Advertisement

Microsoft upgrades Paint 3D's drawing and magic select tools

The tools help knock out backgrounds and draw smoother lines and curves.

Microsoft's Paint 3D was introduced as part of the Windows 10 Creators update last October. The company wants to make 3D modeling as easy and accessible as using a 2D drawing program. The free Windows 10 app gives you the power to create, share and print anything you can think of in three dimensions. Now, the Microsoft team has two new updates for Paint 3D, available now, that should improve the experience of 3d modeling.

The first update is an improved magic select tool, which lets you crop out the background of any image. This lets you turn the resulting content into a sticker or use as a skin to wrap onto a 3D object. "As of today, you can now magic select content directly into a scene," Paint 3D studio head Lee Shuneman writes in a blog post, "even after the scene has been partially composed so there is no need to move the object off canvas first."

The second improvement comes from the original MS Paint. You now have the option to draw and create shapes with a straight line and curve tool. This should help make smooth edges and curves on your objects without having to be a steady-handed mouse master. "When you use these tools across 3D shapes, the line and curve tools act just like other stickers, which means that they can be seamlessly applied to both the canvas and 3D objects," writes Shuneman.

Finally, Paint 3D now supports the new open standard for 3D file sharing, called GLB, which makes 3D asset transfers quicker and more efficient. According to Shuneman, this works by putting all the assets into one container, which helps minimize the file size while standardizing the format for all other programs that might need to use the 3D file itself.