Vermillion – VR Painting
It’s time to discover your inner artist! With Vermillion, you get a fully equipped oil painting studio in your home, without any of the mess. Ready for the unrivaled sense of accomplishment from creating your first painting? Learn with your favorite YouTube artists using the built-in web browser, trace reference images directly on the canvas, or even better – learn to paint from (new) friends in multiplayer!
Up to four people can paint together in the studio. Share palettes, work together on each other’s canvas, teach a class, or have an old-fashioned paint night.
Vermillion features realistic wet-on-wet color mixing, undo, layers, and a wide range of simulated brushes. Developed with the feedback of both traditional and digital artists, you’re sure to get the fun of oil painting without any of the frustration.
Once done, mount your masterpiece in your studio, or easily share it as an image. You can also create a beautifully varnished 3D model export for your VR home.
FEATURES:
Paint in other games
Ever dreamed of painting the mountains of Skyrim, or your favorite VRChat world? Vermillion can run as a SteamVR overlay, allowing you to paint inside any other VR game!
Multiplayer
Paint together with up to three of your friends, or new friends you meet in public rooms. Cross platform with Quest 2. Compatible with the overlay mode, so you can paint together inside other VR games. Note that the overlay only exists within Vermillion – other players not inside your Vermillion multiplayer session can not see your painting equipment.
Realistic color mixing
Vermillion allows you to blend colors as you would with real paints. Dip your brush into multiple colors, and mix a new color by whisking the brush on the palette – and yes, yellow and blue make green!
Integrated web browser with canvas projector
Never painted before? No problem! The easel has a web browser right next to it, allowing you to paint along with your favorite artists on YouTube for the first time without needing physical equipment, and giving you convenient access to the internet’s vast library of learning resources and reference material.
Vermillion comes with an hour long in-game paint-along teaching you how to paint a cute robin – you’ll hardly believe what you are capable of!
The browser can even be projected onto the canvas, so you can easily trace your reference. You can also display local images on the browser.
Mount your paintings
You can mount your paintings in the virtual studios, so you can enjoy your previous work while painting your next piece.
Designed for wet-on-wet painting
Vermillion is made for wet-on-wet painting. It mixes color not only on the palette, but also on the canvas, allowing you to create perfectly smooth gradients with just a few strokes. Use a dry brush to blend colors further, or to move paint around to create a variety of effects from reflections to grass.
Layers
While Vermillion is made to be the ultimate wet-on-wet experience, sometimes you just need to paint on another layer for detail work. Which is why it’s fortunate that there is support for four separate layers that you can merge and re-order!
Fine control over every mark
Exert fine-grained control over your brushwork through the pressure with which you press the brush into the surface. Use the hand steadying tool to compensate for the lack of a physical canvas to rest your hand against.
Distinct brushes
From the two inch brush all the way down to the rigger, there’s a brush for every occasion.
Sharable
You can export your finished painting as a 3D model to use in your VR home, share through Sketchfab, or use in social VR applications. Vermillion also offers up to 8k image export of your finished piece, which can be used for canvas prints!
Made for streamers
With a controllable spectator camera to offer great views of the process while streaming or recording, as well as full LIV support, you’ll be sure to create amazing content.
Paintings in the trailer and screenshots by David Kühnel, Chad Munn, Gladski, and Markus Franz.
Steam User 78
As an oil painter, this has saved me thousands of dollars. As an artist, this has saved my sanity when I have no studio space. As a teacher, I can get people trying to paint without a huge investment. This is a fantastic simulation of oil painting with many computer quality-of-life benefits on top of it all. I enjoyed it so much I made a bunch of tutorial videos to help people get even more out of it. So yeah, Vermillion is a fantastic piece of software. Strongly recommended.
Steam User 23
It's great. Worth every penny, and then some. Probably the overall best VR app for any platform, and the oil paint simulation I've found to be more accurate than most regular digital painting software. If you are even slightly interested in painting definitely get this.
Steam User 22
The best painting experience in VR. Be sure to try out the overlay version of it! Can pop up a canvas on top of any Steam VR games
Steam User 19
I have experience with real oil painting and I was always on the look out for some sort of digital way to oil paint. With all the art apps and software available nothing came close. Then when I got my Index I saw this was available and I have to say I am astounded how close to the real thing this gets. I will list the Pros and Cons but overall if you want to oil paint but don't want to buy all the equipment this will get you 80%-90% there.
Compared to actual oil painting:
Pros
-No mess
-No oil smell
-Save on buying new oils and brushes
-Save on buying new canvas, and also not having the right size
-Can now literally paint in any location
-Undo
-Switch between brushes and paints super easily
Cons
-No eyedropper tool
-Would be cool to have a wider variety of weird and wild brushes
- Limited amount of undo's
Steam User 19
I love this game! I've even been able to get family members to use my VR headset and try out VR painting, and it's fun to just paint stuff and mix colors. It's impressive to see the kinds of things people create, even if I myself am not a fantastic artist, but you can still make something cohesive enough by messing around. I appreciate the layering system, since I like being able to make adjustments to a background I painted without worrying about messing up the main subject I painted. I also appreciate the ability to adjust the spectator camera for when I'm streaming, people have really seemed to enjoy watching it!
Since I've first played, the developer has also added different environments you can paint in (in addition to browsing the Steam Workshop for environments, though I haven't tried those myself yet), which can be a nice change of pace from being in one single room the entire time. Though I will say, that hawk screeching at the Mountain Lake always sets off my dog, lol.
I would definitely recommend this game to people with a VR headset for a non-intense experience.
Steam User 15
Impressively good oil painting simulator! Has built in web browsers to allow you to watch videos within the virtual studio, and you can even export your paintings to get them printed in real life.
Steam User 21
Dev asked for reviews because Vermillion is close to being marked Overwhelmingly Positive. So here is my review because Vermillion is indeed deserving of that rating. Dev is super solid and responsive, so he deserves it too.