Oculus has created a series of tutorial videos for newcomers to Quill, the company’s VR paint app. Available for free with every Touch purchase, Quill is an artistic creation tool designed for virtual reality and motion controllers.

The recent launch of the Touch motion controllers introduced two major creative tools from Oculus, Medium and Quill. While Medium is a sculpting tool, Quill presents a painterly style with similarities to Google’s Tilt Brush. Developed by Oculus Story Studio during the production of their upcoming VR short film Dear Angelica, Quill started life purely as an internal creative tool for that project, and has evolved into a more general-purpose art program that was released as a beta alongside the launch of Oculus Touch.

Along with the release of the Quill beta, Oculus has created a beginner’s guide to the app on their YouTube channel, which is a great way to get started. Drawing brush strokes on your limitless VR canvas is intuitive, and we’ve already praised the simplicity of the interface, but some features could benefit from further explanation, especially for those not already familiar with digital art tools.

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The series of four videos covers sketching and deleting strokes, moving and scaling around the virtual space, using and customising brushes, and working with layers. We’d like to see this tutorial series continue beyond the basics into more advanced techniques. According to their blog, the team plan to release more videos, but as the software is in beta, they may want to deploy upcoming features and improvements before the next round.

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The trial version of Microsoft’s Monster Truck Madness probably had something to do with it. And certainly the original Super Mario Kart and Gran Turismo. A car nut from an early age, Dominic was always drawn to racing games above all other genres. Now a seasoned driving simulation enthusiast, and former editor of Sim Racer magazine, Dominic has followed virtual reality developments with keen interest, as cockpit-based simulation is a perfect match for the technology. Conditions could hardly be more ideal, a scientist once said. Writing about simulators lead him to Road to VR, whose broad coverage of the industry revealed the bigger picture and limitless potential of the medium. Passionate about technology and a lifelong PC gamer, Dominic suffers from the ‘tweak for days’ PC gaming condition, where he plays the same section over and over at every possible combination of visual settings to find the right balance between fidelity and performance. Based within The Fens of Lincolnshire (it’s very flat), Dominic can sometimes be found marvelling at the real world’s ‘draw distance’, wishing virtual technologies would catch up.
  • ummm…

    i like some of the stuff they’ve done with quill. will us vivers ever get the chance to use it?

  • Andrew McEvoy

    This is seriously awesome, as is Oculus medium. Very nicely done.

  • OgreTactics

    Some Quills are amazing.

  • impurekind

    How do I view all the user-created quill stuff inside the app?