
TiltBrush by Google - mukgupta
http://www.tiltbrush.com/
======
chiaro
I studied architecture. I can't wait to get my hands on this, it feels very
much like the killer app for that niche. What separates the students from the
men and women who have developed their "vision" is the ability to go back and
forth between how you imagine a space will feel to walk through and the lines
on the paper. This shortcuts that completely.

With some snap to line and plane functions, mirroring, copy-paste etc this
would be pretty usable for rapid prototypes. Imagine importing the blueprint
for a cathedral, drawing a few lines in 3D space to define its verticality
then blowing it up to its true scale so you're standing in the pews.

~~~
davidiach
You just made me imagine how it would be to play a Sim City type of game in
VR. I could create a city and then walk in it or drive through it or fly over
it. So many different possibilities. I can't wait.

~~~
phonyphonecall
Remember Roller Coaster Tycoon (2 or 3?) where you could ride the coasters you
designed in FPV? Can't wait to induce motion sickness without ever leaving my
desk.

~~~
chillydawg
Oculus has a couple of roller-coaster demos already. They are amazingly
immersive, even on the first dev kit.

~~~
BatFastard
And for me, highly nauseating (also for everyone else who has tried one using
my Oculus).

------
verst
I experienced TiltBrush over the weekend with the HTC Vive / SteamVR set at a
friend's house. It was an amazing experience.

By far the best VR experience I had to date (I have a DK2). The creative joy
and glee you feel when painting in TiltBrush is phenomenal.

Some extremely satisfying micro experiences:

* Painting stars / sparkles above your head that sink down onto you

* Trying to draw a cube in 2D, then leaning forward and realizing that you are in a 3D world and need to draw completely differently - actually walking the cube.

~~~
strictnein
Ordered the HTC Vive and I think it's the "game" that I'll have my kids (age 4
and 7) experience first. They both loved some of the demos and games available
on the DK1 and DK2, but I think the creative freedom this seems to encourage
will be even better.

~~~
hbosch
Small note here: I have not seen any anecdotal or objective data on it, but I
have a feeling this headset may be overly large or slightly too heavy for a 4
year old's face/head, and the controllers may be too big as well... I do hope
I'm wrong, though! TiltBrush looks like a child's dream! :)

~~~
verst
Also an adult's dream!

I wish my friend had taken a video of me as I was frolicking whilst throwing
sparkles as high above my head as I could.

Or perhaps as I free-form drew a (wobbly) cube in 3D (should have used the
straight line tool!), then stuffed it with flames. Then I taped up the sides
of my first cube skeleton to hide the flames. Obviously this makes no sense at
all but the experience was incredibly creative.I don't think anything
parallels this right now.

------
potch
I got a chance to try tiltbrush recently. I drew a little cottage around
myself, complete with a table and couch. While I was painting the ceiling, I
subconsciously stepped around my couch to avoid tripping on it. That's when VR
clicked for me :)

~~~
BattyMilk
My first time with VR I had a similar experience playing a driving sim on a
friend's DK2. When I had finished playing I stood up out of the chair, ducking
to miss the door frame

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iLoch
We've got a Vive Pre so I've had the pleasure of being able to use this a bit.
It's as fun and amazing as it looks in the promo video there. I'm not an
artist so I can hardly put the features to any real use, but I'm always amazed
to see what people are capable of creating.

I think this is truly a new form of artistic expression - and I think it has
the potential to become very popular in the future. I'm imagining having
holograms on display of works done by famous modern artists... being able to
walk around them and see them from different perspectives - I'd love that.

~~~
carolosf
Reminds me of Gladia's "Field colorings" in Isaac Asimov's book Naked Sun

~~~
RBerenguel
Goes back to an Asimov short story, Light Verse (IIRC, I read it in Spanish, I
think this is the original title).

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squidbidness
My mind is exploding with the possibilities this presents even for existing
film and animation production pipelines.

Just one example: A layout artist being able to directly sketch into being the
spaces and sets they envision, then being able to storyboard and block
character animations by sketching with traditional animation techniques, but
directly in the camera space.

Similar kinds of programs could be a revelation for modeling, rigging, and
animating characters... it had never occurred to me till seeing this how
awesome VR interfaces could be for that kind of artistic work.

~~~
wowtip
Combine this with some kind of haptic feedback device and you will have
something really cool. I just skimmed the description, so not sure if it
support volumetric 3D objects, i.e. sculpting, or only painting?

------
cooper12
Not exactly the same thing but I've actually been sitting on an idea for a
mobile app that was inspired by Google: Essentially, you'd be able to look
through your phone camera and draw on the world on the screen. Then other
people could see your geolocated creations and maybe modify them. (I also
considered autodecay for dense areas) I never did figure out the physics of
how the projection would work or if the accuracy of GPS made it feasible, but
I thought it'd be a good way to blend our real world and allow a sort of
"virtual graffiti", a form of augmented virtual reality. As with all
interesting ideas though, if you wait too long, someone comes and does it and
I saw something similar on HN except with stickers also. As for how Google
inspired it, their photo app lets you physically rotate your phone to pan
around photospheres.

TiltBrush seems more of a pure creative endeavor meant for artists or anyone
just looking to mess around a virtual world. I really much like how you can
walk around the creation/space. The fact that it's three dimensional actually
makes it more like sculpture than painting, though I"m sure there isn't
anything other than parallax errors preventing 2D drawing. The granularity of
the brushes seems to be good, so it will all come down to how well the hand
controllers will work together with the headset. (hopefully not requiring
surgery-like stillness just to get small details right, maybe by allowing
adjustable head movement sensitivity)

~~~
t3hprogrammer
String did "virtual graffiti" in 3d in 2011!
[https://vimeo.com/15935674](https://vimeo.com/15935674)

When I last explored this idea, "stickers" are necessary since most surfaces
in real life are generic "textures", so there's no way to know which section
of a wall you're looking at if you're too close to it.

~~~
cooper12
Interesting how it's in 3D, and pretty interesting considering how early it
was done. (back before all the Oculus hype) Oh and sorry what I meant by
stickers were colorful cartoon drawings popular in Facebook and LINE. Although
what you're saying does make sense in regards to manipulating surfaces.

------
thenomad
The announcement that TiltBrush will be available on the Vive's launch is what
moved me from "Hmm, maybe" to "Shut up and take my money".

I just hope there's a way to export the ensuing paintings in some kind of 3D
format. Self-expression in static form is all very well, but I want to take
them into Maya, fire up the mocap suits, and make movies with them!

On a related note and without Google's marketing budget, there's also a guy
working on early-stages animation software for VR including the Vive:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/489o5y/virtuanimato...](https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/489o5y/virtuanimator_easy_animation_in_vr/)

~~~
kriro
That was my thought exactly. Wouldn't it be cool to model Blender (or whatever
tool you use) stuff in VR. I'm horrible at 3d modeling but something like
TiltBrush could make it fun and engaging and motivate me enough to explore in
new ways.

~~~
AJ007
zBrush would be great. It makes a lot of sense to build 3D stuff in 3D rather
than 2d.

~~~
thenomad
If ZBrush announces a VR version I think I'll be having another "shut up and
process my credit card" moment...

------
newjersey
A little meta comment and I apologize for bikeshedding but it seems https
works fine here. Can we replace the link in the title with

[https://www.tiltbrush.com/](https://www.tiltbrush.com/)

Thank you!

~~~
mukgupta
I posted this link but I don't see any option to edit the URL now.

------
azinman2
This will be a landmark app, in that it looks to be one of the most flushed
out stabs at vr painting. It defines a number of UI/UX components and
philosophies all using direct manipulation (with what looks like an Adobe-
flow), plus a number of original 3D-specific tools.

Congrats to the team at Google

------
brudgers
Recent review: [http://spectrum.ieee.org/consumer-
electronics/audiovideo/til...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/consumer-
electronics/audiovideo/tiltbrush-the-killer-app-for-vr)

------
hacker42
I think it would be more accurate if they wrote "acquired by Google" instead
of just "by Google". Also, why is this not under the Alphabet umbrella given
that this product has nothing to do with search?

~~~
coldpie
The division isn't clear, but the impression I had was more "software" vs "not
software."

------
theGimp
Well that's interesting. I haven't seen any Google product host its videos on
anything other than YouTube in a very long time.

It's strange they chose to host it outside YouTube in this instance.

~~~
mukgupta
That's probably because Google Acquired Tiltbrush and the founders choose to
keep it this way initially.

------
mmanfrin
This + a video of people playing 'Job Simulator' have me wanting to cancel my
Oculus Rift preorder and get a Vive instead.

~~~
nmbr213
Platform exclusives will be the bane of VR.

When I see interesting exclusives X on Vive, Y on Oculus and Z on Playstation
VR, I won't buy all three platforms. I'll just say 'screw you all, I'll pass'.

~~~
coldpie
Valve has developed and supports the OpenVR platform[1], which is designed to
allow different hardware on the backend. Rift/Facebook seems to be primarily
pushing a closed platform with exclusives. Playstation VR is obviously
Playstation-only. Make your purchasing decisions accordingly.

[1]
[https://github.com/ValveSoftware/openvr](https://github.com/ValveSoftware/openvr)

------
partiallypro
I really hope Google puts aside their differences with Microsoft and tries to
get a demo of this running on Hololens. I think it would be SO much cooler to
be able to walk around someone's cool 3D art piece using AR rather than VR.

~~~
agildehaus
Hololens has a tremendously small FOV and everything it projects is
translucent. Not exactly a great medium for viewing art.

~~~
partiallypro
I've used Hololens, and not everything it projects it translucent. It does
have a small FoV, but it will get bigger with time, right now it's because of
battery tech and chip energy efficiency/power.

------
abledon
Part of me wonders how little body consciousness future generations will have
when there is easily accessibletechnology like this that sucks the focus away
from the immediate body you reside in and into a virtual world. On The
Positive, I like how you can stand to use this technology, and not be trapped
sitting in a chair.

Brave New World Ho!

~~~
bovermyer
Or, on the other hand, it allows us to more fully control our sensory reality,
thus beginning to make "reality" as a concept more fluid.

~~~
abledon
I think the term 'fully control' is tricky in hiding 'gotchas'.

Does 'full control' of sensory reality imply a pre-condition of being locked
into a near-sight helmet where the eye muscles are limited to only focus on an
object right infront of them for (possibly) many hours at a time? Questions
for 2020 i suppose.

------
prawn
If the method of viewing these isn't completely proprietary, someone should be
setting up a site to distribute free and paid experiences. First or early to
market would pay off like it did for early dominant Minecraft forums and the
like.

I can see this becoming a thing. As a commenter here notes, people could
create graphic novels in 3D space.

------
joosters
I wonder what the file format is... is it open, so it can be viewed by other
VR systems, or is it tied to HTC? Can you view the creations in a browser?
(Obviously you can make videos, but is there a 3d navigator for non-VR
viewers?)

~~~
justncase80
I don't know for sure but I bet it is, or could be exported to, any existing
object model file formats. Like fbx.

------
zardo
The last scene... VR graphic novels could be pretty amazing.

------
hxrts
Digital artist Jeremiah Johnson using a beta release:
[https://www.instagram.com/p/_TFWRWK6Xh/](https://www.instagram.com/p/_TFWRWK6Xh/)

------
takeda
Isn't this based on this:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSbkn6mCfXE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSbkn6mCfXE)

(If you're impatient to skip into 2:30)

~~~
timecube
That is this.

------
marknutter
If we nail VR over the next few years, it's going to change everybody's
motivations. You think people are locked into their screens today? Just you
wait..

------
eva1984
The concept is cool, but the supposedly-creative music is just annoying for
being so generic.

~~~
ChrisClark
Makes you wonder, are musical tastes subjective?

------
flashman
Well, if nothing else, the coming VR cycle is going to be more psychedelic
than the last.

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pollen42
We have one in our office and it really is amazing. My favorite moment was
when I pulled my hand back to go around a line, forgetting that it was
virtual. Real immersion.

We also able to comp the drawings on to video. Not perfect yet, but trying:
[https://twitter.com/evanbbb/status/704727611201724416](https://twitter.com/evanbbb/status/704727611201724416)

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tled
If you don't have a HTC Vive. Then try this:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cc.openframewo...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cc.openframeworks.sketch3d)

~~~
spb
This appears to be a blatant ripoff of
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cc.openframewo...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cc.openframeworks.inkSpace)
\- they didn't even change the app ID to refer to something other than the
original developer's domain.

~~~
thesystemis
author of inkspace here, thanks for pointing this out. I will try to flag
this...

~~~
thesystemis
(update - google took it down. thanks again for pointing it out to me...)

------
mserdarsanli
[http://buttersafe.com/2011/12/22/the-greatest-
gift/](http://buttersafe.com/2011/12/22/the-greatest-gift/)

------
Bjorkbat
This is by far probably the biggest motivating factor for me to buy one of
these latest gen VR headsets. Everyone else seems largely preoccupied with
trying to get into VR filmmaking or slapping VR onto just any old game, but
this really unleashes a lot of the potential of VR.

Admittedly I'm a little disappointed to see nothing about the old company's
story on the website. The founders must seem truly remarkable, yet the landing
page gives no clue as to who they are. We just know that it's by Google, which
technically isn't wrong.

------
personjerry
Oh man I can't wait to see the Michaelangelos and Berninis of today

~~~
sosuke
I'm nervous about reality preserving the medium for as long as their works
have been around. Do you think it wouldn't be a problem?

~~~
adventured
Maybe in the future so much content will be created by so many (eg digital
photographs, youtube), that the notion of preservation will lose a lot (but
not all) of its former value, with the focus shifting on the next thing rather
than enjoying the last thing for 400 years. Humanity as we understand it
today, isn't going to exist in hundreds of years, we've already taken over
control of our own evolution, and there's a high probability that we'll merge
into the machines and never come back out. At the rate all of this is
accelerating, long-term preservation is very likely going to be moot.

~~~
flashman
I have this idea in my head that one of the niche communities in fifty years
will be people who trawl through discarded mass storage devices: cobbling
together hardware fixes, undeleting files, and scanning them to see whether
they contain anything interesting, like cached pages of lost websites, photos
containing the faces of celebrities but from decades before they were famous,
troves of old corporate emails, and so on.

~~~
zardo
Like historians? I also think they will exist in fifty years.

~~~
sangnoir
I think more like Verner Vinge's Programmer Archeologists[1], rather than
Historians.

1\. [http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/4424](http://lambda-the-
ultimate.org/node/4424)

------
xplot
Imagine the kind of fun one could have with this and a bit of THC.

~~~
omarchowdhury
Or LSD, for that matter.

~~~
xkcd-sucks
"That refresh rate is annoying, which is a shame because lots of people put
lots of effort into making this artefact"

"So flat and pixelly"

"Why am I sitting inside a sensory simulation box when I could be doing more
exciting and fulfilling things in that-which-we-refer-to-as-the-physical-
world?"

"The faster you move your head, the more the graphics lag behind the sound...
Woah, try it with the music visualizer, it's like multimodal flanging or some
shit"

~~~
xplot
I have had the opportunity to play with Vive headset. The lag is hardly
noticeable and once the drugs kicks in it should be more tolerable(i am
guessing :P).

And for some the physical world is too boring anyways, So might as well be
trapped in the sensory simulation box.

The real issue would be the ergonomics and the walking part to create
something with the brush.

------
Dowwie
Draw stars and then watch them come down around you?

..and so with the introduction of the TiltBrush, Google enters a new era of
VR-enhanced pscyhedelic paraphernalia

------
puranjay
As someone who has never experienced VR before, this thing seems unreal.

I can't even imagine what we'll have by the time my kids are in their 20s

------
aethertron
Neat. Dreams by Media Molecule on PS4 looks like a similar thing. (3D painting
with motion controls, supposedly coming to VR too.)

------
BatFastard
You only get to draw on the planes you create is that correct? I would like to
see how you select different panes. Not enough details, creating 3D art is
tough. Recently I had a very immersive experience with the LeapMotion
controller and my DK2. If you get a chance try the new Orion experience from
LeapMotion! Wow!

------
zitterbewegung
I remember there was a similar system for CAVE st argonne national laboratory
I think it was helped by crayons.

------
hijp
I would really love to do this with a bunch of friends in the same virtual
room, physically present or not. Just painting together, walking through or
around each other's creations and working together. I really hope they add a
multiplayer aspect to this someday!

------
concernedctzn
Has google made the source available for this? Would be a cool contribution to
the VR scene.

------
kimar
Looks amazing. Wonder how this would compare to Oculus Quill (although Quill
is still an internal tool at the moment).

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbhUdKvJfw8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbhUdKvJfw8)

------
radarsat1
Very similar idea to Sandde, [http://www.sandde.com/](http://www.sandde.com/),
which stemmed from a collaboration between IMAX and the National Film Board of
Canada.

------
sytelus
Can you walk around, walk away and come back? How much movement is allowed
before experience breaks down? This is the major difference between VR devices
like Occulus/Cardboard vs Hololens.

~~~
6x9equals42
It's on an HTC Vive so you're tethered to a PC with USB cables, but you have
about a 15ft by 15ft square to move around in.

~~~
chrisan
Do you happen to know the limitation they are getting around requiring cables?
I can only imagine in the future it will be wireless. Not that I think I could
wait that long to try VR, just curious :)

Bandwidth, power, weight, cost, combination of all?

~~~
6x9equals42
All of those things. With current headsets you'd need to losslessly stream
1200p video at 90fps which is a lot of bandwidth and those numbers are only
going to increase. It also has to be very low latency and not skip/stutter to
avoid motion sickness. Hopefully we'll see it in consumer headsets in the next
5 years.

------
uptown
Reminds me a lot of "What Dreams May Come"

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120889/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120889/)

------
journeeman
This is great! Is there a similar app for sculpting in VR out there?

~~~
timecube
Oculus Medium ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IreEK-
abHio](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IreEK-abHio))

------
kdkooo
Soooo cool! This is clearly the way of the future.

------
tremguy
Can you share the space with other people wearing VR? Collaborating in
something like this would really make it for me.

------
skrowl
This is the first actual app I've seen that uses "room scale" VR that
Valve/HTC talked up so much.

------
sidcool
This is seriously amazing.

------
richardboegli
Something seems odd, why are the videos on the site not YouTube videos???

Answered my own question: TiltBrush was acquired by Google in 2015. Its still
a missed opportunity by not having the videos on YouTube.

------
timwaagh
its so easy to miss the l

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shmerl
Is it open source?

------
ripitrust
simply OMG

------
ehosca
instant nausea...

~~~
matthew-wegner
The Vive version? Absolutely not. I have a Vive Pre--before that the developer
kit--and I've seen people new to VR spend over an hour straight in Tilt Brush.
My Steam account shows 10+ hours logged.

I'm assuming you're either referring to the Google Cardboard version (which I
haven't tried), or just trolling...

