Google makes VR paint app “Tilt Brush” open source

January 26, Google announced that it will turn its VR paint app “Tilt Brush” open source.

Tilt Brush is an application that lets you paint in a VR 3D space. It supports headsets such as Valve Index, VIVE, Oculus, Oculus quest, Windows Mixed Reality, and Playstation VR.

This is a technology that Google acquired in 2015 from Skillman & Hackett, one of whose original developers is Patrick Hackett. Tilt Brush was launched for the HTC Vive VR/SteamVR in 2016 and has been working with Tilt Brush Artist in Residence program, a group of various artists.

Google’s reason for making Tilt brush open source was that they wanted to support immersive AR experience by allowing more artists to use it. With regards to the Google version of the Tilt Brush, it will no longer receive updates.

The open-source version is released on GitHub. It is licensed under Apache License 2. It requires Unity 2018.4.11f1, SteamVR, and you need Python 2.7 to run the scripts in the Support/bin directory. As a side note, Tilt Brush trademark and logo are still owned by Google.

Tilt Brush
https://www.tiltbrush.com
GitHub tilt-brush
https://github.com/googlevr/tilt-brush