Open Brush

Open Brush is a free 3D painting app for VR and mixed reality from the non-profit Icosa Foundation, and a staple of the creativity category. It continues Google's Tilt Brush, which Google stopped developing and released as open source in 2021. Open Brush arrived on Steam on June 8, 2021, and its code is public under the Apache 2.0 license.

What it does

You paint strokes that hang in the air around you and can walk around them like a sculpture. There are 48 brush types, with effects such as fire, water, smoke and beams of light, and you can paint inside built-in environments such as open space. You can also load sample sketches from Icosa Gallery, the foundation's free 3D model site, to explore or build on.

On Quest, a passthrough option lets you paint over a view of your own room, for example turning your living room into a dragon's cave.

Multiplayer

A free update in May 2025 added real-time multiplayer, so several people can paint and chat in the same scene. It works across platforms, letting Quest and SteamVR users share a room, and the room owner can mute or remove people or make them view-only. The first version supports the core painting tools, with more features planned.

Comfort

There is no fast artificial movement; you paint while standing, sitting or walking around a room-scale space. The stores do not show a comfort rating.

Platforms and what to know before buying

• It is free on the Meta Horizon Store, on Steam for SteamVR headsets and on the PICO Store, where it supports headsets up to the PICO 4 Ultra.
• On Quest it runs on headsets such as the Meta Quest 3.
• The PC VR version needs Windows and a headset with motion controllers; the Steam page lists a GeForce GTX 970 or Radeon R9 290 class GPU and 4 GB of RAM. The Mac and Linux builds are viewer-only, without VR.
• Because it is open source, builds are also published on GitHub.
• It is rated 3+ on the Meta Horizon Store and the PICO Store.