When Adobe spent $20 billion in cash and shares last month to acquire rival upstart Figma in the largest buyout ever of a privately held software company, it did so to maintain its long-standing dominance in the market for the creation of two-dimensional content.

Although Unity Software Inc. (U.N) and other companies with a focus on video games dominate the market for three-dimensional content, Adobe has also made investments in this area recently. Three-dimensional content is anticipated to play a significant role in the metaverse, the virtual world that Meta Platforms Inc. (META.O) and other companies are counting on for future revenue growth.

However, creating three-dimensional objects has traditionally required a lot of work from artists. Adobe on Tuesday unveiled two tools that should make the process faster and simpler.

Almost any camera, even smartphones, may be used to snap a sequence of shots of a real-world object with Adobe's '3D Capture' application, which subsequently combines the images into a three-dimensional digital object.

According to François Cottin, senior director of marketing for Adobe's Substance 3D and metaverse, the software would initially be used for e-commerce, where, for instance, a shoe vendor may allow consumers to digitally put on footwear to see how they look on their feet using augmented reality.

Artists now have the option to move between manipulating a three-dimensional object with their hands in a virtual reality headset and editing it on a desktop computer thanks to the second Adobe product introduced on Tuesday.

According to Cottin, the software enables virtual artists to create objects with the same precision as they would if they were using clay, a technique that is still used to create vehicles and other objects.