A volumetric captured Corgan soars through Tilt Brush and Blocks by Google created VR art.
Two-time GRAMMY Award winning artist William Patrick Corgan is teasing us with a music video for his new VR experience. The 2-D preview version is for Corgan’s new VR video “Aeronaut,” a single off his recently released solo album “Ogilala.”
The Smashing Pumpkins frontman opens the video dressed in a glowing white suit, playing piano against a dark backdrop. As the song progresses, it’s this black background that we see shift to a variety of animated environments, all created entirely using VR tools Tilt Brush and Blocks.
Corgan worked in collaboration with Isobar, Viacom NEXT, and VR artist Dani Bittman to conceive the virtual worlds depicted in the production. Bittman created all the environments for the VR experience except for Corgan and his piano with the Google VR tools.
Aside from the virtual environments, Corgan’s hologram live performance was captured in volumetric video with Microsoft Mixed Reality Capture technology. Corgan’s three-and-a-half-minute performance captured as volumetric video was then brought together in VR using the Unity creation engine and Tilt Brush to create a world around him. The entire project is unique in the way it was produced and created, combining three relatively new technologies and tools to bring “Aeronaut” to life.
The video and VR experience was directed by Viacom NEXT’s David Liu and Rob Ruffler.
Although we only have this preview version to check out now, the project is designed for room scale systems, initially for Microsoft’s VR headsets, with additional versions for other systems to follow. It will be available to the public in early 2018.
“Ogilala” is Corgan’s first solo LP in over a decade (and first as William Patrick Corgan).
