Open Brush is software based on Tilt Brush, a tool for creating 3D drawings and sketches on a room-scale, previously developed by Google and released as open-source in 2021. Like its predecessor, Open Brush allows artists to paint colorful strokes in virtual reality, which function both as traditional paint and as 3D geometry.
Users can manipulate the shape of each stroke, bending it or making it smoother, as well as constrain strokes with straight lines or use grid or edge snapping to create sketches of geometric objects. After creating strokes, they can be mirrored, recolored, or erased, and lighting, cameras, and background environment can be adjusted for the resulting 3D sketch. Finished sketches can be exported in glTF, FBX, USD, or JSON formats, and also used directly as VR assets in game engines: Open Brush has a specialized Unity SDK.
In addition to drawing in virtual reality, users can run the program in monoscopic mode on Windows or Mac: currently, this is the only way to use Open Brush on macOS. Released on the third anniversary of the program, version 2.4 of Open Brush is the biggest update since the release of Open Brush 2.0 last year. It adds a range of new features aimed at creating more precisely organized drawings, including a new transformation panel for moving, rotating, or aligning strokes along selected axes.
The existing snapping settings panel has also been updated, introducing new features such as snapping strokes to guides, snapping strokes only along selected axes, and reapplying current snapping settings to other objects. A new "Multi-Mirror" tool has been added to the existing "Mirror" tool, allowing strokes to be mirrored across multiple planes simultaneously or creating more complex radial arrays.
Open Brush now has the capability to import a wider range of files, including vector images in SVG format - during the import process, they are either converted into raster images or 3D models. Additionally, it's now possible to import custom images to use as backgrounds for sketches: the program supports panoramic images in JPEG, PNG, or HDR formats.
Among other new features, users can create and edit camera motion paths when using standalone headsets, as well as a webcam preview panel designed for live streaming drawing sessions.
Open Brush 2.4 is available for free on Windows, Linux, and macOS. It is compatible with HTC, Meta, Pico, and Windows Mixed Reality headsets. The list of compatible VR headsets can be found here. The source code is available under the Apache 2.0 license.