So, I mentioned a while ago that I’d be talking more about the Oculus Rift’s applications for filmmakers, performance capture people, Machinima creators, and so on.

And so, today I’m sharing something I’ve been working with: a very, very early test of the potential for camerawork in the Oculus Rift.

You can download the application (for PC/Windows) at the bottom of this post, along with some instructions. But first, I’d like to point out the massive improvement that the Rift makes straight away - which you almost certainly wouldn’t spot from anything but a Rift demo.

The Camera IN a World

I’ve been developing virtual camera systems - repeatedly - for 15 years at this point. In fact, I developed our first camera technology, NiSplit, for my second film, Eschaton: Nightfall. To give you an idea of how long ago that was, we got sponsorship on that film from a little games company that was just starting to develop a name for itself. They had a funny logo of a man with a valve in the back of his head, and were deep in development hell on their first big game, called “Half-Life”…

Since then, I’ve consulted on a whole bunch of virtual camera systems, including the Machinima suite Moviestorm, and I’ve built everything from cameras that inject themselves into a game’s .dll to full-on virtual filmmaking suites. I thought I had a pretty good handle on all the problems of virtual cameras, from control systems (pro tip: the X-Box controller is about the best virtual cameraman’s tool out there short of James Cameron’s Volume) to spline smoothing.

But a few minutes wandering around in the Rift with a crappy virtual camera reveals a side of virtual filmmaking I’d never even thought of.

When you’re shooting film in the real world, you see, your camera takes up just a tiny portion of your visual field most of the time. As a result, your brain’s constantly reviewing the scene as you see it, considering alternate angles, coming up with different ideas for takes.

And here’s the thing I’d never thought of: in most virtual filmmaking systems, from Second Life to Maya, your camera is your entire viewport onto the scene.

That means that unless you’ve carefully storyboarded or are very disciplined about experimenting with angles, you’ll tend to get stuck in a rut. I’ve known that this was a bit of a problem in virtual filmmaking for a while - it’s easy to get stuck in a groove of similar shots - but I’d never considered that the reason was the 2-dimensional, 24-inch window you’re looking at your scene through - until I put on the Rift, and grabbed a camera.

Even with the very limited controls in the demo below, it’s immediately obvious that this is a different way of virtual filmmaking. I found myself constantly looking around the world, beyond the confines of my screen. I was immediately much more flexible with my shots, trying a whole bunch of different angles, different setups, incorporating elements of the scene that I couldn’t see through my camera, but could see in the world.

There are a lot of other things that I want to try with the Rift, and a lot of things missing from this demo. I’m really interested to try tracking shots with the Rift, for example - setting up a path for the camera, then free-looking using the Rift to control camera angle. Compared to overly-smooth splined paths or jerky mouse-movement, I think this could produce a really interesting “handheld” effect.

And I want to try smoothing the Rift’s output for a Steadicam look - potentially vomit-inducing, but also potentially awesome.

But I wasn’t expecting such a profound difference, and such potential, from such a simple demo. And that says to me that the Oculus Rift could be very big indeed for computer animation.

I’m looking forward to finding out more of what it can do.

Download Rift Camerawork Test 0.1

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Controls are standard first-person mouse and keyboard. You can move the “camera” screen in front of you up and down with the mouse wheel - that’ll also move the camera, so you can get high shots that way.

Left and right mouse buttons control the view angle of the camera, up or down.

The camera’s currently locked to your horizontal view with the Rift. That’s a problem - I really want to get this demo working “tank-style”, so that looking around doesn’t move the camera or change your movement direction, but I haven’t figured out how to do that.

Let me know what you think!