Icosa Gallery has released Open Brush 1.0, a new VR sketching app available for Oculus Quest and SteamVR-compatible headsets.
Icosa Gallery has released Open Brush 1.0, a new open-source sketching app that lets the users paint in 3D space with virtual reality. The resulting 3D sketches can be published to the Icosa Gallery or exported in FBX, glTF, and USD format.
The software is a derivative made from the formerly Google-developed Tilt Brush which is available for Oculus Quest and SteamVR-compatible headsets. Becoming an unofficial continuation of Tilt Brush, the new software expands the original software's functionality beyond the point where Google left it when it stopped developing the software as a commercial product.
Like in the original app, Open Brush allows painting colored strokes in VR that can function as paint strokes as well as 3D geometry. The form of each stroke can be controlled by curving or lathing it. To create straight lines, the users can constrain strokes or use grid or angle snapping to sketch geometric and organic objects. Once strokes are created, they can be mirrored, recolored, or erased. For the resulting 3D sketch, users can set up lights, cameras as well as background environment.
Completed sketches can be later used as concept designs which can be fine-tuned in software like Blender or Maya. It's also possible to use them as VR assets in game engines as Open Brush has a dedicated Unity SDK. Besides, Open Brush offers the option of rendering a video of a 3D sketch that can be later uploaded to YouTube directly from the app.
Apart from other numerous updates in the lengthy new features list, Open Brush includes such notable changes as Color Jitter and Lazy Input. With Color Jitter, the users can paint strokes and merge sketches if needed while Lazy Input offers the automatical smoothing of freehand strokes.
Open Brush 1.0 is available free on Windows, Linux, and macOS, although users still have to pay for compiled binaries. The Open Brush 1.1 beta version is in progress including new features such as layer support and the ability to selectively cut and delete parts of existing strokes.
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