Ex-Pixar designer is trying to make building worlds inside VR a lot easier

With Oculus Rift and HTC Vive expected to hit the market in late March and early April (respectively), Limitless Studios wants to get in on the action.

Founded by former Pixar and Bungie character designer Tom Sanocki, today Limitless has announced a creative platform that will enable artists to build interactive characters and immersive environments for virtual reality with ease.

The Limitless VR Creative Environment, as it is known, works as a foundation technology that lets VR users interact with virtual characters. However, the platform can also be used to construct VR settings for video games, movies and other interactive media.

The tool will enable artists to create immersive experiences where characters can be programmed to respond to voice, gestures, gaze as well as other human input – a task that, in Sanocki’s estimate, could otherwise require five to 10 programmers to accomplish successfully.

Sanocki admits that as of now creating characters with the Limitless VR environment could appear difficult and troublesome at times, but he remains confident that the tool will make VR production better, faster and cheaper in the near future.

“My career has always been about mixing art and technology,” says Sanocki. “We want the developers and filmmakers to focus on their storytelling, not the technology.”

Limitless Studios not only promises the VR Creative Environment will be cross-platform, but that it will also support all VR headsets available on the market.

The technology will be exhibited at the Game Developers Conference 2016. Until then, you can watch this demo of Gary the Gull that another Pixar alumnus, Mark Walsh, has crafted using the Limitless VR Creative Environment.

As Ben Woods commented earlier, VR’s big problem is going to be creating enough content to keep people satisfied. If Limitless can lower the barrier of entry for designers and artists, the company could be vital in ensuring virtual reality isn’t just another passing fad.

➤ Limitless creates a platform to make interactive VR worlds and characters like Gary the Gull [VentureBeat]