Google VR Blocks: A Free 3D Modeling Tool for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift (opens in new tab)

Having developers spend more time "in-helmet" will help them make more compelling VR experiences. It's obvious from the state of experiences that most devs aren't spending all day in VR, the way someone might spend all day in League or WoW or EvE. Hopefully this will fix that.

I'm excited to get home and try this.

There are plenty of creative tools made by indie developers, including 3D modeling and sculpting tools. Most of Google's creative tools are aquihires (Tiltbrush, Soundstage) although Blocks appears to be internally developed. Some cool ones I can think of off the top of my head include SculptVR, Kodo, VRTX, Bound, Tvori and King Spray.

Funnily enough I was just making a list of VR tools that allow user-generated content (excluding music). I got this far:

Sansar

Modbox

Anyland

Tvori

Diorama Worlds

StageX

Google Blocks

High Fidelity

Tilt Brush

Medium

Quill

Rodin

MakeVR

Metaverse Construction Kit

3DSunshine

Country of One

VR Home

MyDream

Shape Lab

- I'm working on a feature matrix but rest-assured several of those are mature, well-suppoted and by smaller developers.

Unfortunately indie creative tools are not a great business (with only a handful of exceptions that have found a sweet spot, like Sketch).

If you want a tool that will be around in two years, Oculus and Google are still a better bet. I wish the market for creative tools were better, but I don't see the prospects for small developers getting any better in this space.

It's not voxel based as far as I can tell, it's a regular poly mesh editor albeit with a great interface for VR. It does provide some constraints that disallow edits that result in the mesh ending up in a bad state.

Right now there aren't any tools for animation or anything else like that. Just basic object creation, extrusion and feature manipulation.

Solid questions (no pun intended)!

* FBX export? * scripting/animation? * Displacement maps, collision hulls, etc.

Would also like to know.

When Google releases a 6DOF standalone or mobile Daydream they will port all of their desktop PC VR apps to mobile. We're close to this, as the standalone Daydream hardware (mobile Vive) has 6DOF inside out headtracking, even though it lacks a 6DOF controller required for all VR content creation apps. For now, mobile devices don't have the input and tracking capabilities to provide a good modeling experience.

Performance aside, Daydream does not have 6DOF.

There's a bunch of hacks you can do around 3DOF, but the experience would be severely crippled without 3D tracked controllers.

Not if you understand the difference between a system that only tracks three degrees of freedom (i.e., rotational motion only / e.g., Daydream and GearVR), and one that tracks all six (i.e., rotational + translational / e.g., Vive and Rift).

Since 3 DoF systems are widely-viewed within the industry as being time-limited, most designers with long-range plans for their work will build for 6 DoF first and foremost, and maybe develop a 3 DoF version if the basic concept and funding stream allows.

Being a general authoring tool rather than a specific title, Google's VR Blocks fit squarely (sorry) in the Do 6 DoF First category.

vive and rift are accurately positioned in space while daydream has just an approximation from the gyro and a lot less inputs. So yeah, basically just not doable on this platform and similar ones like samsung's

Meanwhile me and others are having a blast in VR day in, day out.

Funny definition of "vaporware"...

> I don't even really think I have seen a news story or anything about VR for the last 18 months apart from Sony's crappy offering.

1. Microsoft's Windows VR platform announced and launched to devs.

2. Bethesda announced 3 major AAA VR titles at E3: Fallout, Skyrim and Doom

3. Valve's innovative Knuckles controllers are in the hards of developers

4. Several new headsets announced - 3 for the new Windows VR platform, another Steam VR compatible headset from LG and some standalone headsets.

5. The Rift and Touch is now under 449 Euros

6. Apple announced SteamVR support and their own VR framework for Metal

That's just from memory.

Yesterday I was ripping robots to pieces in Robo Recall, and later took a supercar for a spin around Spa in Assetto Corsa. Both using my Oculus Rift. I must have bene dreaming since this is supposedly just vapour?

It's much more simple than professional modeling tools. You can make some simple objects, but you don't have the tools required for more complex work. If you want something something like Blender in VR, your best option is to actually get a VR user interface for whatever software you're using, like MARUI [1] is for Maya.

[1] https://www.marui-plugin.com