Voxels for hud - is it possible?

[conradrdw]

I have made a voxel for HUD, for my project, but it doesn't works in zdoom. I don't want to use gzdoom's openGL cause i like zdoom's software. is it possible to add voxel support for HUD sprites?

[randi]

Of course it's possible, but seriously: Why? It doesn't offer any more flexibility than sprites do, and sprites will always look better. So why bother? I fail to see the attraction to this idea that keeps popping periodically.

[RV-007]

Blame Legos Inc., lol.

[NeuralStunner]

I fail to see the attraction to this idea that keeps popping periodically.

I think the main thing is the 3D look that is achieved when the weapon moves around onscreen. It's really the closest thing anyone can get to viewmodels in a software renderer outside of Quake.

An actual software model system (probably prerendering to sprites, which I think is what you've done for voxels) would be a nice thing to have. It'd have its own limitations but I could see it being useful.

[Nash]

Thing is, the voxel resolution/performance trade-off is just horrible. I tried making a huge voxel once (pretty much at the limits, 256^3?) and littering the map with it... only 10 copies of it on screen and it's already dunking the FPS down a lot... and this is on an i7 920 machine!

"Well duh, make the voxels smaller then"

Then it would look crappy.

[conradrdw]

Because spawning this voxel as an object again and again in front of player takes much more performance then it could be, but anyway looka awfull when i start moving. Please, I know you can add this!
Of course it is not finished now so looking not the best, but anyway its much more interesting for me then sprites.

[Graf Zahl]

Why even use voxels for that? There's absolutely no imaginable way how they could ever look good as HUD sprites. That they work in GZDoom is more an accident than intentional.

[Snarboo]

I actually find the aesthetic in those screenshots charming. Kinda makes me wonder what Quake would have been like had they gone with voxels. :p

[conradrdw]

I make all the objects in my project voxels. so i want a voxel hud too. I would be glad if this support is done.

[GFD]

I could see this looking good if used well; it is pretty charming, reminds me of Ace of Spades or that voxel Wolfenstein thing. Also might be easier for some people than trying to make sprites if they want to use a voxel model they've already made. +1

[Zhs2]

Standing in with the approval train, whatever that's worth. Of course, centered weapons would probably be most preferable in the case of voxels (to cite the Quake mention up there), but why the heck not if it fits the graphical vision of your project, I say.

[Amuscaria]

I could be wrong, but what advantages does using this have over just sprites? Software render doesn't have dynamic lighting, so you're not going to save work on light your sprites. As far as I understand, animating voxels isn't like animating a 3D model where you animate a skeleton (i could be wrong about this as well) so you still need frames and therefore different voxel renders. Graphically, you'll never match the efficacy of voxel huds over sprites - if you want detail, you suffer major performance losses for rendering essentially thousands of pixel-sized sprites in tendem. If you wanted fast speed, you get an extremely low resolution comparable to that of classic Wolfenstein.

Also, the perspective at which you view the voxels is always going to be the same - from the first person. Given you have no lighting, no animation, and no graphical benefits from using this as is, if you just wanted a voxel looking graphic for aesthetic reasons, why not just take a screencapture of a voxel render and just use that as a sprite. If would be practically no different.

I'm not sure if an developer would spend the time at adding a feature that offers no real use outside what I imagine can only be an extremely narrow niche.

[Nash]

I understand what the OP wants in terms of aesthetical consistency (I've played his project before when he posted it in the Bugs forum, it is actually kind of cool; a lot of custom-made voxels) but unless someone is willing to code it, I think the only solution the OP has is to fake it with whatever method he is doing right now...

[Snarboo]

This seems like it would be a pittance to add, so redundant or not, I don't see why it shouldn't make it in with the caveat that it will look kinda weird or crappy to most people.

[mallo]

I make all the objects in my project voxels.

Even monsters?
Voxel monsters look crappy when they change direction.