The best open-source virtual reality painting app, the Google LLC-developed Tilt Brush, is coming to Facebook Inc.’s all-in-one standalone VR headset the Oculus Quest.

Facebook announced the upcoming software migration Wednesday. Tilt Brush is Google’s 3-D painting app that enables artists to “draw” in all dimensions without the need for a standard 2-D canvas or computer screen. The app makes use of a VR headset to allow artists to create this unique type of visual content.

The Oculus Quest is a VR headset that does not rely on a powerful computer in order to execute VR software. Described as an “all-in-one” headset, the Quest contains everything it needs to run without cables or wires so a user needs only put it on and go.

The addition of this software to the Quest headset will widen the audience of potential artists and add yet another tool to the kit of 3-D and VR content makers.

“Tilt Brush is designed for creators — whether you’re a casual doodler or a professional artist,” said Google Product Manager Elisabeth Morant. “Over time, we’ve seen the product used in ways we never would have imagined — from bringing our favorite Disney characters to life, to prototyping what became a Time Magazine’s best of 2018 invention, to 3-D printing and casting a Tilt Brush self portrait as a bronze statue. The possibilities are endless, and we’ve only just scratched the surface.”

Thanks to its all-in-one nature, the Oculus Quest uses a mobile chipset and screen and it operates a lot like a smartphone — just in a form factor that allows people to put it on their face. The fact that the Quest is a mobile device meant that Google had to migrate the software made for operating on a more powerful platform. Morant said most of the work during the migration depended heavily on performance improvements, since mobile devices have far less oomph than a desktop computer.

Fortunately, early design decisions in the creation of Tilt Brush made enhancing performance easy. For example, the app stores painting strokes as simple representations at creation time that are easily re-rendered by a graphics processing unit chip. That made it simple to optimize for mobile rendering.

The mobile version of Tilt Brush also had to eschew a full-screen pass to render selected objects. This would not be a problem for a powerful computer capable of keeping the entire object in memory to display on screen, but a low-power mobile device would struggle. As a result, Google tried out different options such as outlined strokes that look far different than in the original app but use less power.

Although not everything the desktop-connected version of Tilt Brush made it to the Quest version, the result is still quite impressive.

“We did end up removing some features that depend on the device being attached to a PC, such as Audio Reactive mode which depends on having access to system audio,” said Morant. “Trade-offs were made during the course of development, but ultimately having a product that runs smoothly on mobile made it all well worth it.”

Creators using Tilt Brush will be able to use assets from Google’s VR gallery of 3-D art, called Poly. Creators will also be able to upload their creations to the gallery so that they can be explored, viewed and used by other content creators.

Although there is no official release date for the Oculus Quest, Facebook’s marketing has alluded to this spring, so 3-D artists can expect access to this mobile version of Tilt Brush within the next couple of months.

Image: Facebook