From Excavator Operator to VR Creator and Metaverse Maker
Artist Spotlight: Simon Clark’s VR explorations have unearthed a career in 3D
With the barrier to entry in the 3D world being lowered by intuitive creation tools in VR, many creatives are discovering opportunities to generate income in the growing digital economy.
Today we are talking to Simon Clark, a VR artist that has made the move from driving heavy machinery for years to building worlds and avatars for VRChat, 3D printing life-sized dinosaurs sculpted in VR, and doing commissioned 3D work.
How long have you been a VR Artist?
Not that long, really. I've been doing VR sculpting for the last couple of years but I got more into it during Covid - you sort of have a lot more time to spend doing it.
I never knew that I had a passion for creation and VR until I started!
And it made sense with the hands-on aspect of it - I've been an excavator operator for the last 25 years.
“Masterpiece has got the tools that make it so easy and definitely more intuitive! It gives you the options to let your imagination loose.”
What’s an Excavator Operator and how has that helped you with 3D creation in VR?
It’s driving heavy machinery in the construction industry, so it’s something totally different, but I think in a way that's kind of helped me. The coordination of controlling machinery with two hands just connected for me with VR creation. And that's why I really enjoy it.
How do you choose which VR tools to use?
It’s an evolving process - there are so many tools out there. Once you have an idea for a world, it’s about looking at what each of the different apps offer to get you the look you want. Tiltbrush is great for foliage, for example. When it comes to rigging, that’s where I go to Masterpiece Motion because it took it to the next level. I had pretty much given up trying to rig anything before that. I just don’t have the patience to do it on a desktop based rigging app.
With those rigging tools in VR it just opens up a whole new level of ease to do something that was almost an impossible part of my workflow. I wasn’t able to do it.
“It kind of brings out the kid in me and I feel like I’m playing with toys.”
How has VR sculpting helped in creating a 3D space for VRChat that you plan to walk around in?
That’s where it’s so much easier than doing it on a desktop app. I made an Island world where you can walk around with some palm trees and an old fort, and with VR, the beauty of it is you can just scale it up to look around and get it to where you think, yeah, that’s what I expected it to be. And then you can keep adding more details.
For the dinosaurs, when I sculpted them for the first time, that’s what blew my mind for how good VR is. I wanted to 3D print it life size so I could scale it to life size and look at it and see where there's not enough detail. If I print this, I need to add more.
It’s probably the thing I find the most satisfying.
What’s the VR creative community like?
It’s a very inspiring and encouraging community. People comment and lead you into other forums where groups of artists support each other and talk through any problems they have, especially in VRChat where everything is made using VR creative tools.
What is the Bone Museum?
While I was still driving excavators, I took time on a rainy day and tried sculpting dinosaurs, which I like, which seemed simple enough to sculpt and print.
I thought, now I want to put these online now so that other people can experience it at full scale.
It was easiest to sculpt with a mirror plane on, so they look very symmetrical and almost robotic. And that was where I was like, Masterpiece Motion, because then I can rig them. And even if I wasn't going to animate them initially, because it's so easy to rig and skin in Motion, I could just quickly rig something and then pose it, export it so that they all had unique individual poses.
Then I started dabbling in the animation of it. Now I've got a few animated ones in there, which is just, yeah, it makes the whole place come alive a lot more.
You recently updated the Bone Museum with a new piece - tell us about how you made that one?
That was an original piece - a T-Rex skeleton. I made the original model in Sculpt VR, and then I had to decimate it because it was something like 19 million polygons. It was ridiculous.
I took it into Masterpiece Creator and I gave it a UV map and painted a kind of rock texture, but colored it to a bone color. I'm absolutely just loving the texture that you can do in Masterpiece Creator because you can paint so many different layers over and they all show up in VR, which is what kind of makes this dinosaur a lot better than all the rest of mine now.
“I am truly amazed at how easy Masterpiece Studio Pro has made my worKflow to VRChat world and avatar creation - the fact I can paint proper textures in VR and then rig and animate in motion makes my whole workflow so much faster as fun.”
I'm going to have to go back and redo all my other ones now because the rock effect on the bones makes it really look like a fossil.
And then once I animate it in Masterpiece Motion it’s standing and roaring leaning around, so it's like the fossil just comes to life! Yeah, it's been pretty exciting.
Are you still driving an Excavator?
I stopped driving a couple of months ago. I wanted to try and follow up a bit of a career and either doing something along the lines of making worlds for VRChat and also getting into my 3D printing because I've had a few requests to do specific prints.
Watch Simon’s Walkthroughs from Masterpiece Studio Pro to VRChat