Requirements and Installation

To paint in 3D with Open Brush, you’ll need to have a VR headset that supports SteamVR or any Oculus headset.

HTC Vive / Valve Index

4. To open Open Brush, open the Steam Library > select Games > Open Brush.

Oculus Rift

Rift users can either use the SteamVR build as described above for the HTC Vive / Valve Index, or the Rift-specific build described here:

3. To open Open Brush, open the Oculus Home Library > Open Brush.

Oculus Quest

Oculus Quests can either be used standalone or tethered to a PC. For tethered ("PCVR" mode), see the instructions above for the SteamVR build for HTC Vive / Valve index. For standalone mode (which has some performance limitations compared to being connected to a PC), follow these instructions:

3. To open Open Brush, open the Oculus Home Library > Open Brush.

Windows Mixed Reality

4. To open Open Brush, open the Steam Library > select Games > Open Brush.

For a quick tutorial

2. On your palette, go to Tools > More > Tips ‘N Tricks.

3. This will run you through an overview of your Open Brush controllers and where the various buttons are.

View sketches

When you run Open Brush for the very first time, you'll be shown an introductory tutorial teaching you how to paint and use the palette.

Every time the app is started after that initial run, your palette hand will by default open to the Sketchbook. In the Sketchbook, you can choose between viewing some featured sketches by the community and your own saved sketches. You can also choose to start a new sketch.

On your Open Brush panels, you’ll see a number of different options and features. Learn more about them in the pages that follow.

Eraser, Dropper, Re-Color, Camera, Teleport, Selection, Mirror, and Straight Edge are all on the top level of the Tools panel. on the "More..." panel, which is originally below the Tools panel, you can access Environment, Lights, Backdrop, Guides, and Poly Library.

At the bottom of the palette is the Menu panel which opens when you hover over it. In both Beginner and Advanced Mode, this Menu panel contains the Sketchbook, My Profile, Beginner/Advanced Mode, Clear Sketch, Save Sketch, and Upload. When you are in Advanced Mode, the "More Options..." button will also appear within the Menu panel and contains the Tips 'N Tricks, Labs, and Settings.

The Quick Tools Panel

Additionally, you can find the Brush, Dropper, re-color, Selection, Model Pin, and Eraser on the Quick Tools panel.

The Quick Tools panel is accessed:

• Most devices (eg Quest, Rift, Pico, Vive XR): From the B button if you're right handed (or more generally the secondary button on your painting hand).

• HTC Vive: From the Menu Button on top of the thumbpad.

• Windows Mixed Reality: From the Menu button, in between the thumbpad and thumbstick

Welcome to the Open Brush Documentation

There is content here for both users of Open Brush and for people that want to contribute to its development.

It's currently a massive work in progress and various links and info will be incorrect but we're just trying to get all the information currently available in one place.

1. Top row of buttons (Left to right): i. Help: Pops up links to various useful web pages ii. About: Pops up our About page iii. Contribute: Pops up a link giving info on how you can contribute iv. Ruler

3. Pointer Angle: This changes the angle the brush pointer is at. Find a settings you feel comfortable with.

4. Quality

5. Simplification

6. Current Sketch Cost

7. Super Secret Hidden Buttons: Absolutely nothing happens if you click here.

How to Find the Admin Panel

Using the Admin Panel

The large central button opens the Sketchbook Panel.

Around the outside are buttons for:

1. Save Sketch

3. 1. Tutorial

   4. (small button underneath) Reset Panels: resets all panels to their default position/visibility

4. Beginner/Advanced mode toggle

5. New Sketch

1. Eraser Tool. You can use the eraser tool to erase entire brush strokes. To select the tool:

   1. Point your painting controller towards the palette and select the eraser .

   2. Position the tool anywhere on the brush stroke and press the trigger to erase.

   3. To disable the eraser, select the icon again.

   Note: To erase your last brush stroke quickly, you can also use Undo. To use Undo, press the left side of the palette controller’s disk. You can also use Undo if you accidentally erase a brush stroke.

2. Dropper Tool. To select the brush and color used for a stroke or the color in a reference image:

   1. Position your controller on the brush stroke or the color in an image you want.

   2. Press the trigger to confirm. Your brush type, color and size will be copied.

   3. To disable the dropper, click the icon again

4. Camera Tool. Use Cameras to save your creation in various formats.

   1. Point your painting controller towards the palette and select Cameras.

   2. On your painting controller, swipe the thumbpad (HTC Vive) or thumbstick (Oculus Rift and Windows Mixed Reality) right or left to access the Camera options.

   3. After selecting your option, your image file will save to the "Open Brush" folder inside "Documents" on your computer.

   4. You can then share photos, videos, and GIFs or your artwork online.

   5. PC users can record still images, animated GIFs or video. The Quest only supports still images and GIFs.
5. Teleport Tool. To virtually hop to a different spot in your environment, use Teleport.

   1. Point your painting controller towards the palette and select Teleport.

   2. On your painting hand, press the thumbpad or trigger to move around the x and y axis.

   3. You will see footprints on the ground, which represent your landing spot.

   4. To disable Teleport, select the icon again.

   Note: The distance which you can teleport varies in each environment.

6. Selection Tool. Use Selection to select and duplicate strokes and models in your scene.

   1. Select strokes using the trigger. You can also flip into deselect mode by tapping the thumbpad (HTC Vive and Windows Mixed Reality) or “A/X” button (Oculus Rift).

   2. If you want to move your selection, grab it as you would any other model in your scene. To delete a selected group of strokes, just throw it away.

   3. Duplicate selections by either: a) holding the thumbpad (HTC Vive and Windows Mixed Reality) or “A/X” button (Oculus Rift) while intersecting your controller with selected strokes or... b) using the same button but whilst moving a selection The first method creates a duplicate slightly offset from the original whilst the second leaves a copy behind at the exact spot where you pressed the button.

   To select everything in a scene, long press on the Select button on the Tools panel and the Select All button will appear.

   To invert a selection that you have just made, long press on the Select button on the Tools panel and the Invert Selection button will appear.

   Combines the currently selected strokes into a single group. They will move and scale as one. You can ungroup them easily by clicking again.

7. Mirror Tool. Use the mirror mode tool to paint symmetrically. To use the tool:

   1. Point your painting controller towards the palette and select Mirror Mode.

   2. To grab and move the mirror, use the Grip button on the sides of your controllers.

   3. To adjust the mirror back to default, grab and move the mirror onto the snapback widget.

   4. To spin the mirror, grab the mirror using the Grip button on the right side of your painting controller. Throw the mirror to spin it in an infinite loop. You can then paint within this loop.

   If you long-press the mirror tool you get the following options:
8. Straight Edge Tool. Use the straight edge tool to paint in straight lines between two points.

9. Fly Tool

Differences in Beginners vs Advanced modes

1. Dropper

2. Repaint

3. Selection

4. Fly

5. Snip

6. Join

Paint with Open Brush

1. On your painting controller, use your index finger to pull the trigger.

2. Hold the trigger down and move the controller to paint.

Note: You can switch which hand is your painting controller and which is your palette controller by tapping the bottoms of the two controllers together. This is great to use if a right and left handed person are sharing controllers.

Using the palette

1. On your palette controller, use your thumb to swipe left or right across the thumbpad (HTC Vive) or thumbstick (Oculus Rift and Windows Mixed Reality).

2. This will allow you to rotate between the three faces of the palette.

3. Using your painting controller, angle your controller towards the palette in order to select items on the palette.

4. Focus the pointer and press trigger to make selections.

5. You can also use the grips on your painting controller to grab panels spawned into the world, and place them onto your palette.

Change the width of your brush strokes

To change the width of your brush strokes:

1. On your painting controller, slide your thumb left or right along the thumbpad (HTC Vive) or toggle the thumbstick left or right (Oculus Rift and Windows Mixed Reality).

2. Sliding or toggling left will make the brush stroke finer. Sliding or toggling right will make the brush stroke larger.

Undo & Redo shortcuts

If you would like to undo or redo brush strokes you have just made, you can use Undo and Redo in the Tools Panel (in Beginner Mode) or these shortcuts (in Beginner or Advanced Mode):

• To undo an action:

  • HTC Vive: On the palette controller, click the left side of the thumbpad.

  • Oculus Rift: On the palette controller, click the X button (right handed) or A button (left handed).

  • Windows Mixed Reality: On the palette controller, click the left side of the thumbpad.

• To redo an action:

  • HTC Vive: On the palette controller, click the right side of the thumbpad.

  • Oculus Rift: On the palette controller, click the Y button (right handed) or B button (left handed).

  • Windows Mixed Reality: On the palette controller, click the right side of the thumbpad.

To quickly undo or redo, press and hold the controller button specified above.

Rotate & Resize your sketch

To scale, rotate, or move your sketch, you can hold down both of the grip buttons on the sides of your controllers to grab the sketch. Then, move your hands to shrink, enlarge, or spin the sketch.

• Use the sphere, cube, and pill guides to create perfect shapes.

• Guides are moved and scaled similar to other widgets, using the Grip buttons.

Use Lights to modify your scene's primary and secondary lighting colors and positioning.

• The sun is your primary light, and it casts shadows.

• The sun is the brighter light.

• The moon is your secondary light, it doesn’t cast shadows.

• The fill light floods the scene with an equal distribution of color and light. It's effects are most easily seen in the shadow color of your scene.

• You can grab and move the sun and moon by selecting with the trigger.

• You can change the color of all three light sources.

• The lighting effect is best observed on environments with a ground and object (i.e. pedestal), and in those sketches where there are at least a few strokes.

• The sphere the lights pivot around can be used as a representation/quick preview for placement of lights in the world.

• Custom lights save with sketches.

Use Backdrop to modify your scene's backdrop color gradient and fog.

• Grab anywhere on the backdrop sphere to move or turn it by selecting with the trigger

• The backdrop sphere represents the sky dome (skybox) in the world.

• Change the backdrop gradient by selecting different colors.

• Change the fog intensity by adjusting the slider, and you can change the color by clicking on the fog rectangle.

• Reset your environment at any time by reloading it from the environment panel.

• Custom environments save with sketches

• Some environments already have textured sky dome. In that case, you will be prompted to turn off that custom skybox before you can modify it.

3. Tiltasaurus: A word game inside Open Brush

4. Icosa Library: was Google Poly but our replacement is coming soon

5. Pin: Locks groups and 3d models in place so you don't accidentally move or select them

7. Spectator Camera (PC Only): Allows you to place the camera for your desktop view

Open Brush is completely free on all platforms. (Tilt Brush is still available and is still being charged for. This is still the only way to get the app on Playstation VR)

PC

Oculus Quest

Linux

Mac

What does it do?

1. Snap selections to a grid. Duplicate selections at precise positions

2. Draw brush strokes that align with the grid (especially useful with the hull brush)

3. Snap the rotation of selections to a chosen angle (i.e. 15, 45 or 90 degrees)

What's it good for?

Drawing along straight x, y or z lines. Building regular structures up by making multiple copies of brush strokes

How do I use it?

Click the Snap Angle or Snap Grid buttons to cycle through angles and grid sizes.

Can I see it in action?

If you hold down your Wand trigger (the left hand if you're using Open Brush right-handed) when you first select a stroke with the Selection Tool, only brushstrokes that use that brush will be added to the selection as you continue to select strokes.

You only have to be careful with the first stroke you select, and then after that, you can just wave the selection or erase tools with reckless abandon and it will only select strokes using the same brush type.

Features Added to Open Brush

• Fly Tool

• Plane Guide

• Oculus MRC fixes

• Guide settings

• View Axis Unlocking

• Merging Sketches

• Passthrough Mode

• Snip/Join Strokes

• Experimental mode

• Advanced camera tool

• WebM video import

• Point cloud import

• Switching hands

• Reset to "First Time"

• Support for more headsets

What does it do?

It expands on the previous Recolor tool which is now renamed to "Repaint". The following features can be used individually or in any combination:

Recolor

Same as before (but see the "jitter" feature below which adds new functionality to Recolo)

Rebrush

Similar to "Recolor" except it repaints existings strokes with a different brush. This is the same as the"Rebrush" tool in previous experimental builds. That feature is now part of this Repaint Tool)

Resize

Change the brush size of existing strokes.

Jitter

When this option is turned on, recolor and resize will add random variations based on your current Jitter settings.

Jitter Improvements

In addition to the Repaint Tool, this build adds some new features to the existing "Color Jitter" settings on the Color picker (the Dice icon near the bottom)

Jitter Brush Size

This slider controls how much the stroke size varies from stroke to stroke. All the way to the left behaves normally. As you move the slider more to the right, each stroke will have more randomness applied to it's stroke size.

Jitter Positions

This slider controls how much randomness is applied to each point on a brush stroke. . All the way to the left behaves normally. As you move the slider more to the right, each point of the stroke will be randomly shifted from it's usual position. At higher settings and with some brushes this will cause the brush stroke to actually split and form multiple small strokes.

Things to try

1. Try a high setting for "Jitter positions" and press the trigger to draw but don't move your hand. You'll get a small spherical "squiggle" that can be very interesting with some brushes.

2. Draw something regular with the Hull brush and make copies of it. Then use the "Repaint Tool" with a low setting for "Jitter positions" to add random variation to each copy

3. Position jitter can cause strokes to break into many small strokes. This depends on the brush you use and amount of jitter. Try really low jitter settings, try smaller brush sizes and try different brush types such as tube brushes (they tend not to break up as much)

What's it good for?

Modifying parts of existing sketches. Adding random variation after you've already painted something. Trying out different brushes and reusing parts of a sketch with different properties. (try duplicating some strokes and then repainting the duplicate)

How do I use it?

The Recolor button on the Tools Panel has been replaced with "Repaint". When you select it, a side panel appears with 4 toggle buttons: Recolor, Resize, Rebrush and Jitter.

Any combination of these 4 options can be selected at any time. If you choose "jitter" then set your chosen amount of jitter using the button with the dice icon at the bottom of the Color Picker Panel

Can I see it in action?

VR controllers can sometimes be a little too accurate and responsive, making it difficult to create smooth curves at low movement speeds. The Lazy Input feature will exchange responsiveness for control by applying real-time input smoothing.

Toggle it by HOLDING your off-hand trigger and TAPPING the button marked with the rabbit/turtle.

2. Multimirror

3. Save Strokes to Media Library (deprecated - consider merging strokes via the Sketchbook Panel three dots menu instead)

4. Enable Profiling (deprecated - and not very useful for non-developers)

Bimanual Input

This is a 3D-version of bimanual tape drawing sometimes used in automotive drafting.

Holding the off-hand trigger down will constrain the brush to move in a straight line towards the off-hand controller.

You can curve the line by using your off-hand controller to control the stroke's direction while using your main-hand controller to move the cursor closer to the off-hand controller and control the stroke's orientation.

Revolver

The Revolver adds a lathe function to the Wand Stroke Guide. Activate the Revolver by tapping the button marked with a bulls-eye icon while the Wand Stroke Guide is active.

The radius of the revolving arc constraint is dependent on the distance between the main hand controller and the Wand Stroke Guide Axis. You can tap the bulls-eye button to adjust the radius.

The revolver can also be made to automatically sweep around the axis by using the joystick.

The location of the tools differ slightly between basic mode and advanced mode. In advanced mode environment moves to the "More Tools" panel and undo/redo are removed (you can access these via your wand instead) .

Warning, not for the easily nauseated! While holding both grab buttons to change the scale, you’ll see a padlock on one of the action buttons. Click it, and you’ll now be able to orientate the world to any position you want!

To try out newer features, you can open up the Labs panel. Here you will find some of the latest additions to Open Brush.

Accessing the Labs panel

1. Make sure you are in Advanced Mode.

2. Below your palette, go to the Menu panel and select "More Options...".

3. On your paint palette, swipe to the Tools panel and select More.

4. Select Labs.

Labs Features:

Display YouTube Chat whilst streaming (PC Only)

Play Tiltasaurus with your friends (PC Only)

Tiltasaurus is a virtual reality game where your friends can guess what you're drawing in Open Brush. To play Tiltasaurus:

1. In Open Brush, make sure you are in Advanced Mode.

2. Go to the Menu panel (below your palette) and select "More Options..." > Labs > Tiltasaurus.

3. The player wearing the headset will see a card with a word or phrase to draw.

4. The player who is not wearing the headset will see a category displayed on the computer desktop, but will not see the word or phrase on the card.

5. As the player in the headset begins to draw, the player looking at the desktop can guess the word or phrase.

6. Once they guess correctly, you can switch and start again. Clear the current drawing and get a new word or phrase by hitting Refresh on the card.

7. Adding Tiltasaurus.json to the Documents/Open Brush folder will let you add your own list of words.

Add a reference image or 3D model

Use the "Pin" tool

(docs coming)

Export your sketch as a 3d object

Switch the desktop view to a spectator camera

(docs coming)

Run scripts

Use grid or angle snapping

eIf you want to see an image or 3D model while you paint in Open Brush, you can add it to your scene. You can move, change, or delete reference images.

1. Make sure you are in Advanced Mode.

2. Below your palette, go to the Menu panel and select "More Options...".

3. On your paint palette, swipe to the Tools panel and select More.

Click this icon to open the Media Library:

Add a reference image

1. On a computer, copy a PNG or JPG file to Documents/Open Brush/Media Library/Images.

2. In Open Brush, make sure you are in Advanced Mode.

3. Go to the Menu panel (below your palette) and select "More Options..." > Labs > Local Media Library > Local Images.

4. Switch between selecting images and models using the icons in the top left.

Add a 3D model

1. On a computer, copy the model files to Documents/Open Brush/Media Library/Models.

2. In Open Brush, make sure you are in Advanced Mode. On the Quest you also need to switch Experimental Mode on in the settings.

3. Go to the Menu panel (below your palette) and select "More Options..." > Labs > Local Media Library > Local Models.

4. Switch between selecting images and models using the icons in the top left.

5. See "Supported Formats" below to see which file types you can use.

Supported File Formats

Interacting with Imported Objects

Move an image or model: Position your controller on the image, press and hold a grip button on the side of your controller. Then, drag the image to the new location and release the grip button.

Resize an image or model: With your controllers near the image, press and hold both grip buttons. Then, move the controllers farther apart or closer together.

Pin an image or model: While holding your selection with the grip, pull the trigger to pin. Alternatively, you can use the Pin tool to pin images, models, or guides.

Remove an image or model: With your controller near the reference image, press and hold a grip button. Then, flick the controller away from your body and release the grip button.

Enabling the new GLTF importer

We have an alternative version of GLB export which can have some advantages over the importer we released in v2.4.

Saving a sketch

While painting, you can save your sketch to avoid losing changes.

2. Take a snapshot of your sketch to use as a thumbnail image.

3. Your sketch is now added to your Sketchbook.

4. Your sketch file is saved to your computer at Documents/Open Brush/Sketches.

Trouble saving sketches

If you're having issues saving your sketch, check that you have administration privileges on your machine. Antivirus software can also sometimes interfere with the ability to save sketches.

Sharing your Open Brush sketches

Save in various file formats using Cameras

1. While in your sketch, go to Tools > Cameras.

2. With your painting controller, swipe the thumbpad to toggle between Auto GIF, 5-second GiF, video, and snapshot.

3. After selecting your option, your image file will save to the Documents folder on your computer.

4. You can then share photos, videos, and GIFs or your artwork online.

Note: Using Cameras will not save the sketch file to gallery.

Take a 5-second GIF

1. Select 5-second GIF from the Cameras menu.

2. On your painting controller, hold down the trigger to start recording. You can release the trigger to reposition or paint, then hold down the trigger again to continue recording.

3. When the recording hits 5-seconds, the GIF will be saved to your desktop under Documents/Open Brush/Snapshots.

Take a video

1. Select Video from the Cameras menu.

2. On your painting controller, tap the trigger to start recording. Tap the trigger again to stop.

3. Your captured video will be saved to your desktop under Documents/Open Brush/Videos

Upload a video to YouTube

1. Select Video from the Cameras menu.

2. On your painting controller, tap the trigger to start recording. Tap the trigger again to stop.

3. Hold down the thumbpad after a video has finished recording to go into Preview mode.

4. If you like the video you’ve captured, hold down the checkmark to upload.

5. If you haven't already, you will need to sign-into your YouTube account in your default desktop browser.

Export your sketch file to .fbx, .obj, .gltf and other formats

.fbx is a popular format for 3D modeling, and can be used in applications like Blender and Maya.

1. From the Tools panel, select "More Options..." > Labs > Export.

2. A folder will be created in Open Brush/exports that contains subfolders for each 3d file format currently supported. Each folder may also contain brush textures

Create a 360 video

You may notice a number of brush stroke options are labeled as audio reactive. These are special types of brush strokes which can react to music or audio playing from your desktop.

To use audio reactive brushes

1. Begin playing audio from your computer desktop.

2. Point your painting controller on Brushes page and click the wavy audio reactive icon.

3. You will see a message that Open Brush is listening for audio.

4. Once audio is detected, press the trigger on your painting controller and begin to lay down your brush strokes.

5. Different types of audio reactive brush strokes react to music in various ways - like pulsing, bouncing, or lighting up. You can use them to create an audio visualizer within your artwork.

If you are having issues using Open Brush, check out your options below.

Asking Questions and getting help

Common issues

Looking for saved files

If you have tried to export or save a file but you don’t see anything in Open Brush, the file has probably saved to your computer. Flip over your painting controller and check the history panel. It will display a list of all of your most recent actions or exports.

Lost artwork

Open Brush makes saves of your work in Documents\Open Brush\Sketches\Autosave. Each new sketch you create will have a separate autosave file, and Open Brush will store autosaves from your last five sketches. If you need to access an autosave, just drag it into the Sketches folder using Windows Explorer - it will have a Open Brush logo as its thumbnail in the Sketchbook.

After I launch Open Brush, a sad Tiltasaurus appears

Pink screen when starting Open Brush

This is commonly an issue with using an out-of-date version of DirectX. Make sure you're on the latest version of DirectX, and that you're running Open Brush on a PC that matches the minimum specs of the VR device you're using.

Open Brush crashing or freezing

Antivirus software can sometimes interfere with Open Brush. Try disabling any AV or Firewall software you're running, and try starting Open Brush again.

If you downloaded Open Brush through Steam, try refreshing the cache by choosing to "Verify Integrity of Game Files..." for Open Brush through the Properties window.

Finding your log files

Every time Open Brush is run, a log file is generated "output_log.txt". That log file can typically be found at: C:\Users\<your name>\AppData\LocalLow\Icosa Foundation\Open Brush

What is Experimental Mode?

When Tilt Brush was released as open source, we discovered all the features that had been previously available to a select few and we made these available for everyone to try.

Note that using experimental mode used to require running a separate build of Open Brush (prior to 2.0). This is no longer the case - all versions can switch to experimental mode by going in to settings, hitting the toggle button and restarting the app.

Turning on Experimental Mode

Simply open up the Settings Panel, click the button and restart Open Brush.

Compatibility Issues

The main thing to be aware of with "Experimental Mode" builds is the new brushes. Any sketch you save that contains these new brushes may not look correct when you export it to another piece of software or load it in a non-experimental version of Open Brush.

What Features are there that are only in this build?

Experimental Brushes

3D Model Import

This is for PC only (not Quest). As well as importing still images and videos you can import 3D models (fbx/obj/gltf). The importer is rather fussy and doesn't work reliably. We'd like to improve this and move it to the main release.

Drafting

Combined with the new Drafting Brush, this gives an easy way to sketch out guides and construction lines for yourself. This button quickly toggles them on and off so you can see them while you paint and then quickly see how your sketch will appear to others when you export it without the drafting lines.

Double Mirror

Save Selected Strokes

This will save the currently selected strokes to your Local Media Library so you can use them in other sketches like you can imported 3d models.

Profiling

Not as interesting as it sounds. Mainly useful for developers testing changes or new hardware.

Reference Images allow you to view image files inside your Open Brush sketch. This can be useful for getting inspiration while drawing, or to incorporate as media in your sketch.

Reference Images are in version 21.0+ on Oculus Quest.

How to access the Reference Images Panel

The Reference Images Panel can be found on the Labs Panel. The Labs Panel is located in the 'More Options...' section of the Admin Panel in Advanced Mode.

1. If you are in Beginner Mode, point to the Admin Panel on your menu hand. On the bottom-left is a button to switch to Advanced Mode. Click this.

2. Once in Advanced Mode, point to the Admin Panel on your menu hand. On the bottom-right is a button that reads, 'More Options...'. Click this.

3. A popup will appear with a few choices. Click 'Labs'.

4. The Labs Panel will spin out. Point at it and find the 'Reference Images' button. Click this.

5. The Reference Images Panel will spin out.

Adding images to your sketch

On the Reference Images Panel, click any thumbnail to load the image. After it loads, click it again to bring it in to your sketch.

Adding more images

1. Once connected to a PC, look for, 'Quest' in Windows Explorer. Click this.

2. Navigate to '..Quest\Internal shared storage\Open Brush\Media Library\Images\'

3. Copy image files (.jpg or .png) into this folder.

Supported image files

Images take up video memory inside Open Brush and including too many will cause Open Brush to crash. There are some restrictions on image files.

1. Only .jpg and .png file types.

2. Max image file size is 10Mb.

3. Max image dimension (height and width) is 1024.

The Open Brush config file can be used to tweak various options for advanced users. A blank Open Brush.cfg file will be created in the Open Brush folder on application startup if one does not exist.

Example PC path: C:\Users\<username>\Documents\Open Brush\Open Brush.cfg.

On an Oculus Quest, you can find this file in /sdcard/Open Brush. You can use either adb or the SideQuest file viewer to access this file. You could also sideload a text editor if you want to edit the file directly.

Example of an empty Open Brush.cfg:

{
   "User":{
      
   },
   "Brushes":{
   
   },
   "Video":{
      
   },
   "Flags":{
      
   },
   "Export":{
      
   }
}

Sample contents of a Open Brush.cfg with various fields filled in:

{
   "User":{
      "Author":"Tiltasaurus"
   },
   "Brushes": {
      "IncludeTags": ["classroom"]
   },
   "Video":{
      "Resolution":1280,
      "OfflineResolution":1920,
      "FPS":30,
      "OfflineFPS":60,
      "ContainerType":"mp4",
      "CameraSmoothing":0.98,
      "Encoder":"h.264",
      "SaveCameraPath":true,
      "FOV":80
   },
   "Flags":{
      "PostEffectsOnCapture":true,
      "ShowWatermark":true,
      "ShowHeadset":true,
      "ShowControllers":true,
      "SnapshotWidth":1920,
      "SnapshotHeight":1080,
      "FOV":80,
      "DisableAudio":false,
      "UnlockScale":false,
      "AdvancedKeyboardShortcuts":false,
      "SkipIntro":true,
      "EnableMonoscopicMode":false,
      "DisableXrMode":false
   },
   "Export":{
      "ExportBinaryFbx":true,
      "ExportFbxVersion":"FBX201400",
      "ExportStrokeTimestamp":true
   }
}

Valid Config file Settings

"User" Section

• Author: The name you use here will be stored in files uploaded to Icosa, Sketchfab etc.

"Brushes" Section

"Video" Section

• Encoder: (h.264) This setting specifies the video codec used for encoding exported videos. Currently, the only supported codec is h.264.

"Flags" Section

1. PostEffectsOnCapture: (true | false) This setting determines whether post-processing effects will be applied to captured images or videos. When set to true, effects will be applied; when set to false, they will not.

2. ShowWatermark: (true | false) This setting controls the visibility of the Open Brush watermark on exported images and videos. When set to true, the watermark will be visible; when set to false, it will be hidden.

3. ShowHeadset: (true | false) This setting determines whether the user's VR headset will be visible in the final exported images or videos. When set to true, the headset will be shown; when set to false, it will not.

4. UnlockScale: (true | false) This setting allows users to scale their artwork beyond the default limits. When set to true, users can scale their artwork to larger sizes; when set to false, scaling will be limited to the default range.

5. SnapshotWidth: (1 - some reasonably large number) This setting controls the width (in pixels) of exported images. Users can specify a value between 1 and a reasonably large number to set the desired image width.

6. SnapshotHeight: (1 - some reasonably large number) This setting controls the height (in pixels) of exported images. Users can specify a value between 1 and a reasonably large number to set the desired image height.

7. FOV: (1 - 179) This setting determines the field of view (FOV) for the camera used during image or video capture. Users can specify a value between 1 and 179 degrees to set the desired FOV.

8. DisableAudio: (true | false) This setting allows users to disable audio playback within Open Brush. When set to true, audio playback will be disabled; when set to false, audio playback will function as normal.

10. SkipIntro: (true | false) Skips the intro scene that appears when Open Brush finishes loading

"Import" Section

"Export" Section

1. ExportBinaryFbx: (true | false) This setting controls whether exported FBX files will be in binary format. When set to true, binary FBX files will be exported; when set to false, ASCII FBX files will be exported.

2. ExportFbxVersion: (FBX201600 | FBX201400 | FBX201300 | FBX2012 | FBX201100) This setting specifies the version of the FBX file format to be used when exporting 3D models. Users can choose from FBX201600, FBX201400, FBX201300, FBX2012, or FBX201100. If not specified in the config file, the default version is FBX201400. If users experience issues importing the FBX file into older software, they may need to select an older version.

3. ExportStrokeTimestamp: (true | false) This will put timing information into texcoord2 for all GLB exports. Timestamps are a vec3: x,y = the earliest/latest timestamp in the stroke which contains that vertex. z = the timestamp for that vertex. This setting defaults to true but can be disabled to reduce file size.

Setting config values from the command line

Any of the above settings in the Open Brush.cfg file can also be specified on the command line (not applicable to Quest users). The format is --Section.Setting <value>. For example:

--Flags.ShowWatermark true

--Video.CameraSmoothing 0.99

--User.Author "Captain Open Brush"

Open Brush regularly saves your work into your Documents/Open Brush/Sketches/Autosave folder. Each sketch you make has a separate autosave file, and Open Brush keeps autosaves from your last five sketches. If you need to access an autosave, move it into your Documents/Open Brush/Sketches folder using Windows Explorer—it will have an Open Brush logo as its thumbnail in the Sketchbook.

Remixing allows others to download, edit, and republish your sketch. If you allow remixing, your content will be published under a CC-BY license. We’ll automatically show attribution on any remixed content we publish.

Creative Commons

Turning off remixing for your content

You can choose whether your content can be remixed by selecting from the "Allow remixes" or "Don't allow remixes" options under "Remixes" each time you publish. By default this option is set to "Allow remixes". You can change this setting at any time.

Attribution

Attribution is required under the CC BY license. Any remix we publish will automatically show the source sketch’s title and author underneath the 3D viewer. You retain your copyright and other users get to reuse your work subject to the terms of the license.

Deleting remixable content or changing remix settings

If you delete content that was once remixable, or change the settings to remove remix rights, existing copies of your content used for remixes won’t be deleted.

What's eligible for remixing

Please understand that you may only mark your published sketches as remixable if it consists entirely of content licensable by you under the CC BY license. Some examples of such licensable content are:

• Your originally created content

• Other sketches marked with a CC BY license

We've changed how export in general is configured. Previously all supported formats were exported whether you needed them or not. Some were pretty slow for large scenes (STL - looking at you) and you probably only needed a couple of them. Now you can choose which are available using the config file:

  "Export": {
    "ExportBinaryFbx": true,
    "ExportFbxVersion": "FBX201400",
    "ExportStrokeMetadata": true,
    "KeepStrokes": true,
    "KeepGroups": false,
    "Formats": {
      "fbx": true,
      "glb": true,
      "newglb": true,
      "json": true,
      "latk": true,
      "obj": true,
      "stl": false,
      "usd": true,
      "wrl": false
    }

• ExportBinaryFbx: This setting specifies the version of the FBX file format to be used when exporting 3D models. Users can choose from FBX201600, FBX201400, FBX201300, FBX2012, or FBX201100. If not specified in the config file, the default version is FBX201400. If users experience issues importing the FBX file into older software, they may need to select an older version.

• ExportFbxVersion: Controls whether exported FBX files will be in binary format. When set to true, binary FBX files will be exported; when set to false, ASCII FBX files will be exported.

• ExportStrokeTimestamp: (true | false) This will put timing information into texcoord2 for all GLB exports. Timestamps are a vec3: x,y = the earliest/latest timestamp in the stroke which contains that vertex. z = the timestamp for that vertex. This setting defaults to true but can be disabled to reduce file size.

• ExportStrokeMetadata: includes extra information with each stroke that might be useful to developers writing their own importers

• KeepStrokes: Each stroke will be exported as a separate mesh rather than grouped by brush type (export will take longer and may fail on complex scenes)

• KeepGroups: Maintains groups on export (export will take longer and may fail on complex scenes)

• Formats: Each item in here corresponds to an existing export format except for "newglb". This is also a glb file but we use the new export code to generate it.

Note that formats not supported on your platform will be ignored. See below for platform support.

Import Differences between GLTFast (old) and UnityGLTF (new) formats

Extensions supported by GLTFast but not UnityGLTF:

• EXT_mesh_gpu_instancing

• KHR_materials_pbrSpecularGlossiness (legacy extension - superseded by KHR_materials_specular which is only supported by UnityGLTF)

Extensions supported by UnityGLTF but not GLTFast:

• KHR_materials_clearcoat

• KHR_materials_emissive_strength

• KHR_materials_ior

• KHR_materials_iridescence

• KHR_materials_specular

• KHR_materials_transmission (soon)

• KHR_materials_volume (soon)

• MSFT_lod

Extensions supported by both:

• KHR_draco_mesh_compression

• KHR_lights_punctual

• KHR_materials_unlit

• KHR_mesh_quantization

• KHR_texture_basisu

• KHR_texture_transform

(The above list may change as we implement missing features in UnityGLTF. GLTFast also has announced plans to support KHR_materials_variants, EXT_lights_image_based and KHR_materials_transmission)

UnityGLTF has some other differences:

• Model hierarchy should be faithfully preserved. GLTFast on the other hand doesn't support sub-meshes so any mesh that contains multiple materials will be split into separate objects. (this might be desirable in some cases)

• In general 3d models should be more robustly handled if you round-trip between Open Brush and other 3D apps

Please report any other differences you find. The reason we are keeping both importers around is to gather feedback on their strengths and weaknesses.

Choosing between the new and old GLTF formats

The use of the new exporter is currently optional and we will continue to support the old exporter until the new one is a full replacement.

• The new GLB export format should work better in Blender and other 3D animation apps although we still have work to do to fix support for particle brushes, transparent brushes and other features.

• Imported 3D models will export much better with the new GLB exporter

Platform Support

Breaking Apart Imported Models

Importing Lights

Known Issues

Open Brush sketches can be exported by clicking the ‘Export’ button found on the Labs panel. The Labs panel can be found under ‘More…’ on the Tools panel.

Each sketch exported from Open Brush creates a separate folder in Documents/Open Brush/Exports which contains the geometry in the following formats:

(.glb is closely related to .gltf and most software will support both. We output binary glTF version 2)

python convert_to_fbx.py "c:\Users\username\Documents\Open Brush\Exports\Untitled_1.json"

Each script has a set of command-line options that fine-tune the generated file.

Flipside XR

4. Add both to your Flipside Unity project

5. Export your Open Brush sketch and import the .glb file into the Flipside project

6. Follow the Flipside instructions for uploading a Unity scene as a Flipside Set

Maya

After importing the FBX file into Maya you will need to turn off the Alpha is Luminance attribute in the Color Balance section for each texture node. To see the brush colors in the viewport turn on the Display Colors attribute and set Material Blend to Multiply in the Mesh Component Display section on each mesh shape node.

To render with the vertex colors you can use the mentalrayVertexColors shader node to access the stroke color in your material.

Mozilla Hubs

Mozilla Spoke (the Hubs editor) gives an error when you try to import our .glb file directly. However importing first into Blender and then re-exporting will fix this. Not all brushes work correctly but the simpler brushes should import fairly well.

Sketchfab

To post to Sketchfab you will need to upload the FBX file and the textures.

We are working with Sketchfab to have Open Brush import correctly, but if the strokes look wrong you can try opening the 3D Settings Editor in Sketchfab and under the Materials tab set the material properties manually.

Snapchat Lens Studio🔗

Styly

To upload your work to Styly, you'll need to remove all traces of the audio-reactivity scripts in the Open Brush toolkit.

3. Delete the following folders from your Unity project window:

   1. ThirdParty/CSCore

   2. ThirdParty/Reaktion

4. Delete the following files from you Unity project window:

   1. TiltBrush/Scripts:/VisualizerAudioInput

   2. TiltBrush/Scripts:/VisualizerManager

   3. TiltBrush/Scripts/Editor/VisualizerManagerEditor

5. Also in the project window, drag the entire TiltBrush/Scripts/Gltf folder so it's inside TiltBrush/Scripts/Editor

6. Carry on where you left off with the Styly docs.

Unity

Unity WebGL

You'll need to delete the following 2 scripts if you want to build for Unity WebGL targets: GenericAudioInputEditor.cs and GenericAudioInput.cs

Unreal Engine🔗

Command-line Exporting

To export sketches from the command line, use the --export option to specify a file or set of files to export. --export supports wildcards, and multiple files can be specified with a single --export flag. Filenames without a path are assumed to be found in the Open Brush Sketches directory.

You can override the destination folder of exports using the --exportPath flag.

We suggest you also specify the -batchmode option if you don’t want the Open Brush window to appear.

How to Import OpenBrush FBX files & edit Materials to appear correctly

This example uses models that are best viewed without lighting. In UE5's scene view, change the scene lighting to "UNLIT" (top left of window).

• Drag the FBX from Windows Explorer into the UE5 scene

• An FBX Import Option menu will come up:

  Make sure to select: Advanced > Vertex Color Import Option [REPLACE]

Organize Materials, Textures, Mesh Files

• Upon importing the FBX, the Content Drawer will include the meshes and materials

• Create a subfolder for MATERIALS and TEXTURES

• Select the imported materials, drag and drop them into the newly created MATERIALS folder
• The materials are pretty terribly named. I highly recommend renaming them. The brush material names are at the end of the filename:
• From Windows Explorer, drag optimized PNG brush textures into the UE5 TEXTURES folder:
• From the CONTENT DRAWER, drag and drop the meshes into the scene. I recommend creating a folder in the OUTLINER window and drag all the mesh objects into there:

  Selecting all the model mesh objects, it may help to update these DETAILS:

  Location: 0,0,0 Scale: 0.5,0.5,0.5

• I also recommend turning off visibility of all the other non-mesh objects in the OUTLINER tab (e.g. Atmospheric Fog, Floor, etc.)

Associate Vertex Colors, Textures, Opacity to Materials

Edit Vertex Colors to Materials that only need Vertex Colors:

• In CONTENT DRAWER > MATERIALS, double click the "Flat" material file. The Material Graph window will popup

• Right click on the empty grid, type in VERTEX COLOR to add the node

Connect the top white dot to BASE COLOR in the "FLAT" window.

• Click on "FLAT" so you can see its DETAILS on the left menu

• Update: BLEND MODE - MASKED Two Sided - [checked]​

That's it! Be sure to save these edits or CTRL + S. The edits won't show up on the main scene window until these Material changes are saved.

• Repeat for the other three materials listed above that only need Vertex Colors associated to the materials.

Edit Materials that need Vertex Colors and Texture Sample:

• Do the same steps above to add VERTEX COLOR to the BASE COLOR

• Do the same steps above to update the Material Details to (same as before): BLEND MODE - MASKED Two Sided - [checked]

• Right click the empty grid space and type in TEXTURE SAMPLE to bring up a node where you'll associate the texture png files

  • Click on the TEXTURE SAMPLE node window so you can edit the DETAILS

  • In the section for "Material Expression Texture Base" click on the dropdown to select the texture name that matches with the material name.

    • NOTE: The DoubleTaperedMarker material can use the "Marker" texture

  • Connect the TEXTURE SAMPLE node's "RGBA" dot to the Material's "Opacity Mask" dot

• REPEAT for the other materials with same properties

Edit Materials that need Vertex Colors, Texture Sample, and Transparency:

• Do the same steps above to add VERTEX COLOR to the BASE COLOR

• Update the Material Details: BLEND MODE - ADDITIVE Two Sided - [checked] "Additive" will allow these brushes to appear semi-transparent, foggy, smokey.

• Do the same steps as above to associate textures to TEXTURE SAMPLE node

• Connect the TEXTURE SAMPLE node's "RGBA" dot to the Material's "Opacity" [not Opacity Mask as previous materials]

• REPEAT for the other materials with same properties

Make sure to save all of your Material window edits!

Make sure to view this in "unlit" mode.

Also hide the Light Source, etc to prevent any shadows from showing up in the scene.

Reward yourself with ice cream.

About

The Open Brush Unity SDK allows you to import your Open Brush sketches into Unity. The SDK includes:

• All of Open Brush’s brush materials

• An importer script that automatically assigns Open Brush materials to imported .glb files

• Open Brush’s audio reactivity functionality that make brushes react to music

Requirements

The SDK has these requirements:

• Your project must use Unity 2019.4 or higher

Getting the code

The SDK comes in the form of a Unity Package. To import:

1. Open Unity

2. Create a project or open an existing one

3. Double click the downloaded .unitypackage file, or go to Assets > Import Package > Custom Package.

4. Import the package

Importing a sketch

To use a Tilt Brush sketch inside of Unity, you need to export it and copy the exported .gltf file into your project. You do _not _need any of the .png files that come with the export. The SDK will use its own, Tilt Brush materials instead.

The SDK will process .glb files on import and assign the correct materials.

To export a sketch:

1. Open Tilt Brush, load your sketch

2. Click the [...] icon in the settings area of your hand menu

3. Click the **Labs **icon

4. Hit Export in the floating window that pops up

To import a sketch into your scene:

1. Find the exported files:

   1. On a PC or Mac look in Documents/Open Brush/Exports
2. Copy the .glb file into your Unity project

3. Drag the file from the Project window into the Hierarchy

Notes:

• The Open Brush Unity SDK doesn’t load .tilt files.

• You don’t need to copy the textures included with the .glb into your project

Tips

Fixing CSCore errors (or other errors related to Audio Reactivity)

At the moment the plugin used for Audio Reactivity doesn't work on some platforms. If you see errors related to "CSCore" or anything that looks audio related deleting the following files from your project:

1. The folder ThirdParty\CSCore

2. The folder ThirdParty\Reaktion

3. These files:

   1. TiltBrush\Scripts\VisualizerManager

   2. TiltBrush\Scripts\VisualizerAudioInput

   3. TiltBrush\Scripts\Editor\VisualizerManagerEditor

"My brushes look different to Open Brush" (Linear vs Gamma)

For historical reasons Open Brush uses gamma mode for color blending. We may offer the option to switch to linear in the future but it will change the appearance of sketches so gamma will always be an option when the hardware allows it.

If your Unity project is set to linear mode (Projects > Player Settings) then imported sketches may look different. For example here's some smoke brush strokes in Open Brush:

And here's the same sketch in Unity set to linear mode:

Shader.EnableKeyword("TBT_LINEAR_TARGET");

Audio Reactivity

You can make the brushes wiggle to the audio in your scene:

1. Drag the** [Tilt Brush Audio Reactivity] prefab** into your scene

2. Add an audio source to your scene, if there’s none

If the brushes aren’t moving, you can select the prefab in Play mode to visualize the audio data the shaders are receiving:

Bloom

1. Import the Standard Assets “Effects” package (Assets menu / Import Package / Effects)

Tilt Brush → Blender → Snap Lens Studio

NOTE: Not all Tilt Brush brushes will export (e.g. particle brushes) The most reliable are the flat brushes and the Wire brush. Also, this process might not be compatible with Tilt Brush on the Quest as the export function works differently than the Rift.

Tilt Brush to Blender:

• NOTE: Tilt Brush’s settings exports the FBX as an ASCII model. Blender won’t accept it, and you’ll receive an error message in Blender: "ASCII FBX files are not supported"

• Add this CFG setting if it's not already there:

"Export": {
   "ExportBinaryFbx": true,
   "ExportFbxVersion": "FBX201400"
}

• Within Tilt Brush (in VR):

  • Swipe to the Tools panel

  • Select "More Options..." > Labs > Export.

  • An .fbx file, brush texture, and geometry will be saved to your desktop computer’s Documents/Tilt Brush/Exports folder.

In Blender

This helps merge vertices that are close together, and saves on polys

• On the MESH subtab, go to Clean-up > Decimate Geometry

• Export the FBX

Blender to Snap Lens Studio:

• Import the decimated FBX model from Blender

• Rename Materials, (ex: from “13981290382_Marker” to “Marker”)

• Drag and drop the TinyPNG optimized imgs into the Lens Studio > Resources > Textures folder

• In the Resources > [ 3D Model Name ] folder > Materials, select the Material.

• In the Inspector for the Material:

  • For the Blend Mode, select anything other than “Disabled” — I preferred Normal or Alpha to Coverage

  • For the Vertex Color dropdown, select “Base Color”

  • For the Base Texture, check to enable, add the Tilt Brush texture here

Image size is based on the current desktop window size. Combined with API commands to move the spectator camera around, this can be used to automate complex renders or your own custom camera paths.

In a web page you can use this for a simple (nearly) realtime preview:

Be careful calling it too often as it's not terribly efficient and will slow down Open Brush. The above example refreshes once per second. We plan to implement a much more efficient WebRTC streaming endpoint at some stage but that will be more complex for client scripts to implement so this simple endpoint will still remain useful.

Customizing Brushes

There are currently three ways to add and modify brushes:

This last method will eventually be the recommended method moving forwards and we hope to fully support these custom brushes in the Unity SDK and for exporting..

What does it do?

Allows you to control Open Brush using commands sent from your web browser or a script you write. You can use nearly any programming language or even just type commands into your browser address bar.

It even works on computers that don't support VR. You can create Tilt Brush sketches on a Mac and export them to view in a web browser.

Example of a script that uses a web form for input:

Example output from the form shown above:

Some output from other example scripts that are included:

What's it good for?

Almost anything! See the command list or the examples. These can be accessed via the help as described below.

You can write scripts to modify existing sketches ("change the color of all strokes to a sequence of rainbow hues"), draw entirely new ones ("draw me a landscape based on this satellite data"), automate tasks ("sign my name and export this sketch"), automatically import a directory full of 3d models and distribute them around your scene, draw fractals or complicated geometry and whatever else you can think of.

There are commands for features that are currently not exposed in the Open Brush UI such as resizing strokes and adding points to existing strokes. The example scripts should give you plenty of ideas.

Can I run scripts automatically at startup?

Yep. All you need to do is to create a text file called "startup.sketchscript"

Make sure the file extension is .sketchscript and not .txt

Place this file in your Open Brush folder inside your user documents folder. It should go into the "Scripts" subfolder in your Open Brush folder

(Usually in C:\Users[your user name]\Documents\Open Brush - This folder is created automatically the first time you launch the API build but you can create it yourself as well)

Each line in this file is a single command that Open Brush will run when you open it. For example:

This will load a sketch from your Sketch folder called "startup.tilt", switch to fly tool and turn on "viewonly" mode which disables all the panels. If you want to try this you can either rename one of your sketches to "startup.tilt" or you can change the first line in the script above. As long as the first line matches the name of a file in your Sketches folder then it should work.

If you want to distribute a sketch without people having access to the original .tilt file then you could change this slightly. Instead of loading a sketch, load an exported version of your sketch. For example, export your sketch and rename it to mysketch.glb. Place it in your Media Libary/Models folder and use this startup script:

Voila - a way to let people fly around your sketches without being able to modify them.

How do I configure it

There are two new settings you can change in your main Open Brush.cfg Both belong in the "flags" section of the config file

Defaults:

These two settings are for security and default to "false" but you may want to set them both to "true" if you want to control Open Brush remotely.

You should do this if you're on a private network. Disable it or configure a firewall to restrict access to known devices if you plan to use Open Brush on public Wifi such as at an event or show.

EnableApiRemoteCalls - by default the API only accept commands from the same machine that is running Open Brush. Set this to true to allow API commands to be sent from other computers. In most cases this will only be machines on the same local network. You will need to configure your router to accept connections on port 40074 if you want to accept commands from remote devices as well. Apps such as ngrok or localtunnel can make this simpler to set up.

EnableApiCorsHeaders: By default browsers are blocked from sending commands via javascript to another domain. Setting this to true will relax that restriction.

How do I use Open Brush without a headset?

Monoscopic mode is a bit tricky to get the hang of but for using it as a quick way to experiment with the API then all you really need to know is how to pan the camera to look in different directions.

Just hold down Alt (Cmd on a Mac) and drag your mouse in the viewport.

Currently there's no controls to move the camera but we plan to add this in soon.

A few other notes on monoscopic mode:

• Left click and drag to draw on the drawing plane (the grid shown in front of you)

• Dragging with the right button down will bring the drawing plane nearer or further.

• Ctrl+mouse will rotate the drawing plane

• Clicking in the game window will capture your mouse cursor.

What's the simplest way to use the API?

Just type a command into the address bar of your browser whilst running one of the builds you've downloaded from this page.

You can also add html files to your Scripts folder. These can have standard form elements for input and some simple javascript to send commands based on those chosen values to Open Brush.

What commands are available?

Each command has a "try it" link that will open a new browser tab with an example of the command in the address bar.

How do I use the API from javascript

Here's a simple piece of code to send a single command:

How about other languages?

Any language that can send http requests should work.

Known Issues with the API

Currently the brush 'cursor' (or the 'turtle' if you want to think of this as a kind of LOGO system) doesn't store it's full rotation - only it's bearing.

How to get help

With a custom build running you can visit:

and follow links to useful info such as a full list of commands, examples scripts etc

If you are using Open Brush on PC VR / SteamVR, there are three types of cameras available to you. If you are using a version of the software that is run directly on a stand-alone headset such as the Oculus Quest 2 or 3 headsets, then there are limitations on some video functions because standalone headsets cannot process the video without being tethered to a PC. Steam VR allows the PC’s processors to handle the heavy lifting that is required to record Video in VR. This can be done with either a wired or wireless connection between the PC and the headset.

The types of cameras available are:

The Cameras Tool(s)

The Cameras Tool is a set of camera tools options that are available in both the Beginners and Advanced Palates.

In the Beginner’s mode, the camera icon is a single function tool, opening the Cameras tool on your brush controller. The Cameras tool has these options:

1. Auto-Gif

2. 5 Second Gif

3. Snapshot

4. Video (not present in some versions of Open Brush)

The Cameras tools are all handheld and controlled with the brush controller where you will find the viewfinder and the record function. Using the thumbpad left and right shuffles through the four camera options. Clicking with the trigger initiates the process of recording in all options.

The 5 Second Gif requires you to hold down the trigger for the 5 seconds. You can release the trigger and repull it to stop and start from the same place in the 5 second timeline. The video function begins when you pull the trigger and continues until you pull it again to stop the recording.

The video function allows for a lot of control because you can move with 6 Degrees of Freedom through the scene limited only by your ability to control the direction, speed and orientation of the camera with your brush controller. This results in a handheld video, and the strengths and weaknesses of that approach are the same as real world handheld videography. It is hard to steady a camera being supported by your body.

Any videos created with any of the Cameras options will show up in the /Documents/Open Brush/Videos folder.

When switching to the Advanced Palate, the Cameras icon changes to be a multi-function button. This is visually shown by a triangle on the lower right corner of the icon.

To access the Cameras sub-menu do a click and hold.

In the sub menu you have the option to go into a Camera Options menu.

Within the Camera Options menu you can:

· Turn the Open Brush Watermark on or off,

· Adjust field of view and smoothing variables, and

· Toggle Post Effects.

The series of images below demonstrates the differences in the captures with Field of View set to 140, 70 and 10. The first image shows the capture with the Watermark turned on, in the rest it has been toggle off. Understanding how this affects the image the camera captures allows you to better control the way you capture the scene.

The video below is a demonstration of the tools mentioned above. It was recorded as a screen capture utilizing the Spectator Camera.

The Spectator Camera

The Spectator Camera does not record images or videos. Instead, it is used to send an image to a monitor. To capture images or videos, a screen capture function is required to record the video that is sent to the monitor. But the Spectator Camera is the only camera that shows the whole environment, including tools and camera paths.

There are four options with the spectator Camera:

Headset: Sends the video from the view of the headset. This is a view that moves along with your head, focusing on what is directly in front of your face as you wear the headset. This is a relatively jerky method of video capture because it moves every time your head moves.

Stationary: This allows you to place a camera inside the scene and it captures either the stationary image in front of the camera, or you can use this as a handheld camera by grabbing and using the tool as you would a tangible camera.

Figure 8: This is the same camera as the stationary, but it makes a continuous figure 8 moving around a fixed point which is established by where you place the spectator camera.

Circle: Again, this is the same camera, but it revolves around the scene in a horizontal circle on a fixed path through or around the scene.

Because the Spectator Camera does not record, recording of video lies outside of the scope of this document in that it becomes a discussion of a hundred separate toolboxes. You will need screen capture software that allows system audio to be captured along with the video (if you want to include audio in the recording).

Note: You may not be able to capture audio from some sources because of DMCA rules in place that allow listening but not recording. Recording of your microphone does not have this limitation. Recording a music video in Spectator Mode can present some challenges that were intentionally put in place to protect copyright. Understanding that there are protections in place to prevent recording of some audio sources is an important part of the planning and production process. You will not be able to record audio from platforms such as Spotify. You can feed the audio into a scene and the audio responsive brushes will react, but there are digital blocks that prevent you from recording.

A strength of the spectator camera is that it is easy to establish your camera path because it is limited to the preprogrammed options (Stationary, Figure 8, and Circle). You can also use the stationary option as a handheld option and move the camera around the scene.

Another strength of the spectator camera is that it shows the environment including tools, controls, headset and controllers. It can also provide the opportunity to record the scene as it is rendered, providing a stroke-by-stroke perspective of how the scene is created.

The weakness of the Spectator Camera is that it is limited to the preprogrammed options, and because recording with the Spectator Camera Option requires screen capture software that is not part of Open Brush.

The Field of View setting in the /Cameras/Camera Options tool does not affect the Spectator Camera. Rather, when establishing the Spectator Camera shot, you can visibly see lines that illustrate the capture field for all of the spectator Camera settings except headset.

Camera Paths Tools

Camera Paths is an extremely important set of tools for Recording Video, or Virtual Cinematography in Open Brush. The tools are pretty basic, but learning to use them effectively and efficiently is the key to turning out high quality videos where you are in total control of how you capture the scene.

Camera Paths is a set of tools that allow you to control the way that a camera captures the scene as the camera travels along a path you create through the scene. This method gives you a great deal of control and flexibility in your approach to filming the scene. But, once you click the record button, all other functions are locked until it has completed filming the path. There is an option to stop the recording while it is in process, but you will lose the video that was in process if it does not complete the defined path.

The tools you can use to manipulate the path include:

Add New Path Tool

This is the only option when you enter the Camera Paths Tools if there are not already established camera paths. To establish a path, you need to click the Add Anchor Point tool and then create a path consisting of 2 or more points. Once you have a path, additional tools become available to you.

· Select Path: allows you to choose which of the existing paths you want to work with.

· Show Paths: Makes Paths Visible in the Sketch so they can be manipulated.

· Delete Path: Allows you to delete an entire path.

· Record Path: After you have created and edited your path, this tool will launch the video recorder that will go through the entire path making a video record. Videos will show up in the /Documents/Open Brush/Videos folder. Recording cannot be paused. Recording can be cancelled by clicking the X on the bush controller while it is in the recording process.

· New Anchor Point: Adds an additional anchor point to the path. If the anchor point is added at either end of a path, it will stay activated allowing you to add additional points to the path.

· Delete Anchor Point: Deletes any controls form the timeline. This includes anchor, direction, speed, and zoom points.

· Camera Direction Point: Controls the Direction the camera is pointed at the point in the timeline where it is placed. This type of point interacts with previous direction pointsand the path to determine the transition between camera direction points creating a flowing camera direction instead of a jumping camera direction.

· Camera Speed Point: Provides values from .1 to 100 to control the speed the camera moves down the path at a given point. This type of point interacts with previous speed points and the path to determine the transitional speed between points.

· Camera Zoom Point: Provides values from 10 to 140 to control the Field of View as the camera moves down the path at a given point. This type of point interacts with previous zoom points and the path to determine the transitional zoom between points.

The strength of the Camera Path is its flexibility. The weakness is that you are locked into the defined path once recording has started. The camera paths tool is not accessible until a sketch is fully rendered, and once the recording has started, all other tools are locked until the recording has completed. That means it cannot capture the rendering of a scene, so all videos start with a fully rendered scene.

Creating a camera path can be quite time consuming. In addition to the various tools, you need to work with the way that adding a point to the timeline can affect the elements ahead of and behind it on the path. Effective use of the Camera Paths requires the use of a lot of control points (each tool creates a control point when it is attached to a location on the camera path). The flexibility you can achieve comes at the cost of spending time learning each of the tools and how they interact with other points on the timeline.

Settings that affect video render

Below is a sample Open Brush.cfg file showing the fields related to Video that can be used to control the video capture / render.

{

"User": {

"Author":"Kevin W. Tharp, LLC"

},

"Video": {

"Resolution":1920,

"OfflineResolution":1920,

"FPS":30,

"OfflineFPS":30,

"ContainerType":"mp4",

"CameraSmoothing":0.98,

"Encoder":"h.264",

"SaveCameraPath":true,

"FOV":129

},

"Flags": {

"PostEffectsOnCapture":true,

"ShowWatermark":false,

"ShowHeadset":false,

"ShowControllers":true,

"DisableAudio":false

},

One of the Key variables is the number of frames you see per second (FPS). In virtual reality itself, this is the refresh rate. The refresh rate is important to the Virtual Reality experience but does not affect the virtual cinematography because videos of the scene are rendered at a fixed FPS rate. The number of frames per second affects the memory as each frame is processed in the memory. Using a lower FPS for recording impacts the memory by requiring less memory.

When you are recording live, this can be a significant impact because the system renders the scene twice, once for each eye, so that you can see it in VR. Then you add the recording on top of that and you are really taxing the memory available for your display/recording function. If you run out of memory, the VR experience gets glitchy or fails completely. A glitchy VR experience is a bad thing, because it can lead rapidly to VR sickness and poor quality or failed recording.

Rendering ‘Offline’ videos

Untitled_13_00.mp4

Untitled_13_00.HQ_Render.bat

Double-clicking the ".bat" batch file will give you several options for re-rendering your video:

Press the number corresponding to the format you prefer. It will then launch Open Brush, which will reload your sketch and render the video. Once it is done, Open Brush will exit. As rendering at higher quality tends to affect the framerate, it is suggested that you do not wear your headset until this process completes.

“No Quick Load” option (#6) will forego quick loading of the sketch and will force it to load at normal speed. It is recommended that the time spent recording should exceed the normal loading time of the sketch or else the video may end before the sketch completes loading.

Video Camera Paths

If you want to render a camera path from the command line directly, rather than using the batch file detailed above, you can use the following:

Changing Eye Scale on ODS 360 videos

When you render an ODS video, you may find things like the floor is missing, or parts of your objects get clipped off.

The reason this happens is that it’s often easier to scale down your sketch to make it easy to move the camera when you take your original video, but when you render out an ODS file, the objects are too close to the camera.

To fix this, you can change a value in the .usda file. Open it up in your favorite text editor and look at around line 30 for:

If you reduce this value, the render will feel bigger, and the camera is less likely to clip with parts of your sketch. A good value to try out is:

Then you can just try re-rendering with the batch file.

Exporting 360 videos / Offline Video Rendering

Videos can be rendered ‘offline’ faster and at a much higher resolution and framerate than using the internal Multicam tool

1. Editing Open Brush cfg file

2. Go to C:\Documents\Open Brush\Open Brush.cfg

3. Under "Video" add the flag "SaveCameraPath": true,

4. Save Open Brush.cfg

5. Camera Setup

6. Load the sketch you would like to render

7. Find a good spot from which you would like to capture your 360 video

8. Be sure to look around in all directions to make sure no objects are too close to the point of capture

9. Save your sketch

10. Record your video by moving camera or keeping camera stationary

11. After saving, exit Open Brush

12. Rendering ****Note: When you create a video from inside Open Brush using the Camera tool with configuration "SaveCameraPath" flag set to true, Tilt Brush will create a Windows batch file alongside the video (In Documents\Open Brush\Videos) that you can run to re-render the video at a higher resolution

13. Go to C:\Documents\Open Brush\Videos . There should be .usda, .bat and video file which corresponds to the .tilt file

14. Double click on .bat file

16. Once the render is complete, it will pop open the “VRVideos” folder which should contain an video file with your stereo render.

18. Uploading to Youtube

    1. Upload the new “injected” video file to YouTube

    2. Note that it takes YouTube some additional time to process 360 videos, until this process is finished, you may see the raw over/under and the “View in Cardboard” option will not be available.

    3. Once processing is done, you should see an icon when viewing the video on your phone, indicating that it’s ready to be viewed in VR.

Quest and Other Non-PC Devices

Currently Open Brush doesn't support recording video directly on the headset. There are two main ways to work around this limitation.

Option 1: Draw a Camera Path in the headset and render on a computer

Standalone headsets like the Quest have the same Camera Path Tool as PC VR - the difference is that the record button is currently disabled. However any paths you create are saved with your sketch and can be copied to a PC or Mac and rendered there. The PC doesn't need to be a VR-capable PC - you can run Open Brush in a mode that doesn't require a VR headset.

There is an example script you can use to help you generate the video.

1. Launch Open Brush at least once to ensure the correct folders are created in your Documents folder.

2. Copy the sketch from your headset to the Open Brush/Sketches folder on your PC or Mac

3. If your sketch contains any images, videos or 3d models that appear in your video then copy those from the Quest's Media Library folder to the equivalent location on your PC or Mac.

1. Click on the Example Scripts link and then click on /examplescripts/record_camera_path.html
2. Click browse and select the sketch you copied from the Quest earlier

3. Click "Go"

4. This will generate the video as if you'd recorded the path inside the headset

Option 2: Use native Quest video recording feature

Commands are query string parameters. Like this: command.name=parameters

Separate multiple commands with: &

If you want to send a lot of commands or especially long commands (complex paths etc) then you can just http POST instead of GET. The commands should be form-encoded in the body of the request (exactly as if you submitted a html form with the form name as the command name and the form value as the command parameters)

You can also send multiple requests although because of the nature of http, these can sometimes arrive in a different order to how yousent them. We will soon support websockets which should be a better way to send realtime streams of commands.

Command List

Draws a series of paths at the current brush position [[[x1,y1,z1],[x2,y2,z2], etc...]]. Does not move the brush position

Draws a path at the current brush position [[x1,y1,z1],[x2,y2,z2], etc...]. Does not move the brush position

Draws a polygon at the current brush position. Does not move the brush position

Opens the user's Scripts folder on the desktop

Opens the user's Exports folder on the desktop

Draws the characters supplied at the current brush position

Draws the path supplied as an SVG Path string at the current brush position

Changes the brush. brushType can either be the brush name or it's guid. brushes are listed in the localhost:40074/help screen

Adds the supplied values to the current color. Values are hue, saturation and value

Adds the supplied values to the current color. Values are red green and blue

Sets the current color. Values are hue, saturation and value

Sets the current color. Values are red, green and blue

Sets the current color. colorString can either be a hex value or a css color name.

Sets the current brush size

Changes the current brush size by 'amount'

Moves the spectator or non-VR camera to the given position

Moves the spectator or non-VR camera by the given amount

Turns the spectator or non-VR camera left or right.

Changes the angle of the spectator or non-VR camera up or down.

Tilts the angle of the spectator or non-VR camera clockwise or anticlockwise.

Points the spectator or non-VR camera to look in the specified direction. Angles are given in x,y,z degrees

Moves the brush to the given coordinates

Moves the brush by the given amount

Moves the brush forward by 'distance' without drawing a line

Moves the brush forward by 'distance' and draws a line

Changes the brush direction to the left or right. Angle is measured in degrees

Changes the brush direction up or down. Angle is measured in degrees

Rotates the brush clockwise or anticlockwise. Angle is measured in degrees

Changes the brush direction to look at the specified point

Changes the brush direction to look forwards

Changes the brush direction to look upwards

Changes the brush direction to look downwards

Changes the brush direction to look to the left

Changes the brush direction to look to the right

Changes the brush direction to look backwards

Resets the brush position and direction

Sets the current brush position and direction as the new home

Stores the current brush position and direction on to a stack

Pops the most recent current brush position and direction from the stack

Logs some info about the brush

Delete strokes by their index. If index is 0 the most recent stroke is deleted. -1 etc steps back in time

Selects a stroke by it's index. 0 is the most recent stroke, -1 is second to last, 1 is the first.

Select multiple strokes by their index. 0 is the most recent stroke, -1 is second to last, 1 is the first.

Recolors the currently selected strokes

Rebrushes the currently selected strokes

Changes the brush size the currently selected strokes

Removes a number of points from the currently selected strokes

Moves the position of all control points in the selection using a noise function

Snaps all the points in selected strokes to a grid (buggy)

Joins a stroke with the previous one

Joins all strokes between the two indices (inclusive)

Adds a point at the current brush position to the specified stroke

Activates the SketchSurface

Activates the Selection Tool

Activates the Color Picker

Activates the Brush Picker

Activates the Brush And Color Picker

Activates the SketchOrigin Tool

Activates the AutoGif Tool

Activates the Canvas Tool

Activates the Transform Tool

Activates the Stamp Tool

Activates the FreePaint Tool

Activates the Eraser Tool

Activates the Screenshot Tool

Activates the Dropper Tool

Activates the SaveIcon Tool

Activates the ThreeDofViewing Tool

Activates the MultiCam Tool

Activates the Teleport Tool

Activates the Repaint Tool

Activates the Recolor Tool

Activates the Rebrush Tool

Activates the Pin Tool

Activates the CameraPath Tool

Activates the Fly Tool

Save the current scene overwriting the last save if it exists

Saves the current scene in a new slot

Exports all the scenes in the users's sketch folder

Shows all strokes made with the drafting brush fully opaque

Shows all strokes made with the drafting brush semi-transparent

Hides all strokes made with the drafting brush

Loads the sketch in the given slot number from the user's sketch folder

Loads the sketch in the given slot number from the curated sketch list

Loads the sketch in the given slot number from the user's liked sketches

Loads the sketch in the given slot number from the user's Google Drive

Loads the sketch with the given name from the user's sketch folder

Clears the current sketch

Sets the symmetry mode to 'mirror'

Sets the symmetry mode to 'double mirror'

Toggles the straight edge tool on or off

Toggles autoorientate on or off

Undoes the last action

Redo the last action

Reset the position of all panels

Enables the sketch origin tool

Toggles 'view only' mode on or off

Toggles the Drop Cam widget on or off

Toggles 'auto-simplify' mode on or off

Exports the current sketch to the user's Exports folder

Opens the user's Sketches folder on the desktop

Disables all stencils

Starts a party

Create a duplicate of the current selection

Groups the current selection

Exports the selected strokes to the user's Media Library

Renders the current camera path to a video

Toggles profiling mode on or off

Toggles the settings panel on or off

Summons the mirror origin to the user's position

Inverts the current selection

Selects all strokes and widgets in the scene

Mirrors the current selection

Toggles post-processing effects on or off

Toggles the watermark on or off

Toggles the camera path visuals on or off

Toggles the camera path preview on or off

Deletes the current camera path

Starts recording a camera path

• Type: Most brushes fall into one of three categories: Flat (ribbon shaped), Tube (a cylinder or other shape with thickness) or Particle (the brush stroke generates multiple small objects that only roughly follow the path of the stroke)

• Animated?: Does the brush stroke have any automatic movement either to it's shape or texture?

• Self-lit?: A self-lit brush doesn't react to lighting and will still be visible even without any lights in the scene. It appears to give off it's own light (although brush strokes don't actually illuminate other objects nearby)

Standard Brushes

Experimental Brushes