We've found another reason not to use Microsoft's Paint 3D – researchers

As Microsoft preps the next version of Windows, a hole has been spotted in an earlier Great Hope for the company: MS Paint 3D. The raster graphics and 3D modelling app was part of Microsoft's Creators Update back in 2016 and was released in 2017. The idea was that users would embrace its support for 3D objects and ditch the …

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually use Paint 3D

As it does just one thing I want which is to rotate and paste my logo onto a thumbnail / cover image for videos. Otherwise I use paint.

I am sure there are free alternatives that would do that as well or better, but I don't need everything they do, and I would have to learn how to use them, whereas the free already included 3D paint does the job and is good enough for what is strictly a hobby.

[Red Ted]

Paint.NET

I would thoroughly recommend Paint.NET as a great piece of software to use instead of Paint.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Paint.NET

I will look at it, but looks way overboard for my use case.

[Tilda Rice]

Re: Paint.NET

its not. its the go-to for quick image manipulation, super easy to use

[JWLong]

Paint 3D

...........Sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Paint can be messy

> The idea was that users would embrace its support for 3D objects and ditch the ancient Microsoft Paint (first introduced with Windows 1.0) for the new shiny.

It came with a completely unnecessary yet undeletable top-level folder called "3D Objects". This alone was enough for me - in a reasoned, mature and not-at-all petulant decision - to resolve to never ever open the thing. :-)

I've mostly succeeded.

[Icon: putting one of your dad's old shirts on back-to-front in infants' school when painting.]

[Anonymous Custard]

Re: Paint can be messy

Likewise, and almost totally succeeded (opened it once to look, never again).

Paint on the other hand is my go-to app for all sorts of minor graphics tweaking and adjusting - use it almost daily.

[AMBxx]

Re: Paint can be messy

I don't have Paint 3D - one of the joys of running Windows Server 2019 as a desktop PC (I need hyperV to work with Veeam).

On the other hand, I still have Internet Explorer installed, so it's not all good news.

[Terry 6]

Re: Paint can be messy

Exactly. Paint was and is the ready to hand simple programme for doing simple jobs.

The idea that making it more complicated to use would somehow enhance its value simply indicates ( if we ever needed this) how out of touch Microsoft development are, for all their expensive focus groups and stuff.

[Anonymous Custard]

Original paint rules!

The challenge for hackers would be to persuade a user to open the file application...

FTFY

[Trigun]

Never used Paint 3D - MS Paint ftw in my book. It's simple and handy enough for making guides for end users who need them. Just because something is old one should never assume it's redudant (plus, that's age-ism ;))

[babaganoush]

I agree. MS Paint is ace.

[Gene Cash]

Mat Powell is wrong

STL files are the format-of-choice for distributing 3D-printer files.

[Ken Hagan]

Re: Mat Powell is wrong

Methinks Mat Powell is trying to spread FUD. Do MS have an alternative file format they are trying to push? Is this a (laughable) attempt to badge STL as proprietary, in contrast to their own one, which of course isn't proprietary because it is the Microsoft Industry Standard (tm).

[lglethal]

Re: Mat Powell is wrong

I think its more that there's an extraneous "the" in the sentence. I think it should read:

"a format native to stereolithography CAD software, created by 3D Systems"

The stl file format was created by 3D systems, and it is the native format for stereolithography (which is what 3d printers use) and is available in pretty much every CAD system. I think the sentence previously just made it sound like it only worked on 3D systems CAD system, but I dont think that was actually the intention.

[Denarius]

common trend then

So MS have the same issue as vehicle builders. Too much change and complexity added for no operational reason. In some vehicles it is hard to work out how to shut off the radio/entertainment system so one can hear the two way radio or allow a mobile phone Bluetooth pairing. So many of us intensely dislike the post 2003 versions of Office as the UI looks as if if the coders think all applications are desktop publishing tools with other functionality added as an afterthought. The new desktop based on FreeBSD article earlier this week illustrates this.

[Robert Carnegie]

Weren't "Paint", "Paintbrush", and "Paint 3D" all different, unrelated programs? I think Wikipedia may be confused about this, or perhaps just me.

[Terry 6]

Paint was and is the built in Windows graphics package since forever. Paint 3D was a parallel replacement that MS brought in because they wanted us to all be buying big idiot glasses for VR. Almost no one does, so it became just another typical MS piece of stubbornness: They were determined that we'd all switch to it despite all the evidence to the contrary. Paintbrush was a totally different product. There have been a few programmes with variations on this name, but the main one is the Apple programme that presumably does much the same as Paint.

[Robert Carnegie]

I think I remember I used to run PBRUSH.EXE. I thought that was "Paintbrush". I run PBRUSH now I get "Paint". Maybe I am misremembering "Paint 3D sounds like too much work" as "MS Paint sounds like too much work".

https://superuser.com/questions/306540/paintbrush-or-mspaint-executable-file/306542

...explains how by various tricks, trying to run PBRUSH gets you Paint, but also maintains that they are just the same thing. Hmm.

Maybe at some point in a series of Windows upgrades in place, there was an older PBRUSH and a new PAINT on the same system, from different Windows versions, and I preferred PBRUSH.

[Ken Moorhouse]

Microsoft wants us to embrace 3D Paint

But insists on flattening buttons on its UI.

[Terry 6]

Also a very simple fact

Doing 3d graphics is bloody hard. You can't just drag a mouse/stylus along a 2d surface anymore. You have to somehow create angles that emulate a 3d shape on a 2d screen.

So Paint3d is actually pretty much wasted on most users.

(Note I quite fancied a 3d printer for my birthday in a couple of months. But I discovered I'm never going to be able to spend enough time to master creating objects in 3d on the computer screen.)