Facebook's Quill brings free animation tools to its app

Quill, Facebook's VR painting tool has announced its biggest update to date. The program now includes a set of animation tools which will let you draw and arrange discrete frames into animation sequences. With helpful tools to visualize previous frames and quickly create new ones, artists will be able to express not just a moment in time, but an entire scene.



The new updates add the ability for artists to craft and edit frame-by-frame animations inside VR, as well as the ability to copy and repose models in a way that enables the beautiful creations of Quill to come to life. Quill uses state-of-the-art technology to make sure artists enjoy the smoothest and most elegant paint strokes possible.

Besides arbitrary layer scoping and huge data file support, Quill integrates in production pipelines through export into Alembic and FBX file formats that can be read in Maya, Houdini or even Photoshop. The new updates allow WAV and MP3 sound files to be imported. Mono sounds can be used spatially; ambisonic sounds are supported as well.

Facebook claims that the company’s VR resident artist, Goro Fujita, was “able to complete his animated short film Beyond the Fence in just three weeks, an undertaking that could have lasted over a year with traditional 3D animation software."

Additionally, Facebook has said there's more in store for Quill. The company said, "We're working on many more Quill updates and features, including the ability to discover and watch animated Quill stories in Facebook Spaces with friends."