Sketching in VR. The Future is Now.

About a year ago I saw a video that blew my mind. It featured someone wearing a VR headset and “drawing” in 3D space with hand controllers that spit out geometry with the same fluidity and ease of drawing in ink with a ball point pen. I had to try it. It took me a while because I found out that the technology wasn’t available on the Mac and I’ve been primarily Mac-based for 30 years. I had to spec out and build my own PC, buy the VR headset, and start familiarizing myself with Windows 10 and working with a VR interface. However, the moment I put on the headset and fired up Gravity Sketch, I knew all the effort and expense was well worth it. I cannot describe just how amazing and fun it is to explore ideas in this new way. It really feels like you’re in the future.

After experimenting a bit, I decided it might be fun to create a very simple sped-up video of my clumsy first efforts sketching a very basic chair design using these incredible tools. After the initial sketch, I imported the resulting geometry into Keyshot for a quick rendering.

I can’t tell you how excited I am about being able to add this astonishing new capability to my personal toolbox. It is one of those technologies that makes the work of designing easier while simultaneously boosting productivity and delivering a better value to the client.

I’m going to try to design and render something a lot more interesting and post a video like this in the future. Stay tuned.