Four years after releasing the Windows 10 Creators Update with an emphasis on new content creation features, Microsoft is making a few of those features optional.
Starting with Windows 10 Preview Build 21332, which began rolling out this week, when you do a clean install of Windows 10 the Paint 3D and 3D Viewer applications won’t be included by default. You can still download them from the Microsoft Store if you want them, but I suspect most people won’t.
Both applications seemed like features that Microsoft was pushing in anticipating of a day when 3D content became more popular, allowing users to make their own 3D creations or open 3D models on a computer. A few years down the road, I’m guessing Microsoft wouldn’t be removing them if the company found them to be hugely popular with users. I can’t say I’ve ever opened 3D Paint to do anything other than take a screenshot of it for articles like this one.
Keep in mind that the change applies to new Windows installations. Upgrading from an earlier build of Windows 10 won’t remove the applications, but you can always uninstall them manually.
For now, you’ll need to be a member of the Windows Insider Preview program to get a version of Windows without the apps pre-installed. But eventually the change should make its way to stable builds of Windows 10.
Other changes in Preview Build 21332 include:
- News and Interests will show two columns of content when you hover or click the icon in the taskbar
- Dev channel users can o paste content from the Windows clipboard as plain text using a Win + V keyboard shortcut
- Dev channel users get theme-aware splash screens
- Math Input Panel is being removed, but there’s an optional “Math Recognizer” feature that can be installed if you want to use a similar input and math recognition experience in some applications.
You can find more details, plus a list of bug fixes, in the release notes.
I actually started using Paint 3D when I got my Surface. It’s just a quick and snappy way to get a drawing on the screen with a fancy brush. Only used the 3D functions a couple of times, but I imagine I will later down the line.
I routinely use Microsoft’s 3D Builder to this day. While it’s lacking quite a few features, it’s so much more accessible than Solidworks, Blender, or AutoCAD for designing simple 3D objects for 3D printing (I mostly make simple brackets and other custom hardware). It’s a shame they stopped supporting it more than a year ago.
I regret that neither Paint (pbrush) nor Paint3-D have standard (measured, industrial common) templates.
You can draw an image with a rectangle or a circle, but you can’t virtually grab a 2″ x 4″ x 8′ wooden board and a 3/4″ x 4′ x 8′ sheet of plywood or a 1/2″ diameter piece of schedule 40 PVC pipe… cut to length and attach and build up a general project …
Yeah yeah yeah, CAD software. But much the same. SHAPES but not virtual ITEMS.
I’m a big fan of the fast and simple Paint program Pbrush.exe. It ain’t broke and Microsoft doesn’t need to fix it.
I actually disagree on the usability of Paint 3D.
While I have never touched the 3D aspect of it, it is a much-needed upgrade on the standard MS Paint, particularly when marking up images at work.
Yes, if I had a choice and ability to install software on the computer, or a need for a more feature-rich solution, I’d probably use something else (Paint.NET, perhaps?), but Paint 3D does what’s needed and does scaling / resizing / simple markup much better than Paint itself.
Now, if Paint had more of an upgrade, would probably use that.