13 ms·

Open Sourcing Tilt Brush

148 points by theBashShell 6y ago

sjcoles 6y ago
Killing*
- Pfhreak 6y ago
  The implication of your post is that Open Source projects are dead projects, which seems obviously false.
  - ogre_codes 6y ago
    While it's definitely better than many products they've actually killed completely, abandoning software to the community is often little different from killing it. Unless someone forks it and starts maintaining it, it will just slowly rot.
    - obvi2352 6y ago
      On the contrary all games are abandoned to the community eventually. Giving them the source code is a huge help, but even without the community will reverse engineer the game and create an engine from scratch if the game is good enough.
  - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    For anyone who owns Tilt Brush from Google on Steam, for example, the app is now a dead app. Even if people work on the open source code, Google won't publish an update.
  - samatman 6y ago
    That isn't an implication, it's an induction, one you performed with no valid basis for doing so.
scohesc 6y ago
Nice! I was going to spend the 20 bucks on this on Steam a couple weeks ago. I'll wait for an open source binary to be created and run it that way then!
pontifier 6y ago
This is awesome. I had so much fun with tilt brush, but felt that there were just a few things I'd change. Maybe I will now after I get done with all the other things I'm doing... I might actually be able to use it (with these modifications) to help me with some of my other projects :)
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
It's nice at least a few dead Google products get open sourced instead of deleted outright. I have to imagine this is only possible because it's pretty much entirely a client-side desktop application that doesn't rely on Google servers for much. Exactly why building apps for the cloud is a big downside.
- nexthash 6y ago
  On the other hand, cloud software is often more convenient to use, allows for syncing on multiple devices, and is more powerful due to having access to the computing resources of large data centers. So you can't really say that building cloud apps is only a downside. Tilt brush just happens to be the type of application that doesn't overlap much with these benefits, making it easier to open source. Also, cloud software isn't much more difficult to open-source, see self-hosted open source applications like NextCloud: https://nextcloud.com/ https://nextcloud.com/
  - eropple 6y ago
    > Also, cloud software isn't much more difficult to open-source What's the open-source, production-ready, 100%-API-compatible implementation of AWS SQS or Google BigTable? Genuinely curious, because I've been down these roads and they're not simple.
- a_e_k 6y ago
  > that doesn't rely on Google servers for much. My understanding is that it used to interact with Google Poly. But a couple of months ago it was announced that that is shutting down. (See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25277615 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25277615 for the HN discussion about that.)
  - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    Yeah, Poly was like the content store, but it wasn't fundamental to the app's functionality.
- azurezyq 6y ago
aceazzameen 6y ago
I just want multiplayer Tilt Brush so more than one person can paint the same scene at the same time.
- iseanstevens 6y ago
  Gravity sketch does this in their paid plans
- Diederich 6y ago
  Amen! I wonder if such a thing might happen now that it's open sourced?
  - andybak 6y ago
    Already being discussed on the Discord for Icosa (the open replacement for Poly) EDIT - apparently someone has already got basic multiplayer working: https://twitter.com/RendeverHealth/status/1354271198075564032 https://twitter.com/RendeverHealth/status/135427119807556403...
Mindwipe 6y ago
Open sourcing it is good, but without a formal successor it looks like the community will need to settle on a given fork for future development.
- someperson 6y ago
  The developer most willing to continue active development and support usually wins. No reason multiple devs won't eventually merge their efforts too.
  - Mindwipe 6y ago
    Yeah, it's just potentially a pain for people who paid for the Google version which y'know, even got discounted like two weeks ago and frontpaged on the Oculus sale!
jimmySixDOF 6y ago
There is a good discussion of this also with ama from one of the developers live on Reddit : https://www.reddit.com/r/vive/comments/l5idbu https://www.reddit.com/r/vive/comments/l5idbu
paxys 6y ago
Nice, although with Google not maintaining it anymore I wonder if there will be enough community interest to spin it off as a real project rather than just an archive.
- andybak 6y ago
  Already about 10 forks. One with a binary build available and a WebXR port in progress. There's a very passionate community around Tilt Brush.
pabs3 6y ago
Looks like the community will need to fork it in order to port it away from the proprietary Unity engine and SteamVR, maybe to Godot and Monero/OpenXR? Is there a fork yet?
- porcc 6y ago
  uh...really? i think this is much too difficult to assume it would happen in the first 2 years after open sourcing, much less the first day
  - pabs3 6y ago
    It was pretty soon after Synfig Studio (2D animation tool) was open sourced when folks started working on the code. Tilt Brush is a much less obscure tool than Synfig was at the time, I assume there are lots of folks who would jump on this.
- andybak 6y ago
  Support for runtimes other than SteamVR is already documented. It was taken out of the build in a way that's trivial to add back in. However - I can't see anyone bothering to rewrite in Godot. It would be a huge task and Unity is very popular with a fairly liberal usage licence.
appleflaxen 6y ago
it's too bad they are closing down Poly, the gallery of creations with tools like this, but it is nice they are open sourcing their code.
- andybak 6y ago
  https://github.com/icosa-gallery/icosa-viewer https://github.com/icosa-gallery/icosa-viewer
concernedctzn 6y ago
Always thought this should've been open sourced as soon as google acquired it. The mechanic was copied in other VR games and it would've been a good reference/learning point for other VR devs. It seemed odd for google to charge for something like this when it could've been used to share and inspire new ideas. Glad they got around to it.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  I'm actually surprised Google doesn't charge for more of side projects like this... revenue of some kind can often justify continued investment, whereas most of their random free app projects are shuttered quickly because they aren't monetized easily. Also, a lot of VR projects, Tilt Brush included, had price tags in part because they were built with exclusive deals with hardware manufacturers as bundled launches. It's hard to say your VR headset bundle has a value added deal of a piece of software that you then give away for free. My very distinct impression from companies that built exclusive VR titles for new headset launches, is that the revenue guarantees involved were big enough for that to be a reason in itself to build a given title. CCP Games built four... Valkyrie was originally exclusive to Oculus Rift and Gunjack was originally exclusive to the Samsung Gear. Gunjack 2 was then exclusive to Daydream. And Sparc started as a PlayStation VR exclusive. Apart from EVE Online, CCP hasn't made any successful launched games except for VR titles... likely profitable solely because of those exclusivity deals alone.
jrockway 6y ago
I was curious what they deleted, so I clicked through to the build guide, and then I got distracted by their trademark conditions (you can't call the software you build "Tilt Brush", which is weird). Tilt Brush's trademark info page then contains this gem: > Don’t use the term Tilt Brush as a verb, or use it in possessive form. Oops. That just makes me want to Tilt Brush even more.
- Shared404 6y ago
  You should do so, in your own personal build of Tilt Brush.
- sp332 6y ago
  It's not that rare. Mozilla does the same thing with the Firefox trademark.
  - jrockway 6y ago
    I remember Debian getting caught in the middle of that, and awkwardly having "Iceweasel" instead of "Firefox" for a while.
someperson 6y ago
I hope the Oculus Quest gets a new build of Tilt Brush app (with a different name) but offered at no cost [1] [1] https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/2322529091093901/ https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/2322529091093901/
- Impossible 6y ago
  This is unlikely to happen on the official store, but will probably be available for Side quest at some point. Your best bet is probably still building it yourself
andybak 6y ago
Several original devs and various other interested parties are over on Discord discussing future plans: https://discord.gg/GsnAKqwK https://discord.gg/GsnAKqwK
whywhywhywhy 6y ago
Hope they plan to do the same for Google Blocks too, their low poly VR 3D modelling software. Seeing how Google took on VR now makes me frustrated when they enter any new tech. They put so much effort in right at the beginning then backout out almost instantly but crowded the market to prevent other companies building these tools. Should have been clear for anyone back then that VR was a very long term play and didn't really become viable at all for 95% of users until stand alone headsets could be made.

148 points by theBashShell 6y ago

sjcoles 6y ago

Killing*

Pfhreak 6y ago
The implication of your post is that Open Source projects are dead projects, which seems obviously false.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  While it's definitely better than many products they've actually killed completely, abandoning software to the community is often little different from killing it. Unless someone forks it and starts maintaining it, it will just slowly rot.
  - obvi2352 6y ago
    On the contrary all games are abandoned to the community eventually. Giving them the source code is a huge help, but even without the community will reverse engineer the game and create an engine from scratch if the game is good enough.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  For anyone who owns Tilt Brush from Google on Steam, for example, the app is now a dead app. Even if people work on the open source code, Google won't publish an update.
- samatman 6y ago
  That isn't an implication, it's an induction, one you performed with no valid basis for doing so.

scohesc 6y ago

Nice! I was going to spend the 20 bucks on this on Steam a couple weeks ago. I'll wait for an open source binary to be created and run it that way then!

pontifier 6y ago

This is awesome. I had so much fun with tilt brush, but felt that there were just a few things I'd change. Maybe I will now after I get done with all the other things I'm doing... I might actually be able to use it (with these modifications) to help me with some of my other projects :)

ocdtrekkie 6y ago

It's nice at least a few dead Google products get open sourced instead of deleted outright. I have to imagine this is only possible because it's pretty much entirely a client-side desktop application that doesn't rely on Google servers for much. Exactly why building apps for the cloud is a big downside.

nexthash 6y ago
On the other hand, cloud software is often more convenient to use, allows for syncing on multiple devices, and is more powerful due to having access to the computing resources of large data centers. So you can't really say that building cloud apps is only a downside. Tilt brush just happens to be the type of application that doesn't overlap much with these benefits, making it easier to open source. Also, cloud software isn't much more difficult to open-source, see self-hosted open source applications like NextCloud: https://nextcloud.com/ https://nextcloud.com/
- eropple 6y ago
  > Also, cloud software isn't much more difficult to open-source What's the open-source, production-ready, 100%-API-compatible implementation of AWS SQS or Google BigTable? Genuinely curious, because I've been down these roads and they're not simple.
a_e_k 6y ago
> that doesn't rely on Google servers for much. My understanding is that it used to interact with Google Poly. But a couple of months ago it was announced that that is shutting down. (See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25277615 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25277615 for the HN discussion about that.)
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  Yeah, Poly was like the content store, but it wasn't fundamental to the app's functionality.
azurezyq 6y ago

aceazzameen 6y ago

I just want multiplayer Tilt Brush so more than one person can paint the same scene at the same time.

iseanstevens 6y ago
Gravity sketch does this in their paid plans
Diederich 6y ago
Amen! I wonder if such a thing might happen now that it's open sourced?
- andybak 6y ago
  Already being discussed on the Discord for Icosa (the open replacement for Poly) EDIT - apparently someone has already got basic multiplayer working: https://twitter.com/RendeverHealth/status/1354271198075564032 https://twitter.com/RendeverHealth/status/135427119807556403...

Mindwipe 6y ago

Open sourcing it is good, but without a formal successor it looks like the community will need to settle on a given fork for future development.

someperson 6y ago
The developer most willing to continue active development and support usually wins. No reason multiple devs won't eventually merge their efforts too.
- Mindwipe 6y ago
  Yeah, it's just potentially a pain for people who paid for the Google version which y'know, even got discounted like two weeks ago and frontpaged on the Oculus sale!

jimmySixDOF 6y ago

There is a good discussion of this also with ama from one of the developers live on Reddit : https://www.reddit.com/r/vive/comments/l5idbu https://www.reddit.com/r/vive/comments/l5idbu

paxys 6y ago

Nice, although with Google not maintaining it anymore I wonder if there will be enough community interest to spin it off as a real project rather than just an archive.

andybak 6y ago
Already about 10 forks. One with a binary build available and a WebXR port in progress. There's a very passionate community around Tilt Brush.

pabs3 6y ago

Looks like the community will need to fork it in order to port it away from the proprietary Unity engine and SteamVR, maybe to Godot and Monero/OpenXR? Is there a fork yet?

porcc 6y ago
uh...really? i think this is much too difficult to assume it would happen in the first 2 years after open sourcing, much less the first day
- pabs3 6y ago
  It was pretty soon after Synfig Studio (2D animation tool) was open sourced when folks started working on the code. Tilt Brush is a much less obscure tool than Synfig was at the time, I assume there are lots of folks who would jump on this.
andybak 6y ago
Support for runtimes other than SteamVR is already documented. It was taken out of the build in a way that's trivial to add back in. However - I can't see anyone bothering to rewrite in Godot. It would be a huge task and Unity is very popular with a fairly liberal usage licence.

appleflaxen 6y ago

it's too bad they are closing down Poly, the gallery of creations with tools like this, but it is nice they are open sourcing their code.

andybak 6y ago
https://github.com/icosa-gallery/icosa-viewer https://github.com/icosa-gallery/icosa-viewer

concernedctzn 6y ago

Always thought this should've been open sourced as soon as google acquired it. The mechanic was copied in other VR games and it would've been a good reference/learning point for other VR devs. It seemed odd for google to charge for something like this when it could've been used to share and inspire new ideas. Glad they got around to it.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
I'm actually surprised Google doesn't charge for more of side projects like this... revenue of some kind can often justify continued investment, whereas most of their random free app projects are shuttered quickly because they aren't monetized easily. Also, a lot of VR projects, Tilt Brush included, had price tags in part because they were built with exclusive deals with hardware manufacturers as bundled launches. It's hard to say your VR headset bundle has a value added deal of a piece of software that you then give away for free. My very distinct impression from companies that built exclusive VR titles for new headset launches, is that the revenue guarantees involved were big enough for that to be a reason in itself to build a given title. CCP Games built four... Valkyrie was originally exclusive to Oculus Rift and Gunjack was originally exclusive to the Samsung Gear. Gunjack 2 was then exclusive to Daydream. And Sparc started as a PlayStation VR exclusive. Apart from EVE Online, CCP hasn't made any successful launched games except for VR titles... likely profitable solely because of those exclusivity deals alone.

jrockway 6y ago

I was curious what they deleted, so I clicked through to the build guide, and then I got distracted by their trademark conditions (you can't call the software you build "Tilt Brush", which is weird). Tilt Brush's trademark info page then contains this gem: > Don’t use the term Tilt Brush as a verb, or use it in possessive form. Oops. That just makes me want to Tilt Brush even more.

Shared404 6y ago
You should do so, in your own personal build of Tilt Brush.
sp332 6y ago
It's not that rare. Mozilla does the same thing with the Firefox trademark.
- jrockway 6y ago
  I remember Debian getting caught in the middle of that, and awkwardly having "Iceweasel" instead of "Firefox" for a while.

someperson 6y ago

I hope the Oculus Quest gets a new build of Tilt Brush app (with a different name) but offered at no cost [1] [1] https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/2322529091093901/ https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/2322529091093901/

Impossible 6y ago
This is unlikely to happen on the official store, but will probably be available for Side quest at some point. Your best bet is probably still building it yourself

andybak 6y ago

Several original devs and various other interested parties are over on Discord discussing future plans: https://discord.gg/GsnAKqwK https://discord.gg/GsnAKqwK

whywhywhywhy 6y ago

Hope they plan to do the same for Google Blocks too, their low poly VR 3D modelling software. Seeing how Google took on VR now makes me frustrated when they enter any new tech. They put so much effort in right at the beginning then backout out almost instantly but crowded the market to prevent other companies building these tools. Should have been clear for anyone back then that VR was a very long term play and didn't really become viable at all for 95% of users until stand alone headsets could be made.