithm will be able to determine light sources in the room and generate shadows automatically, but for now I've gotta set them up manual style.

Anyways! Tasks for today included recording educational Shape Making voice-over and editing everything together.

I struggled writing the script for this one, because so many of the instructions sound like arcane wizard shit (using the Circle Shape Option with Frosting will create a ring - but will create a disk with Hull - BUT this disk will change shape into a UFO or marshmallow depending on the angle of your hand and size of the brush --), and in the end I opted to say very little and hopefully let the demo video do the explaining for me........

But we'll see about that. 😂

[figminxr]

November 6 2023

Today's screenshots are: Man Experiencing Shape Mania

I've spent the last week or so working on a tutorial video explaining How To Make Shapes, which was a noble endeavor at first, but has quickly devolved into a feverish prism of my own design.

Cylinders litter my floor. Spheres will not stop rolling. Stacks of disks with incorrect collision modifiers explode at the slightest touch. Imperfect cones vibrate menacingly as soon as they are given physics. The pyramids and cuboids surely plot my demise.

"Easy there, girl..."

If you do not hear from me after this next week, then I have surely fallen into their trapezoid. Do not seek me out, for I will be polygone!

[figminxr]

October 18 2023

Today I attempted to create bugs that would bounce forever. This attempt failed, so I turned gravity off and bounced them around using my face instead.

I am a very serious developer and this is a very serious devlog entry.

[figminxr]

October 9 2023

FINALLY I am done with my marathon of scene creation/recording/editing for the Quest 3 launch. 💀

I have a ton of footage to post, but this one was my absolute favorite to make. Here we have an immersive FLOOR IS LAVA game, made possible by the room scan feature on the Quest 3 headset.

This feature automatically brings furniture and walls into the scene, so that when I create lava floes and volcanoes, you can still see stuff like my couch!

To further gamify this lava floor experience, I created some magic 'safety rings' that make traversing the area a little bit easier. With a little more time I could create an obstacle course and finish line to flesh the whole thing out a bit more - but for now you can just enjoy watching me climb around on my couch while wearing elaborate technology on my face. 😂

[figminxr]

October 6 2023

I have been absent from devlogging again for an entire month due to preparing for something BIG.....

🎉The Quest 3 launch!!! 🎉

The above video was recorded on the newly-announced Quest 3 headset. It's now the most affordable way to experience full-color, room-scanned (notice the shadows on the walls and collision on the couch?) mixed reality.

We're also in the process of working on a Figmin mobile app, which will make all of this even MORE accessible to the average person. So!

Lots going on - most of it behind the scenes - but all of it worth getting excited for. (I am so, SO busy though...... please send mango care packages ASAP. 🥭)

[figminxr]

September 6 2023

I present to you the Shittiest Sword Video In The World as an excuse to get myself to do a log again.

This week I've been making a tutorial video on ✨Brush Categories✨

These are brush categories. Categories for brushes. The categories in which brushes dwell.

ANYWAYS..... Vanilla Tilt Brush had all its brushes just thrown in one place that you had to navigate between over multiple pages. With dozens of brushes to choose from, this made seeking out and memorizing specific brush locations... difficult, to say the least.

We've implemented a fancy new dropdown menu that (hopefully) helps speed up the process of both selecting and understanding all these different tools. Everything in Figmin's Sketch Editor is now split between the following categories:

Standard, for the more 'flat' media brushes,

Special Effects (SFX), for the fire, stars, smoke, lightning brushes etc.,

Geometry, for the 3D modeling brushes,

aaaand Audio Reactive, which just holds all the versions of brushes that animate to music.

For my tutorial video that covers all of these, I show myself making a sword using all of the above. (Shout out to my partner for the suggestion! Love u babe 💕)

Future tutorials on the Sketch Editor will cover more in-depth uses for the Geometry brushes in particular (combined with the mirror and shape guide tools)... but, for now, this one about categories will serve as a basic overview of how to create things natively within Figmin XR itself.

[figminxr]

OFFICIAL DISCORD EXISTS NOW YEEEEHAWWW 🤠

the Figmin XR discord (previously only for the devs + artist residents) is now an open community server!

⭐ INVITE LINK HEEEREE ⭐

join if you wanna see even more behind-the-scenes stuff about what goes into Extending Reality~*~*~ (and also just to see me act like a dork in yet another semi-professional setting)

[figminxr]

August 17 2023

New brushes!! New brush organization!!! New multiplayer features!!!! All of these are launching TOMORROW and I've been hard at work helping to make that happen.

This video shows some of the 12+ brushes we're adding. 😁 It also shows me in my natural habitat, playing with my creations like little dolls.

BLAAAGGHGHHH ��🔥🔥 DIE PUNY MORTALSSS

[figminxr]

August 16 2023

No time for a proper log write-up today but I NEED you guys to see this new Stained Glass brush. I'm obsessed. I need it everywhere. Gonna build a house out of this and live in it. People will be like 'Where's Ewan?' and the answer will be 'In his stained-glass house again,' and then they'll be like 'Will he ever come back out into the real world?' and the answer will be 'No.'

[figminxr]

August 11 2023

Today I worked on Videos. A lot of my job is spent super extra carefully balancing my Video Editing Time with Video Material Creating Time - which is to say......... I am lying. I don't do that at all, and I have about 10 finished things at any given time that just haven't been uploaded to the non-spatial internet yet.

I LOVE building things in Figmin and HATE recording them. Video editing is fun! Recording and transferring video files??? Not so much.

ALAS, though - it must be done, otherwise the (currently) headsetless world at large will never see anything I make.

ANYWAYS the above clip is draft 1 of what will hopefully become a very fun and colorful banner video for the Figmin XR website. Our website has been under renovations for some time now, and will be unveiling Soon (tm) - along with the launch of our public Discord server! 🎉

Finally, I will be able to direct all questions to the Discord instead of having to track down DMs across 125389 different social media platforms......

I also recently made a really sick dragon out of some newly-created Metallic brushes (Not pictured - you've just gotta imagine it for now. I don't wanna record videos), and then I created draft 1 of a new splash screen that shows on app startup:

The silhouette is still a placeholder. Next on the to-do list is for me to finally illustrate a new person standing there. Once THAT'S done we can finally update all our banner images - for hopefully the last time in a loooong while.

[figminxr]

July 29 2023*

*posted August 8 2023 because I put this in my drafts and forgot about it lol

OK - this is going to mark the occasion of my First Realistic Devlog. That being - one where I actually record some of the more tedious aspects of my job (graphic design) + deeper thoughts about it. (It's not ACTUALLY all playing with holograms!)

Luckily, I have a secret passion in that I really, really love graphic design. It's one of the most powerful forms of art, which is why so many billions are spent on advertisement each year. It's scary powerful, is proven to influence the way we THINK (propaganda is graphic design), and reminds me why it's so important to Touch Grass every once and awhile.

ANYWAYS. My task right now is to 1) Make new brush icons, 2) Make new brush names, and 3) To write actual, helpful descriptions of what each brush does.

This is to make the app more accessible for non-artists! I want the "art" section of Figmin to be as fun-to-use and nonthreatening as Kid Pix. Figmin already does wonders for bringing out people's inner, creative child, (it's REAL HOLOGRAMS YOU CAN TOUCH. LIKE?!?) -- there are still some genuinely confusing bits of the Tilt Brush section that daunt the average, less art-program savvy person. For example, take this brush called Lofted:

What does this image, combined with the name "Lofted" even MEAN?!? What is a "Toon Tube"?! What is SUPERCOLOR???

Lots of icons are good and actually intuitive (Image from this article):

Others are a little.... less so. (Why are "Wire" and "Light Wire" VASTLY different brushes?! What is "Toon" supposed to be??? It makes 3D tubes with black outlines and is UGLY. I literally never use it. There is "Toon" discourse among Tilt Brush artists.)

Doing hundreds of public demos really taught me about what people liked... and what they struggled with - so I'm working very hard to make it as amazing as I can! It's honestly an honor to work on a program that has as much reach as Figmin XR does - to be recognized and approached by strangers because of it!!!! - and I wanna say we're trying to set the best example we can of what this new technology could REALLY be used for.

... Because it's gonna be used for a lot - and not all of it is gonna be good. I'm constantly thinking about Keiichi Matsuda's film "Hyper-Reality", which is a "bad end" vision of what AR glasses will be like, and I think it should be more widely known among developers. And just like... people in general. Think about what tech you consume, kids! 🫡

BUT YES. Brush icons. Tooltip names. Making new ones is hard!! I'm trying to exactly match the existing Tilt Brush style, while also attempting to include visual & naming information that makes every single brush as organized and easy-to-understand as humanly possible.

It's fun! But agonizing. 🫠

[figminxr]

July 27 2023

Been working on a hearts brush this week. :) 💖 They float around and rise up like the 'Rising Bubbles' brush!

The image on the left is the texture file. Everything in solid white shows up as white, while everything grayscale will be determined by the brush color.

The image on the right is a texture that didn't make the cut - but it shows how the brush looks in-engine!

[figminxr]

July 25 2023

The first physics video is finally done! This one (hopefully) shows off how incredibly easy it is to actually make interactive virtual objects.

When I first started learning Figmin I avoided the physics settings like the plague, because I thought you needed to understand coding or math to use them...

But you don't! In Javier's own words:

"The only hard thing about physics is the math... so I took that out!"

Coming up next - ADVANCED physics tutorials... but you don't have to know advanced physics to learn from them!

[figminxr]

July 20 2023

FLIP the Figmin!!! 😈😈😈

Today I am finishing the first in a series of physics tutorials! This one covers everything that isn't in the Advanced section, and is therefore named the Basic Physics Tutorial. (Very imaginative, I know.)

It's honestly always fun toggling physics on and then figuring out different comedic ways to interact with them. I try to make these tutorials entertaining to watch AND educational!

Physics is a section of the app I was really scared to mess with at first, but Javier has done some wonderful work with making the controls accessible and even enjoyable to play around with.

I'm happy I've learned the ins and outs of them enough to be able to teach them now!

Aaaaaaaand, in other news... I went into our existing font file and edited the curves of it myself!

... But, not before having a bit of, uh. Fun with it in the process. (NSFW text below, technically speaking.)