Tutorial: Exporting From Tilt Brush

Google Tilt Brush will allow you to literally step inside your art and what better place to show that off than Sketchfab?  Fortunately going from the virtual environment of the HTC Vive to your web browser has never been easier. Sketchfab Staff member Seori Sachs explains the process in this quick tutorial.

It always helps to have as many tools in your belt when developing virtual art and here’s another one — Tilt Brush!

Although Sketchfab users are probably aware of Google Tilt Brush, it’s still a baby in the realm of virtual art tools. As the HTC Vive takes off, perhaps more people will create art and hopefully share their creations. At this point you may ask, is it possible to see our awesome Tilt Brush creations in Sketchfab and the answer is yes! At this point, it has never been easier. Here’s a quick tutorial on how to get your own uploadable .fbx files to show off.

https://skfb.ly/Pwyv

General Set Up

Two Vive hand controllers are used to create your art and are programmatically assigned by Tilt Brush to have two major functions. One hand acts as an artist’s palette where you can select colors, brush styles, animations, drawing tools, and mood-setting environment. The other hand does the actual drawing and selecting of options. Since the set up is so intuitive and artists get the full gambit of interactive space. With a low learning curve set in place, prior limitations no longer exist as you can expand your artistic vision in any dimension.

Let’s Get Started!

After creating your Tilt Brush piece, twist the “tool” controller until you see the gear icon, which is the “settings” mode for Tilt. Point to it with your “drawing” controller and pull the trigger button, located under the top of the controller.

This will prompt the Setting menu to come up. In the upper right hand corner, there should be an icon shaped like a laboratory flask. Point and click on it with the “drawing” controller.

This will prompt a small separate “Labs” menu that almost looks as though there is a stand coming from underneath the surface of Lab options. Don’t be alarmed if you can’t find it at first — it has a penchant for sometimes rendering off to the side a bit or behind one part of your painting. If you don’t immediately see it, look around a little bit for it since it shouldn’t be too far off. At the bottom, there should be an icon that somewhat resembles a screen with an arrow coming out of it. This is the “Export” icon. Click on that.

This will prompt an “Exported!” message, which will have haptic feedback confirming it, unless you’ve turned that off.

Where is it?

The export file will usually be found on your computer, under the file directory C:\Users\[Name]\Documents\Tilt Brush\Exports, unless otherwise customized by you.

In that folder, there should be a JSON and .fbx file, titled whatever you named your Tilterpiece. Upload the .fbx to Sketchfab as it is or play around with it more in post.

That’s it! As easy as the exporting process is, we are constantly streamlining it and would love to hear from you on what you’d like to see. As you can see, Tilt Brush makes for an otherworldly art-creation environment and provides opportunities to share what you’ve created with the world.

Please let me know if this tutorial was helpful, any improvements I can make, and share your Tilt Brush results below and tag them as ’tiltbrush’ so they show up in the tiltbrush tag! Any artists in NYC or Paris are also welcome to drop us a line and try their hand at our HTC Vive and post their creations too. Header image credits to Rein Bijlsma.