Oculus Quill — tools and hotkeys
Quill is the VR illustration tool that allows creating environmental 3D art and animation. It’s an infinitely scalable canvas that can be used to prototype, storyboard, create movies and art. The possibilities it offers are amazing, however, when I first tried it, I didn’t find it very intuitive; neither could I find a good documentation on its tools or hotkeys.
In this post, I decided to create an overview of Quill’s gestures and hotkeys.
It is worth mentioning, that button names in the Olucus Quill experience and in the Oculus Controllers manual slightly differ:
- Lower Trigger (in Quill)— is called a Grip button (Controllers manual);
- Alt Tool (in Quill)— is called a Trigger button (Controllers manual).
For consistency, I will be using button names as in the Quill UI.
Accessing different tools and functions is possible with both hotkeys, and through the menu. Quill divides gestures into Draw, Modify and Animate.
Draw
Left hand:
Y — Quill Menu
X — Selection tool
Thumbstick Up — New layer
Thumbstick Down — Merge layers
Thumbstick Left — Undo
Thumbstick Right — Redo
Thumbstick Centre — Toggle gimbal controls
Right hand:
Right Alt — Draw (when using Pen tool)
B — Pick colour
A — Erase (Stroke / Selection)
Thumbstick Up — Increase brush size
Thumbstick Down — Decrease brush size
Line tool:
Left Alt — Snap line to grid (for the Line tool)
Right Lower Trigger — Grab Line while drawing
Modify
Left Lower Trigger + Right Lower Trigger — Scale the scene
Left Alt — Toggle between Brush and Line tools (when using Brush tool)
Left Alt — Thin stroke (when using Thin / Thick tool)
Left Alt + Right Thumbstick Up / Down — Modify Grab tool radius
Left Thumbstick Up — Move selected stroke to a new layer
Right Lower Trigger — Modify line tool origin (when using Line tool)
Duplication:
Left Alt + Right Lower Trigger — Duplicate within the same layer
Left Thumbstick Right (redo) — Multiply with transform. Here, you have to keep in mind that:
- Changing the angle of the duplicate with affect the trajectory of multiplication;
- Changing gimbal control position will affect the central axis of multiplication trajectory.
Selection:
Right Alt — Selection
Right Lower Trigger — Transform (rotate, move) selection
Left Alt (half press hold) + (Right Alt) — Add to selection
Left Alt + (Right Alt) — Subtract from selection
Thumbstick Up + Lower Trigger — Scale drawing / selection up
Thumbstick Down + Lower Trigger — Scale drawing / selection down
Left Lower Trigger + pull — Move the drawing / selection closer
Gimbal control:
Left Thumbstick centre — Bring up gimbal control
Right Lower Trigger — Rotate
Right Alt + (with Lower Trigger grab rotation axis)— Snap rotation
Right Alt + (with Lower Trigger grab transform axis or centre of gimbal )— Move gimbal
Menu UI:
Right Alt (on a Menu top bar) — Detach a menu panel
Right Alt + Thumbstick up / down — Scale a detached menu panel
Right Thumbstick up / down — Modify the amount of steps (eg. snapping)
Animate
Left Alt + Right Thumbstick Press — Duplicate keyframe
Push Thumbstick — Create Keyframe
Thumbstick Left — Frame Backward
Thumbstick Right — Frame Forward
Thumbstick Left (hold) — Play Backward
Thumbstick Right (hold) — Play Forward
Animation brush allows you animate in real time. Create keyframes and paint looped particle effect animation while keyframes are playing.
Menu
Menu is broken down to Gallery, Transform, Tools, Color, Layers, Animation and Document:
Gallery — offers the selection of 3D contributions from other creators as well as basic Quill tutorials.
Transform — allows to auto select transform object, show gimbal controls, animate duplicate transform selection.
In this panel, you can also flip your drawing or selection on X, Y or Z axes.
Tools — offers the selection of drawing tools like Brushes, Eraser, Color modification, Selection tool, Nudge tool, Straight line, etc.
In this panel, you can also move or copy selection to a new layers, or delete selection.
Color panel — allows you to select the colour for your brushes, and the background colour. You can also save your colours into the palette to be able to come back to them later.
Layers — one of the most important panels in Quill in my opinion. This panel allows you to group objects together in layers. Each layer can be modified, moved, activated / deactivated separately, locked, merged together, put in defferent orders, edited and deleted. It is also possible to import reference images, 3D objects, and spatial sounds as separate layers too. Layer opacity can be changed, which gets handy with wire-framing and building up on sketches and drafts.
Animation — another panel that makes Quill a super powerful tool comparing to other existing VR painting tools. It allows you to create and modify frames, and of course play and preview your animation.
Document — allows you to save the document, screenshot or screen-record the scene, export and share on Facebook. What I liked is that it is possible to screenshot the whole 360 scene in an equirectangular projections or skybox. This panel also has settings that allows to change leading hands from right to left, as well as add or remove haptic feedback to your actions.
Inspiration and examples
- Goro Fujita
- Nick Ladd
- Joe Daniels
- Virtual Animation Facebook group
- Virtual Painting Facebook group
- Quill short tutorials
- Social media tag #quillustration
