One year on from Tilt Brush being open sourced, community alternatives are making big moves.
In January 2021, Google open sourced its groundbreaking VR art app Tilt Brush after ceasing development, opening up opportunities for the community to take over.
Since then, a variety of open source replacements for Tilt Brush sprung up across VR platforms, most notably Open Brush and MultiBrush.
MultiBrush launched last February and is essentially a version of Tilt Brush that allows players to create together in the same space on the same artwork. The app launched on Quest’s App Lab platform in 2021, but almost a year on, it is now available on the official Oculus Store for Quest.
📢 Open Brush v1.0 is available NOW! 🎉✨
This update marks 1yr since Tilt Brush was open sourced, since then we have been crafting a bunch of new creative spells for all #VR magicians to enjoy!
Have fun making magic 🪄 ✨Watch our exciting feature trailer below!💫🌌 #openbrush pic.twitter.com/WHrrQfFdVJ
— Open Brush (@openbrushapp) January 26, 2022
Open Brush, on the other hand, doesn’t support multiplayer yet but has become an unofficial continuation of the original app, with the community adding new features and expanding Tilt Brush’s functionality far beyond where Google left it. The latest 1.0 update adds lots of new functionality, some of which can be viewed in the embedded video above.
Snapping and grid functionality is now available in Open Brush, along with jitter controls for brushes. Likewise, the new lazy input feature applies real-time input averaging, allowing for much easier creation of smooth curves when drawing at slow speeds. There’s plenty more features — you can read more in this blog post.
The post also makes it clear that the 1.0 update is far from the end for Open Brush. The development team says that they are close to transferring Open Brush over to OpenXR. This will also allow them to implement hand tracking support on Quest, along with passthrough view support as well. Multiplayer is also on the agenda, as well as custom user brushes.
Open Brush is available for free on PC VR and Quest via App Lab, while MultiBrush is available for $19.99 the Oculus Store for Quest.
