by Chris » Tue Sep 04, 2018 6:52 pm
Enjay wrote:Sorry, got to disagree. You might be able to make it look exactly as it does from one angle (e.g. dead front on) but as soon as you move, you'll see the 3D lego-brick nature of the voxel models, especially on shapes with a curve.
To be fair, the lego-brick nature of voxel models is just 2D pixelization taken to 3D.
As an aside, there are ways to "smooth out" voxels, with techniques like marching cubes. Rather than just treat each individual voxel as its own little self-contained cube, it tries to connect neighboring voxels together, which helps blend both the color and geometry. Whether or not it would look good, however, is up in the air (I imagine it would be dependent on the particular voxel).
If your goal is to get a good looking 3D object, a proper model would almost certainly be the best option. Although a voxel may understandably be easier to create from a preexisting (static) sprite since you basically stretch the existing 2D image into a 3rd dimension and fill in the necessary gaps. High-end computer graphics have employed similar tricks (take a 2D matte painting and "paste" it onto a 3D backdrop, though it only works for limited movement).
[quote="Enjay"]Sorry, got to disagree. You might be able to make it look exactly as it does from one angle (e.g. dead front on) but as soon as you move, you'll see the 3D lego-brick nature of the voxel models, especially on shapes with a curve.[/quote]
To be fair, the lego-brick nature of voxel models is just 2D pixelization taken to 3D.
As an aside, there are ways to "smooth out" voxels, with techniques like marching cubes. Rather than just treat each individual voxel as its own little self-contained cube, it tries to connect neighboring voxels together, which helps blend both the color and geometry. Whether or not it would look good, however, is up in the air (I imagine it would be dependent on the particular voxel).
If your goal is to get a good looking 3D object, a proper model would almost certainly be the best option. Although a voxel may understandably be easier to create from a preexisting (static) sprite since you basically stretch the existing 2D image into a 3rd dimension and fill in the necessary gaps. High-end computer graphics have employed similar tricks (take a 2D matte painting and "paste" it onto a 3D backdrop, though it only works for limited movement).