Artist brings 3D drawings to life in the air with modern technology

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

In the current era, there are fewer and fewer areas of human life in which modern achievements of high technologies would not be involved. For example, not so long ago virtual reality was considered exclusively as a new direction in gaming and the field of electronic simulations. Today this technology is conquering more and more new horizons.

More and more artists around the world are starting to use virtual reality in their work. After all, the capabilities of this technology bring the fine arts to a new, hitherto inaccessible level.

Future technologies in the art industry

If we talk about the present time, the most advanced, adapted and popular program for creating three-dimensional images in virtual reality is the Tilt Brush. Tilt Brush is a virtual reality game from the American corporation Google for drawing at home in 3D. This program was originally developed in 2014 by Skillman & Hackett.

The app is designed for 6DoF motion interfaces in virtual reality. There is also a keyboard and mouse version, but this is not currently publicly available while still under development. Tilt Brush users are presented with a virtual palette from which they can select different types of brushes and colors. The movement of the hand controller in 3D creates brushstrokes that are rendered in a virtual 3D environment.

Not only the artist himself can see the process of creating a drawing, but also an outside viewer - for this he (like the drawing person) needs to arm himself with virtual reality glasses. Users can export room-scale VR objects they create in fbx, usd and json formats. They can also take snapshots, animated GIFs, mpeg videos, or 360 degree video rendering.

On January 26, 2021, Google released the source code for Tilt Brush under the Apache 2.0 license on GitHub. How did an ordinary game, invented for entertainment, become a high-tech modern tool for artists and illustrators, with every chance of transforming into the official direction of modern art?

Illustrator Christoph Niemann

In 2017, the famous German illustrator Christoph Niemann, who specialized in drawing with ink on paper or with a brush on canvas, decided to try a completely new technology of virtual 3D painting at that time. The artist still recalls with delight how he first put on special glasses and picked up two controllers. And if in a virtual simulator or game these “joysticks” can act as control levers or weapons, in a drawing program they are a brush and a palette with paints.

Once in a dark room, Niemann started drawing, surprised to realize that now he can literally immerse himself in his creation. After all, you can draw in a three-dimensional world, which means that the artist in the process of work is directly in the drawing itself. He can look at the image from different angles: correct it, correct it and give the picture a real volume.

Christoph Niemann was so carried away by the new possibilities of 3D illustration that he himself began to develop one of the directions of such “art art of the future”. To do this, the German illustrator had to master the basics of programming and create his own application.

Virtual Cover with 3D Story

In 2017, Christophe Niemann created a virtual cover for one of the issues of the online version of the popular American magazine The New Yorker. With the help of a special author's application for a smartphone, the user can point the camera at the title illustration and, as it were, open the door in the subway car, enter it and find himself inside the story described in the magazine.

The reader can, by turning the cover of a magazine in front of the camera lens, change the perspective of the city described in the story. Thus, immersing yourself in history as much as possible. The effect of presence helps to more clearly capture the whole meaning of the episodes, which gives unusual, and at the same time very deep feelings, as well as the perception of what is happening on a par with the heroes of the story.

Christoph Niemann believes that such “living” illustrations make literary works more real to perception. Such video comics in the future may even become a separate direction in the literature. In addition, any user in such programs will be able to create animated letters and messages. With subsequent electronic mailing to their addressees. In the future, based on such applications, it will even be possible to create instant messengers or virtual social networks.

Revived drawings by Jan Rothutsen

The Dutch illustrator Jan Rothutsen also became interested in the modern technology of three-dimensional drawing. However, the Dutchman took a slightly different approach. With the help of a computer, Rothutsen "brought to life" a scanned drawing of the city, turning it into a three-dimensional urban world of lines and strokes. All of this resulted in a small short film that can hardly be attributed to the genre of animation. Rather, it is a new trend in cinematography, which in the future may be transformed into a full-fledged separate direction of art.

The uniqueness of creating films using virtual reality is that it does not have to follow a clear script. The artist himself, in the process of creativity, can invent and change characters, terrain, leading the plot into an absolutely unpredictable channel. Indeed, during the creation of a 3D drawing, the author is, as it were, inside the image. And this allows him to look completely differently, even at insignificant small details.

The three-dimensional future of drawings and illustrations

Virtual reality drawing programs open up completely new, unique opportunities for users. An artist can, by drawing a small object, the next moment enlarge it to an enormous size. Or transform the drawing to any point on the 3D "canvas". By the way, the artist can customize the field for his activities, more precisely, the amount of virtual space for creating a drawing or a whole composition at will.

It is quite realistic to assume that in the near future, the possibilities of virtual drawing will be much expanded. So, the developers are seriously thinking about adapting the interactive space for several users at once with the ability of each of them to influence it: add their own touches, add objects, thereby creating group mega-masterpieces. And who knows, maybe the hour is not far off when a virtual artist will be able not only to see his strokes, lines and strokes, but also, having touched them, it is quite possible to feel them.