Quill is a painting and animation software for

virtual reality Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated experience that employs pose tracking and 3D near-eye displays to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video games), educ ...

. It runs on

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

with Oculus Rift headsets. It's used to create 3D paintings and animated cartoons. Quill was released on November 29, 2016 on the Oculus Store. Quill Theater, an application for viewing creations made in Quill, was later made available following the release of the Oculus Quest. In September 2021, Facebook, now the owner of Oculus, sold Quill to its original creator, who continues to develop and support the app.

Development

Quill was originally developed by

Oculus Story Studio Oculus Story Studio was an original animated virtual reality film studio that was a division of Oculus VR. The studio was started by Oculus VR to pioneer animated virtual reality filmmaking and educate, inspire, and foster community for filmmaker ...

as an internal tool for the creative needs of the studio's project ''Dear Angelica'' directed by Saschka Unseld along with its art-director Wesley Allsbrook.

Controls

The software works on Oculus Rift utilizing its 6DoF motion controllers. Users can paint in 3D space using their hands naturally, and animate those paintings with

keyframes In animation and filmmaking, a key frame (or keyframe) is a drawing or shot that defines the starting and ending points of a smooth transition. These are called ''frames'' because their position in time is measured in frames on a strip of fil ...

. They can also capture videos and photos of their creations.

Reception

''Dear Angelica'', a VR story fully painted in Quill, was nominated for an

Emmy Award The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the calendar year, each with the ...

in 2017.

References

Graphics software 2016 software Oculus Rift {{graphics-software-stub