Make: Volume 52

Painting and Sculpting

These take you off of a flat canvas or screen, letting

you create digital masterpieces in immersive 3D.

1. TILT BRUSH

tiltbrush.com

Tilt Brush was the first VR art application to have

an avid following. The program puts a drawing

implement in one hand and a palette of tools,

brushes, and colors in the other.It allows the artist to

sweep their artwork not only along a plane in front of

them but in all directions — up, down, left, right, and

behind them too. It’s quite an experience to createa

drawing and then take a step into it to continue

working on it from a totally different angle.

Art shows have already featured live exhibitions of

artists creating wild 3D landscapes, and YouTube is a

good place to find “replays” of these sessions. Even

untrained artists seem to have a great time with it.

The tools also serve as a rapid 3D sketchpad for other

ideas such as roughing out a design for a new chair or

table, or any scale object, so you can see how it might

look in 3D before you get more detailed.

2. PAINTLAB

paintlabvr.com

A relative newcomer to the VR art scene, PaintLab

currently has a distinct appeal: it’s free. While it

boasts a wide range of features for 3D painting, it

may take a more determined user to get all they can

out of it. The developers are very active in adding

new features and smoothing things out for users.

One nice option is the ability to “spray paint” on your

sculptures, making PaintLab useful for trying out

different color schemes on 3D models.

3. SCULPTRVR

sculptrvr.com

SculptrVR bills itself as a world-building game and

uses “voxels,” scalable 3D blocks that look like

something out of Minecraft, to paint the space you

inhabit. It has a unique ability to let the users scale

themselves — up to the size of a giant or down to that

of an ant — to add as much detail as they want.

Some simple physics and object interactivity is

supported, and they’ve also added fun elements such

as a rocket gun that you can shoot at your worlds to

blow them up. Last but not least, you can export your

creations to print them on your 3D printer.

Physics Sandboxes

If you want to hack around in virtual space or are new

to VR, there are a couple of apps you should check out

to learn what you can do.

4. MODBOX

alientrap.org/games/modbox

Modbox is like the ultimate physics building block

set for VR. While still very early in development, a

community of users has already shown some amazing

concepts for games built within it. There’s no game

in the product itself, it’s strictly a set of tools you can

use to do things like build a bowling alley or archery

range, or re-create a haunted mansion in 3D and

walk around in it. The developers promise support for

mods and different tile sets in the coming months.

While not completely accurate physics, I could see

this being used by makers to quickly sketch out

simple machine concepts or a room-size experiment

to see how it functions. But perhaps the greatest

value is the workout it gives your imagination.

5. FANTASTIC CONTRAPTION

fantasticcontraption.com

In this puzzle game, the wearer builds 3D machines

to deliver a pink glowing ball to a goal. It sounds easy

but the challenges get hard fast. The great thing

about this game from a maker perspective is that it

rewards experimentation. Many sessions abandon

the stated goal and instead players make musical

xylophones, imaginary helicopters, or any Rube

Goldberg-inspired assemblage they can dream up.

COMING

SOON

There are a few titles

in the pipeline that you

can’t get your hands

on yet, but should be

available later this year.

OCULUS MEDIUM

youtu.be/IreEK-abHio

Oculus is working on

an input system called

Oculus Touch, which will

let Oculus Rift owners

get their hands into the

virtual world. Medium is

a sculpting application

designed by artists to

behave like real material

might under the hands

of a sculptor. No release

date has been set, but

Oculus has shown it

at events and it looks

promising.

MAKEVR

sixense.com/makevr

MakeVR has been in

development for some

time and will provide

the ability to create

highly detailed VR CAD

designs. It’s easy enough

for a novice to use but

powerful enough to

do real 3D CAD work.

MakeVR promises to

allow the user to create

any 3D shape using

all the tools of a CAD

engine, but in VR. From

there, because it’s built

on a professional grade

CAD software engine, the

user can export those

designs for printing or

use in other applications.

Written by Jon Oakes

Virtual

Creation

Virtual reality is more than just games and interesting experiences. Every piece of creative software

we use today is likely to have a VR equivalent that puts you in the same space as your design, and

some are already allowing you to bring those digital works out into the real world via 3D printing.

Here are some of my current favorites, and a couple of the new titles coming soon.

makezine.com/virtually-real

makezine.com 43

DESIGN, ASSEMBLE, AND BUILD WITH THESE VR SOFTWARE TOOLS

Razmig Mavlian

1: Google, 2 & 3: Jon Oakes, 4: SculptrVR, 5: Fantastic Contraption

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