 From San Francisco, it's theCUBE, covering Samsung Developer Conference 2017. Brought to you by Samsung. Okay, welcome back everyone. Live here in San Francisco for day two, we're winding down day two of two days of wall-to-wall coverage of theCUBE's exclusive coverage of Samsung Developer Conference. I'm John Furrier, the founder, co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media, co-student of theCUBE, our next guest, Larry Cutler, co-founder and CTO of Baobab Studios. You got it right. And your co-founder and CEO, Maureen Fan, was at our Grace Hopper event. Yes. Well, thanks for joining us. Thank you for having me. So you guys are doing great. So I love the storytelling, gaming, tech culture coming together here at Samsung. You see the future, right? The future, if you connect the dots is obviously augmented reality, voice activated, headphones that can be hacked and programmed and customized. You guys are doing some interesting things because some good awards. Take a minute to talk about your studios. What are you guys doing? What's the aha moment for you guys? What should people know? So we, at Baobab Studios, we're reinventing animated storytelling using VR. And so what we've, our aha moment was feeling that you could completely immerse yourself in the world in VR. And when we started thinking about, well, what is so special about an animated film? It's really about transporting you to faraway worlds and making those worlds so real that you could like reach out and touch them. And then if you think about VR, that's kind of the same thing where VR's promise is being able to transport you to incredible places and to make you really feel like you're in those worlds and you're part of those worlds. And to relax and chill a little bit too. Well relax and chill as well. Or entertainment or be through. In our case, we wanted to take all the experience that we have telling stories at places like Pixar and Dreamworks and apply that into this new medium. And so we found that, you know, VR is an incredibly powerful medium and it really is one that's unlike film and unlike games. So you were talking about, you know, bringing together the expertise of people from films and people from games that's critical to what we're doing. And yet at the same time, the experience is something that's totally different. Yeah, we were commenting with some of our guys in our office how Twitch was experimenting with using the comments that drive the game behavior. You're starting to see new kinds of game systems develop around the storytelling as more of a behavioral dynamic, not the boring game I figured out or the multiplayer game with my same friends or whatever that's going on. We're seeing a whole new level of creativity going on. One, two, the other question is, how much does it cost to make these things? Because Dreamworks and these guys have spent a lot of dough to do animation. Yes. I mean, it's not cheap. Right. So how do you guys crack the code on keeping it low, not low budget, but low cost and also intelligent? Yeah. Is that the secret sauce? Yes, well that's certainly super important for us. You know, we're a startup company so obviously we need to be able to have a pipeline that we run efficiently. And for us, I think what we've done is we've brought together some of the best people. So we've hired our friends, we've hired people who are really experts in the field and we're really creating a next generation VR platform so that we can actually create these animated experiences, be able to experiment in the space, sort of try out different techniques and storytelling methodologies and at the same time do it in a way that we can sort of experiment as much as possible. So how about some of the awards you guys had? I mean, you guys have done some things to share some of the accolades you've gotten. Yeah, so I mean, you know, what's amazing is, is that we started with our first piece of content invasion and we premiered it last year in April at Tribeca Film Festival. And it's really gone on to first of all, from a consumer standpoint, it's one of the most popular downloaded pieces of content on all the VR platforms. And at the same time, it's been shown at a number of different film festivals and it recently won an Emmy so we're very excited about that. And what we realize is that audiences just fell in love with this bunny character, Chloe. So invasion is a story about two aliens that try to take over Earth and they're thwarted not by humans with powerful weapons but by cute little woodland creatures. And in the first episode in invasion, they're thwarted by this cute little bunny, Chloe. And what happens is that at the very beginning of the piece, Chloe like hops up to you and if you look down, you're a little bunny in the scene, you've got bunny legs, you can hop around. And audiences, the viewer just reacted in ways that you would never do in a film. Like people are waving at Chloe, a lot of people reach out and try to pet Chloe, a lot of people mimic what Chloe's doing. And in short, people are just treating Chloe as if she's real. And it made us realize that there's something really powerful here that is really worth kind of leaning in and digging deeper into. And what was the next step after that? So you went, what? You went through some development? Was it the game? Was it the character development? How do you double down on that? I'm just kind of curious on thinking about it. It was really interesting because in invasion, we were kind of the first to make you a character in the story. But at the time, there really weren't hand controllers or any of the devices so that you could actually really have sort of a more increased role in the story. And so at the same time, people really felt that they were front and center and they felt a sense of protecting Chloe from the aliens because you're placed right in the center of the story. And so with Asteroids when we started, we just wanted to dive deeper into that idea of you playing an active role in the story. And so in Asteroids, we focused on the two alien characters, Mac and Cheese and their relationship and you're a helper robot on the ship. So you have- So how do I get involved and get these stories? Do I have to have a VR kit? So I don't have, I haven't bought anything yet VR-wise. So for me, how do I engage with you guys? What do I do? Do I buy Oculus Rift or with certain headsets? So our stuff is meant to be available for everyone. We really want to have as many people be able to see our content as possible. And so first of all, if you have a VR headset of any type, our invasion is available on all those platforms. So that's the high-end headsets like the Rift and Vive, the PlayStation VR for Sony, as well as if you have a mobile phone, like a Samsung phone, you can plug it into a Gear VR. At the same time, we also have a Baobab Cardboard app. So you don't even need to have VR to see our product. So you just get an iOS or Android Baobab app. So I'm in the market to buy a headset. I don't mind, I'm not price sensitive. What should I buy? What would you recommend? Well, there really are so many options. So, you know, obviously- What would you get? Well, at the highest end, you know, getting a Rift or Vive really gives you the full VR experience because it's really tracking your position and orientation. So you can actually walk around a space. The characters can react to you in believable ways and it's all happening in real time. And on the other hand, you know, the Sony PlayStation VR is really affordable. If you've got a Sony PlayStation, you just buy the PSVR headset, you plug it right in and you're ready to go. I'm really excited looking forward to a world where you're not tethered to your computer. And so it's really exciting to see these standalone headsets that are going to come out that basically there's no tethering to a computer and yet you have that same inside out tracking so that- And this is the Samsung Vision, right? The Samsung Vision is to use their- Exactly, so right now what you have, which is, you know, which is already really exciting is you take your Samsung phone, you plug it into a Gear VR. And the one thing that's missing is that you're not able to track both the position and orientation of where you are. And so the next generation headsets are going to have that. Yeah, and then the experience is going to be much higher for them. All right, cool. So then I actually download all this stuff. As the CTO of the venture, your job is to kind of look over the landscape. You have to have the 20-mile stare of the future. That's right, that's right. Not screw it up, but you've got to win the present. Yes, we're all about being able to deliver in the present and look forward to the future. And that's the key. And you have that unique skills on entrepreneur. What are you guys doing now, technically, and with the product? What are some of the key things that people should know about? Because I mean, I look at the CG and the animation world and you see the Moore's Law kind of coming that way, right? Wow, I mean, as someone who did a live video, I would love to have a bunny in the Cube set right here. Yeah, exactly. So we see a future where I want to immerse myself with characters. Yes. Not just stickers. Yeah, we of course see that as well. So, you know, obviously... It's expensive. I mean, it must be, because the old days, what? It had artists, monster storage, tons of compute. Yes. What's it like now? Well, we're a really small startup company. So we're not a 300-person organization that is producing a full animated film. We're a small team of artists and engineers working together in the same way that we had that same excitement in the early days. I started my career at Pixar in some of the earlier films, and it was that same... Power workstations, yeah, that high-end gear. Yeah, so it was that same excitement of in those early days, we just had to figure out like, how are we going to actually create the shot? How are we going to build this character? How are we going to finish this on time? And we have that same exact excitement in the office. You have Pixar, you have the Toy Story kind of thing? Yeah, so I worked on the Toy Story films and A Bug's Life and Monster's Inc. And then I went over to DreamWorks and headed up all of their character technologies on their various films. Okay, so you guys doing anything different than those guys, or you guys more focused, more simple? I mean, what's interesting is that is that this is really a new medium and it's a new skill set, because what's happened is that you are part of the world and for us, the thing that's most exciting is that by you being a character, first of all, the other characters are not just able to have sort of high quality animation, but they're able to react to you. And so there's A, a number of technical innovations that you need to overcome so that we can have that same high quality character performance that I would expect from a Pixar or DreamWorks film happening running in real time at 90 frames a second on my headset. And at the same time, also be able to have those characters react to you and respond to what you're doing. And so we've scratched the surface on that. So one of the things that's really interesting is how two people will actually have all these subconscious communication cues, whether it's eye contact or whether it's two lovers sitting across the table and mirroring each other's behavior. That's the type of thing that we can add in to our animation. And at the same time, we have stories where depending on what you do, whether you choose to participate or not, that actually affects the outcome and affects the way that characters respond to you. And so having much smarter character performances is certainly one area that I think is really exciting. And that's going to be interesting for you guys because you have some structured ways to do that. There's some unstructured ways to do it with community data, machine learning. And then you can use bots in a way to help you get data but you almost can have character developments be dynamic. You definitely could. And for us, I think the thing that is always the biggest point that we come back to is story. And so on one hand, we want to tell one story that's really told well, not 10 different stories. And on another hand, because you're part of that story, depending on what you do, that's actually going to affect how the characters respond to you. And that can be in a really nuanced way. And so building up AI systems and building up the smarts so that you can actually have that type of response and yet still feel like these characters are live. Well, like the Chloe example on Invasion is a great example. You'd love to have that automated. So when you see those magical moments, the story could evolve. You can kind of give it that programmable, it's policy-based. Yeah, exactly. So this is the type of thing. We're geeking out here on the stuff here. Larry, great to have you on. Super informative content. And I love the world you're in. I think the world's changing. I think you're going to see some interesting dynamics coming. Have the historical view, Pixar and DreamWorks, old school, if you call that old school. That's right. Now the new school's coming in. Certainly AR looks good too, off. Yeah, we're really excited about AR as well. When we think about stories, VR is about transporting you to a different world and having a story take place there. AR is about the characters being alive in your world. Both are really exciting. Have you seen the Magic Leaf demo? Yes, yeah. What's it like? Can you tell us? I'm not allowed to tell, but I think it's a good... Is it good? Yes, yeah. I have a billion. Oh, yeah, I can't wait. Well, that I can't say. I can't comment on their business, but yeah. I think there's a lot of exciting things, you know, AR. They must have a killer demo. Yeah. I want to find out. I want to see this demo. Magic Leaf, I want to see your demo. All seriousness, great to have you on. And certainly come down to our Cube studios. Want to follow your story. I think you guys are on the cutting edge of a new user experience that's going to be computer animation, community graphics into, I think new persona is a storytelling. So congratulations, Larry Cutler. How do you say that? Baobab. Baobab. B-A-O-B-A-B studios in Redwood Street City, California. It's a Cube live coverage from Samsung developer conference. I'm John Furrier Moore after this short break.