The Scoop on Google Daydream

What is it?

Daydream is an attempt by Google to get into the virtual reality mobile market.  It is a mix of phone, headset, and developer platform.  

Why did they make it?

Clay Bavor from Made by Google’s event stated, “Because we knew that the future of VR was going to be mobile. It was going to be something you had with you.”  He stated that it was important to have VR be comfortable, though it is still early days and there are still issues to work out.

Headsets

They have a new comfortable and light headset that pushes into the mobile Gear VR market but is cheaper and has an external controller that is simple to use.  The controller can track rotation with high accuracy, and includes two buttons called ‘APP’ and ‘HOME.’  One weakness is that it does not not work with your hand moving forward and backward.  For now Google is depending on people doing “clever things” with the software, according Bavor.  The headset uses parallax to simulate a small bit of positional tracking. He says.  “You can actually set your hand in the setting, left hand, right hand. And from that we can actually create a far more realistic sense of the controller moving in space about you than if we were just kind of treating it as a thing rotating independently in space.”

Pixel Phone

Google boasts the Pixel phone has the “highest rated smartphone camera. Ever. A battery that lasts all day. Unlimited storage for all your photos and videos. And it’s the first phone with the Google Assistant built in.”  The pictures are 12.3MP and have an aperture of f/2.0 for bright, even photos.  Will be interesting to see what people think of these phones for day to day use.

Developer support

Google supports developers in creating content for their virtual reality headsets and phones.  Google brags that their SDKs “simplify common VR development tasks so you can focus on building your new immersive experience.”  It supports Android, Unity, and Unreal platforms.  To set up a daydream development, click HERE or go to:

https://developers.google.com/vr/daydream/dev-kit-setup

Visualizing Entheon

One of the keys to a good Kickstarter campaign is a good campaign video.  When Alex and Allyson Grey came to us to help them visualize Entheon, their dream building to host the whole of Visionary Art including The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, we were excited to help them raise the money they would need to get the museum started.  

The building was anything but normal, and it was hard to explain the beauty of the faces, scuptures, and special writing that would make up this vast 3 story temple.  So we showed what the vision was with texturing, lighting, compositing, and camera moves.  We worked together with Ryan Tottle, the ZBrush sculptor for the building, to make their dream Kickstarter a reality.

Read more about the campaign here:

http://cosm.org/blog/entheon-campaign-success/

"Appreciation is vast for Edward Dawson-Taylor and Jackie Cooper whose masterful special effects brought the Entheon building to life. We particularly loved the birds flying in a flock over the sculpted temple. "

And the original kickstarter which raised $210,127 as opposed to the current one of 354,917, up 140,000 dollars!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/alexgreycosm/build-entheon-with-alex-grey-and-allyson-grey/description

(And we are listed at the bottom of the Kickstarter campaign under 3D Sculpting, Digital Effects and Videography *grin*  )

Keep Visioning!

How Augmented Reality Will Change Museums and Virtual Galleries, Premiered at VRLA

Edge Visual Booth at VRLA

At Virtual Reality Los Angeles, the largest VR/AR conference in the world, the Hololens piece "A Day at the Museum" premiered at the Edge Visual Studios (a content creation company for AR, VR, apps, and live projection) booth. Many observers got a chance to try on the Microsoft Hololens for the very first time.  Two of these cutting-edge devices, completely untethered, ran side by side the entire day with a long line of interested businesses and artists.

This museum development tool showed how a platform might be utilized to take information, such as in the case of art pieces in the real world, and allow this information to literally come to life with the use of Holograms.  The user could make an image of 2D cans and turn them 3D, for example.  The viewer could then walk around the cans and see them in a truly immersive three dimensional space.  

Another example was a famous statue, when button-pressed, that began playing basketball in a post-modern interpretation that brought humor and a sense of fun into the gallery space.

Voice activation was also available, allowing the user to select on various buttons by saying "activate" and "pointing" through the headset.  The viewer was able to utilize voice with Microsoft Cortana to record video through the device while working with it.  

Here is an example video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMdFFpDZyu0

Although there were limitations with the currently available hand gestures and field of view, these shortcomings were surpassed by the user's ability to imagine possibilities of holograms and how they could be utilized in real world situations.  

This same platform might be easily used to adapt to other online "gallery" situations, where an artist might wish to premiere his work in a virtual space online.  This could be useful to musicians and other traditional artists wishing their work to stand out online with new immersive technology.

Another possible use case would be to overlay augmented reality on top of a real location to see what a building might have looked like years earlier, or to visualize what a building might look like in the current location.

For more information, please email contactedgevisual@gmail.com.

Hololens Case Study: A Day at the Museum

Turn Any Room into an Art Gallery with the HoloLens

On June 25-6, 2016 Edge Visual competed in Microsoft's Holohacks Los Angeles at the Creative Technology Center downtown.  The idea was for developers to come together and use the Hololens development kit and begin to create projects that showed the potential of the augmented reality headset, the Hololens.  

The event was 48 hours long, from Friday evening through till Sunday afternoon.  Our group was a team of six people, and we are proud to announce our team won the visual design prize with a mixed reality museum experience!

See the video HERE! (or click) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMdFFpDZyu0

Our team included Leone Ermer, Edward Dawson-Taylor, Chris Horton, Ed Hougardy, Ralph Barbagallo, and Steven Winston.  

Once the team got together we brainstormed and decided to come up with the museum tour concept.  Then we got to work.  We worked so well as a team that we are still talking post-event about making our project a real product.  

You can see the concept app (tentatively titled A Day at the Museum) in action in this VIDEO. You simply place art on the walls where you want it, and then anyone in tour mode can look at the exhibit. It's a very simple concept but has several positive applications.

Aside from creating virtual art tours that people can take just about anywhere, if you actually ran a museum and wanted to design an exhibit, you could do it in the HoloLens before staging it in physical space. Integrate the features of Holo Voice Memo and you have an excellent tool for viewing and learning about art.

Holohacks isn't just a promotional event.  It builds community around the platform and creates an ecosystem of developers interested in making creating supporting programs that other companies can't compete with.  

It's been a great experience and Edge Visual is looking forward to continuing its development of the Hololens in the near future, possibly as soon as Virtual Reality Los Angeles, where we will be exhibiting this piece along with MonarchVR on the Gear and hopefully the Vive.  

CG Robot stars alongside Juliette Lewis in Jem and the Holograms

We created a beautiful robot for the feature film Jem and the Holograms, starring Juliette lewis.

Perfectly matching the practical robot, was a detailed CG modelling and shading task that our Artists really enjoyed. It was a pleasure to work on such a cool design and see it match up to the real one. 

We worked with Legion Studios(www.vfxlegion.com) who were contracted to handle the VFX on this movie for Universal Studios.

Hollywood Theater show visuals for Raditatical

We have just completed work on a new stage show directed by a founder member of stomp with an all star cast, we added the virtual sets and interactive visuals to the mix to bring theater to the next level of immersion. http://raditatical.com/

Using the incredible Touch Designer from Derivative, we created a stunning set from a blank canvas, and made it react to the performers and music.

This is some of our favorite work, linking music together with beautiful visuals, and bringing them to life in front of an audience.

Whirlpool Kitchen Stylist

We recently completed an interactive web based project in Porto San Giorgio, Italy with U6 Studio. The client was whirlpool, and the project can be seen at https://www.whirlpool.com/kitchen-stylist. The project on our side involved the post production of these kitchen images,and writing some custom code to create a compositing solution for the incredible thirteen thousand kitchen combinations! Full left brain right brain on this one.

Big win at SIGGRAPH 2013 For Edge Visual Founder!!

CGI crafted by our own Edd Dawson-Taylor, takes the win for dailies at SIGGRAPH 2013!! The CGI integrates with beautifully shot footage combining to make the stunning music video "35 Summers," for the amazing UK artists Plaid of Warp Records, Edd completed the project while he was at Golden Square Post UK.  the octopus infused video can be seen in part in our reels, or if you want to check out the whole thing on vimeo:

The story behind the film combines the dreams of the Director Richie Burridge, with Edds own desire to make a wriggly underwater adventure. The pair met at Golden Square where the adready in progress tentacles won the opportunity to work on the project. 3 months later and the work was done. Edd then found out it was to be for Plaid whos music he has loved for over 15 years. He then had the privilege of seeing the work played out in front of a huge crowd at londons Koko venue as opener for their new tour. A great piece of work and a great story.
 
Edds presentation took a landslide majority vote cruising past competition from films by Pixar and Dreamworks. We are extremely proud of Edd for this honorable achievement, and look forward to many more great things from him.

Daryl Hannah and Michael Madsen CG short Pink and Blue

Our artists are busy creating FX, modelling and compositing on this great new short film by Paper Tiger Films, which entertainingly deals with issues of gender equality in childrens toys. Here is a teaser of what to expect: