Oculus Medium 2.0
| | Price £22.99 / $29.99 or free with Oculus Touch controllers company Oculus website www.oculus.com/medium
We put this update’s new features to the test
When you first launch Medium the new changes in this recent update don’t immediately jump out at you. This release is the largest update since launch and as you would expect in such a young application, a lot has gone on under the hood. The developers have worked on reducing memory usage and have made big improvements in performance using a Vulkan-based graphics engine, resulting in better frame rates.
After looking at a slightly different background sky you will try and access layers, and that’s when the big change hits you. A new scene graph changes the whole layers system and integrates a lot of functionality into one main area. Layers get a boost from 20 to 100, which really helps to build bigger and more complex scenes. The feel is much more like a production-ready 3D program, and any traditional CG artists are going to feel at home with a system not unlike the Maya Outliner or the Cinema 4D hierarchy system.
For example, lights are now added to the scene and to make them move with the sculpt you simply drop them onto a sculpt layer. To adjust world settings you just go to the head of the scene graph and edit the world parameters. Speaking of lights you can now use eight in a scene instead of the previous single light source, and they include Spotlight and Point. Sadly shadows can only be used with one light source.
The core tools get some improvements with Move receiving a new elastic option for a more realistic, elastic feel. The original Move tool was a huge addition in a previous release, mainly because it had the ability to pull clay out and turn or twist it at the same time. This Elastic option builds on that tool and gives a smoother, more responsive feel.
Snapping was always a weakness in Medium and this version gets Angle Snap and Grid Snap, which helps hardsurface modellers get some accuracy into their work. There is also a ‘constrain to plane’ option that enables you to add clay in two axes at once, which is great for floors, walls and flat surfaces. Previously the line tool was one of the only ways to get straight lines into your scenes, but now it is possible to constrain the sculpting to certain axes, making it much easier to construct regular-shaped objects with tight corners.
You can now see how dense your layers are, which really helps you manage the system resources to best advantage. You can see a white grid over your model and the size of the cube indicates resolution. This is crucial as you build bigger and more complex scenes. In previous versions the only way to get an idea of the resolutions was to export it and look at the triangle count. Now you can hover over each layer and get a feel for how big your creation is getting.
Stamps can now be created from painted sculpt layers. This is perfect for complex models with lots of small painted parts.
Everything is accessed from either your tool or support hand, which has made for a better, slicker sculpting experience. There seems to be a lot less jumping out of the ‘Medium’ experience when you want to access tutorials, sculpts or VR videos, and that only improves an already amazing VR sculpting experience.
If you like to customise your Oculus Home screen then you are in for a treat – any models that you make can be exported to your own space and used in the same way as the other furniture and fittings.
Some other little tweaks include colour pickers getting more control options, slicker import and export and overall better file management. Meshes from other programs can be imported as clay and you can sculpt on them right away instead of having to import and convert them. FBX and OBJ formats are imported.
Medium 2.0 is a large update to an already feature-rich VR sculpting package. The new scene graph will make Medium more effective in a CG pipeline and additions like the multiple lights and snapping options will please concept artists that are starting to use Medium in their workflows.
“The elastic option builds on the Move tool and gives a smoother, more responsive feel”