Oculus’s Brian Sharp digs into Medium virtual reality sculpting

The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) is one of the largest film festivals globally. Unlike Cannes, Sundance, and Tribeca, all of which have incorporated virtual reality into the events, TIFF has been a bit of a holdout. At least until now. The first event of a VR-related series running through September is POP 01, and it took place this past weekend, June 24 to June 26. The theme of the show was “VR + art + music” and it featured VR content co-curated by Gamma Space Collaborative Studio founder Henry Faber and TIFF’s Digital Director Jody Sugrue.

One of the most notable aspects of POP 01 is that unlike many VR “festivals,” it wasn’t just a bunch of Gear VRs in a temporary space — POP 01 featured all of the major VR platforms, including Gear VR, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift with Touch, and even PlayStation VR. One of the most exciting “pieces” at the show was Oculus Medium, the VR sculpting application for Oculus Touch that debuted at Oculus Connect 2 (OC2) last fall. It was quite a coup for TIFF to get Oculus to bring Medium up to Canada because, outside of OC2 and other industry-facing events such as CES, GDC, and E3, Medium hasn’t been demoed by Oculus. Along with allowing attendees to try it out, Oculus also sent one of its concept artists, Raz, to Toronto, and for 40 minutes each day he created an amazing sculpture.