Voxels

From voxel generators and editors to terrains and voxel engines.

What Are Voxels and How Do They Work?

If you're a gaming geek, you're probably curious about voxels. Here's an overview: What are voxels? How do they differ from polygons? Voxel hierarchies and bounding volumes are some of the most common questions people have about voxels. Read on to discover the advantages and disadvantages of these units.

What are voxels

When we talk about pixels, we're talking about the elements that make up a picture. In reality, pixels are two-dimensional cubes. Voxels, on the other hand, are three-dimensional cubes, whose size is the same as the DFOV/matrix. They're useful for determining volumetric data quickly and accurately. So, voxels are very similar to pixels, except they represent a volume instead of a surface.

When voxels are aligned into three dimensional unfirom grids (like two dimensional pixels in regular textures), their positions are usually not encoded as they derive trivially from their place inside the grid. Other properties such as colour or normal vector may be encoded per each voxel. For space saving reasons voxels are often packed in spatial hierarchies like bintrees or octrees.

When you voxelize a 3D object, you get a three-dimensional representation of that object. The voxel doesn't know the shape of the volume, but it has a specific value that can be a gradient from 0 to X. As a result, voxelized 3D objects can look like the shape of their volume, even though it's not necessarily real.

Voxels can be shaped and used in various ways. If you want to learn more about voxel modeling, take a look at MagicaVoxel.

Voxels versus polygons

Today's technology can render voxels, but not in high-resolution. Today's computer hardware is designed to render polygons, and rendering high-resolution voxel objects would take a huge toll on current hardware. As a result, voxels are not commonly used in games today. Although voxel developers are passionate individuals and small teams, the future of voxel modeling is unclear.

Both voxels and polygons have their advantages and disadvantages. Polygons are efficient at representing simple 3D structures and homogeneously filled space, while voxels excel at sampling spaces regularly. They are widely used in scientific data analysis and visualization, and some volumetric displays use voxels to describe the resolution of their images. However, voxels fall short in certain areas, including animation.

While both polygons and voxels are useful in creating 3D graphics, they work very differently in real-life situations. Voxels are 3D cubes built by hand, whereas polygons require computer-aided design. Polygons work well for rendering 3D objects, but voxels are more versatile and allow for finer detail. They can be extremely expensive, and can also be very time-consuming to create.

Sparse voxel hierarchies

The sparse voxel octree is an efficient way to represent color and geometry of three-dimensional scenes. However, this data structure is inefficient for representing other voxel properties and is not suitable for lossless compression. Pointerless sparse voxel hierarchies use 32-bit pointers for child nodes and merge the common subtrees for fast traversal.

Alternatively, it may be advantageous to compute the voxels in an arbitrary manner. The voxel properties are known to be small and the computational burden is minimal, as the number of voxels above level n is only one-eighth of the voxels on the level below. The voxel data may be used for rendering high-resolution digital models.

Voxel editing

Whether you're looking to create a game or just want to use voxel graphics in your personal work, voxel editing is a powerful tool. There are many different programs available to help you create 3D assets, and you can even export your creations. Some of the more popular voxel editors are listed below. You can also use a free tool like Qubicle, which is designed to make creating your game assets easy.

The first step in the process is to select the model you'd like to edit. Then, click the voxel you want to change. A color-coded display of your model will appear in the model's center. In addition, you can change the value of each voxel by clicking it. Once you've clicked on a voxel, you'll see the associated polyhedral vertex.

Next, you'll need to choose a program for editing the voxel files. Most voxel editors are free to download. You can also use a web-based version of Voxel if you'd like. Make sure you use one that is reliable before using it for any type of project. If you're unsure of what format your files should be saved in, check out Mega Voxels.

A voxel is a cube of material that represents a value on a grid. It is very similar to a pixel, but it represents three-dimensional space, while pixels are two-dimensional. They are similar to each other in many ways, including the fact that voxels are smaller and have a single color. They're also located in the picture's grid. When edited, they make for a highly detailed 3D image.

Voxel rendering

Essentially, voxel rendering is a method of creating 3D scenes that have the appearance of a sphere. It works by converting flat block data into a list of renderable faces. The voxel rendering pipeline uses an algorithm known as greedy meshing, which culls faces that aren't visible or similar to others and combines them into larger blocks. This method reduces the overall number of quads while still delivering a dense, compact mesh.

Compared to rasterization, voxel rendering is simpler to implement and scale than traditional 3D rendering. It is not expensive to create a single voxel, or even millions of voxels. Also, voxel rendering can be implemented in almost any framework, and on any device, because it doesn't require 3D hardware or software. A simple CSS renderer can be used to show voxels in plain HTML.

When the number of voxels reaches the level of billions or trillions then more robust tools and frameworks are required. Computation and traversal time drops dramatically, and so does memory consumption.

Besides Minecraft, many other games have embraced voxel rendering. Some of these games include Ace of Spades, Creativerse, and Blade Runner. Others include the Command & Conquer and Cryengine series of games. These games use voxels to render terrain and vehicles. Ultimately, it's important to understand why these technologies are still used in games. However, despite the difficulties of voxel rendering, it's still a worthwhile option for some games.

A voxel-based volume can be rendered directly or by extracting polygon iso-surfaces that follow the contours of set threshold values. Ray casting algorithms like 3D DDA can be deployed for traversing the volume when rendering directly. The marching cubes algorithm can be used when extracting isosurfaces.

Resources (open source)

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