Foundry has announced Kanova, a new sculpting tool that allows the user to manipulate and sculpt assets on a desktop in the usual way, and in virtual reality. Kanova is based on 3D Adaptive Distance Field technology obtained by Foundry with the Mischief acquisition a few years ago. It allows for the models to be made with adaptive tesselation similar to advances seen recently in ZBrush and Mudbox.
Kanova is not yet available but will be released free of charge on Steam soon. According to Foundry, an early access testing period of six months is anticipated after which time a decision will be made whether to continue and release a commercial version, or go back to the drawing board and explore new approaches.
At this early stage the feature list includes the ability to edit scenes using Kanova in desktop mode and within a VR environment, a range of modelling tools, a layers system, the ability to sculpt and paint in colour and the ability to output in SketchFab format.
Find out more about Kanova and see a video demonstration on Steam.
It’s available for testing now, not just “soon”. 🙂
It’s actually pretty good. It’s very rough, and it’s not something you could use in production yet (except for concept art & rough sculpts), but the underlying tech is excellent, and the UI… well… the UI wasn’t designed by a crazy person.
Once more for good measure: the UI wasn’t designed by a crazy person.