A new update for Medium, the virtual reality sculpting tool, now lets you collaboratively carve out chunks of flesh, metal, and stone alike, as you build virtual creations with your friends. It’s not quite fully cooperative, in that you can’t sculpt the same model together, but you can see what other players are doing and communicate together from within the VR app.
Medium is a tool that lets you create intricately detailed models from within virtual reality, using pre-built shapes and your own designs, all of which can be stuck together, manipulated, and moved until they are in the desired spot. Then you can paint them and add little details, to build everything from buildings and objects, to people and animals.
What Medium’s latest update does is open up a window to your fellow players. In version 1.2 you can see what they’re sculpting in real time, as well as communicate with them and talk about what you’re both working on. RoadToVR points out that this is limited to two users at this time and you can’t manipulate what others are working on, but perhaps that will be something that’s introduced in the future.
This could be great for those looking to teach newcomers to virtual-reality sculpting the tricks of the trade, or for those looking to play VR 3D Pictionary remotely.
Alongside the new multiplayer functionality, Medium’s latest update also adds a few new tools for sculptors, whether they’re working alone or with friends. The move tool lets users grab and adjust parts of the sculpt without sacrificing fine detail, and new reference meshes let you import 3D designs to use as inspiration for brand-new creations.
Also introduced is a new color picker and palettes, which make picking out individual colors that bit easier, and open up new color ideas. They’re joined by new manipulators, which make rotating, scaling, and layering objects along a specific axis far easier. If you stray too far from the original layout though, you can use the Sculpt Origin command to reset to the starting position, or set it to something else entirely to get a different look at your sculpt.
Medium is an entirely free VR application but is currently available (at least officially) exclusively for Oculus Rift users.
