Quba Michalski

Set in a highly stylized environments of the city of Glass, Mirror's Edge: Catalyst is certainly a looker. At the time of its launch, it was also the very first title to support nVidia’s new Ansel technology – a suite of tools for advanced in-game photography. Among other things, Ansel allows players to capture stereoscopic 360° (VR) stills of their gameplay in glorious 8K resolution. You didn’t have to ask me twice.

My wife asked me for help with some product photography for her ChiChiLand postcard series. After fussing around with a camera and lights for a bit, I decided to go the CGI route.

What can I say… I freakin’ love Octane Render.

Sometimes I spend days, weeks or months, bending the laws of physics and trailblazing cinematic virtual reality. Other days, I sit down with my wife and creative partner-in-crime and make silly animations featuring girls wearing dresses filled with food. I think you can guess which one this will be :)

No Man's Sky does one thing really well: It generates amazing, varied planets, populated with all manner of flora and fauna - all whilst keeping a steady, carefully weighted art direction. Playing the game, I decided to document some of the most beautiful planets and landscapes I came across by recording time-lapse videos of these worlds.

As my focus shifted away from flat media and towards 360° and Virtual Reality content, the updates to QubaHQ became more and more sparse. Today it is my pleasure to introduce to you my brand new website: QubaVR.com. It will be a home to all my newest projects, my VR-focussed portfolio and a host of articles, reviews and editorials on the subject of immersive media.

Gravity is no longer a constant.
Enter a world where the rules that bind us
are suddenly disobeyed.

So you’ve been hearing of Virtual Reality more and more recently. VR seems to be the current buzz word, with 2016 heralded as the year of VR. You’ve read some articles, but lots of terminology feels confusing and some of the messages seem to contradict one another.

Still, you are eager to learn more and try Virtual Reality for yourself.

Welcome.
In this series of articles I am going to walk you through some of the basic concepts related to VR. Whether your end goal is to kick back, relax, and simply enjoy some VR content, or to create your own experiences and share them with others – this guide will help you understand all the basics and develop the vocabulary needed to understand and discuss VR.

Come join me on Thursday, February 18at 7PM – 9PM at Adobe Systems Inc in Seattle for a talk about some cool toys I’ve been building inside After Effects. Organized by After Effects Seattle, in this three-part presentation I will demonstrate how to push After Effects to do things it was not designed to do – building your own unique rigs and effects.

As I shift my creative focus away from traditional 2D/framed media and towards 360° video and VR, I find myself in need of good ambient sound more and more frequently. In the world of traditional motion design and film, good music was king. Adding a catchy tune to a piece could make or break its success, and entire careers were built on the ability to sync up visuals to the rhythm and sounds of the audio track.

Now, with the advent of Virtual Reality the priorities have changed. Establishing audience's sense of presence is the key component of crafting a successful experience. Generally speaking, it is a good practice to take your time immersing the viewer in your world - and well-crafted soundscape is as important as the visuals in establishing the believably of the virtual world.

While nothing will substitute a good audio track created by a professional sound engineer, Ambient Mixer is an online service that's ideal for rapid prototyping. It comes in extremely handy whenever you need to lay in a basic atmospheric sound, but still want to customize it to fit your particular needs.

To simplify the process of converting the stereoscopic images from one layout to another, I created a series of Adobe Photoshop Actions named QubaVR Stereo Swapper, that will allow you to re-arrange your frames with a single (or at most double) click.