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[metaversedance-blog]

Experiments in VR painting

Faded Self -- VR speed painting

I have been experimenting with Google’s Tiltbrush for the vive. This is one of the sketches I drew a couple days ago. I used Tiltbrush’s photo gallery  feature to upload shameless selfies reference photos into the scene to aid in my first attempt at a self portrait in 3D space. The speed painting video doesn’t show it, but at the beginning I had lined up my  profile and front view selfies at a 90 degree angle to each other, scaled so that my features matched up in 3D space (this is a common technique in traditional 3D modeling, see this blender tutorial for example). Finally, when I was done using the photos as reference, I copied them multiple times and moved them under my 3D face to be a part of the composition. I was thinking about the future digital identity in the age of data while painting it, but you can interpret it however you want. 

Experiment Takeways:

-I find it easiest to roughly sketch the wireframe of the form I am trying to paint in 3D to help me with proportion as I add detail

-I feel like it’s easy to get carried away with effects in Tiltbrush (I mean, obviously, they’re tripp AF)! But I realized that adding too many effects, especially in the beginning stages often cluttered the composition. Instead, I started with a thin white simple brush (flat shaded, etc) to outline the general wireframe, then a underlying base using a more conservative brush for color/shading. Then adding cool music reactive/trippy effects to accentuate the features. 

Take this with several grains of salt, as this was simply my subjective observation. Catch me on twitter if you have questions!

Feel free to remix! 

 Online Tiltbrush Model: http://tiltbru.sh/1EzUJpmQ-MS