Project Dali is an immersive drawing experience created for Virtual Reality. It’s the first VR paint program from Adobe.

Written by Micah Blumberg, Virtual Reality Matrix

What would it be like if we had Photoshop Sketch or Illustrator in three Dimensions and in a VR Headset like the HTC Vive or Oculus Touch?

Well Adobe Research has been having fun finding the answer to that question since they first got their HTC Vive back in the summer of 2015 when the first round of developer kits were sent out.

What Adobe came up with is truly different and magical judging by the reactions of the artists at the Minnesota Street Project who were given time to create new artwork with Adobe’s Project Dali.

With Dali you can incorporate texture, like stone marble, granite, limestone, and you can incorporate time based effects like how long it takes for your paint to clot or your clay to dry. Project Dali goes far beyond other VR art tools that are currently on the market in part because of the research behind it with real artists in real art studios.

Project Dali is the passion project of Erik Natzke, the Principle Artist in Residence at Adobe. In his most recent blog post he talks about what Adobe Research has been learning from real artists who are using Project Dali. From that research they have done things like create three dimensional virtual paint that dries over time, and or loses its viscosity, or changes in other ways that were once unique to the real art. Eric is combining the real and the digital together for once in VR, and the result is something everyone must try, but true artists must appreciate.

Ultimately it’s a Adobe’s vision to get VR paint tools like these into artists hands and then have their software in a sense disappear because it is so intuitive that artists can really get lost in act of creation.