Voxels?

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Graf Zahl
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Re: Voxels?

Post by Graf Zahl »

If such a converter actually works, sure. Conversion does not need to be in real time. It's more than enough to do it once up front and if necessary cache the converted models on the HD. Of course they can create a lot of data in memory.
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DavidPH
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Re: Voxels?

Post by DavidPH »

Caligari_87 wrote:I just don't care much for the "tons of tiny 3D cubes" look when it comes to voxels.
I... What? That's what a voxel is. It's a volumetric pixel. Being a cube seems a fairly natural consequence. (Sure, you could render them not as cubes, but then you might as well use some other model type.)

Unless I'm reading it wrong, and you just mean that you don't like voxels (blasphemy). In which case I apologize.
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Snarboo
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Re: Voxels?

Post by Snarboo »

The appeal of voxels to me is that they bring the chunky look of unfiltered sprites into 3D, but I can understand if people don't like how they look.
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Salad Viking
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Re: Voxels?

Post by Salad Viking »

Snarboo wrote:The appeal of voxels to me is that they bring the chunky look of unfiltered sprites into 3D, but I can understand if people don't like how they look.
That reminds me, what kind of effect will texture filters have on voxel sprites? Also, what are your thoughts on voxel brightmaps?
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Snarboo
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Re: Voxels?

Post by Snarboo »

I believe filtering and smoothing can be applied to voxels. I know there was an option for it in Outcast which used voxels extensively.
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Spleen
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Re: Voxels?

Post by Spleen »

DavidPH wrote:Sure, you could render them not as cubes, but then you might as well use some other model type.
The point of using voxels isn't to make everything look as if it were made out of cubes. The point is to be able to define 3D objects in terms of volumetric pixels, rather than as a bunch of a textured triangles.

Software mode renders voxels as columns of pixels rather than as cubes, and it looks just fine. This method wouldn't work in OpenGL because you can change the vertical angle at which you look at things, but rendering them as individual squares should look pretty good, I think.


Salad Viking wrote:
Snarboo wrote:The appeal of voxels to me is that they bring the chunky look of unfiltered sprites into 3D, but I can understand if people don't like how they look.
Also, what are your thoughts on voxel brightmaps?
They're cool but I think translucent voxels should be a bigger priority, so we can voxelize Heretic and Hexen properly. :P
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randi
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Re: Voxels?

Post by randi »

Nash wrote:Will we be able to turn off the LOD models? Zooming in on a far-away model gives away the incredibly low detail voxels.
What if we change the mip selection algorithm instead? The original didn't take screen resolution or zoom into account at all.
Spleen wrote:I think translucent voxels should be a bigger priority, so we can voxelize Heretic and Hexen properly. :P
Why would you need see-throughiness for Heretic and Hexen but not for Doom?
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Spleen
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Re: Voxels?

Post by Spleen »

randy wrote:
Spleen wrote:I think translucent voxels should be a bigger priority, so we can voxelize Heretic and Hexen properly. :P
Why would you need see-throughiness for Heretic and Hexen but not for Doom?
It would be awesome for Doom too, of course! Heretic and Hexen came to mind, since those games have a bunch of actors that are see-throughy by default, even in the original engines. Then again, it would also be necessary for Spectres if those are ever voxelized, since even the fuzz effect would be a form of see-throughiness. Woops!
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Trance
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Re: Voxels?

Post by Trance »

DavidPH wrote:
Caligari_87 wrote:I just don't care much for the "tons of tiny 3D cubes" look when it comes to voxels.
I... What? That's what a voxel is. It's a volumetric pixel. Being a cube seems a fairly natural consequence. (Sure, you could render them not as cubes, but then you might as well use some other model type.)

Unless I'm reading it wrong, and you just mean that you don't like voxels (blasphemy). In which case I apologize.
Well there are two kinds of "looks" for voxels it seems -- the old engines that supported voxels (Shadow Warrior for instance) drew voxel sprites as a collection of 2D squares (complete with x/y billboarding) arranged in a 3D space, whereas modern voxel renderers make them appear as actual 3D cubes. Not sure which would be a better look in today's resolutions, but I quite liked the old look of voxel sprites in SW.

EDIT: Looking at that screenshot a few pages back, that seems to be the old look I was talking about.
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Caligari87
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Re: Voxels?

Post by Caligari87 »

Trance wrote:
DavidPH wrote:
Caligari_87 wrote:I just don't care much for the "tons of tiny 3D cubes" look when it comes to voxels.
I... What? That's what a voxel is. It's a volumetric pixel. Being a cube seems a fairly natural consequence. (Sure, you could render them not as cubes, but then you might as well use some other model type.)

Unless I'm reading it wrong, and you just mean that you don't like voxels (blasphemy). In which case I apologize.
Well there are two kinds of "looks" for voxels it seems -- the old engines that supported voxels (Shadow Warrior for instance) drew voxel sprites as a collection of 2D squares (complete with x/y billboarding) arranged in a 3D space, whereas modern voxel renderers make them appear as actual 3D cubes. Not sure which would be a better look in today's resolutions, but I quite liked the old look of voxel sprites in SW.

EDIT: Looking at that screenshot a few pages back, that seems to be the old look I was talking about.
Yes, this is what I meant. I like software mode voxels better :D

8-)
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Chris
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Re: Voxels?

Post by Chris »

Graf Zahl wrote:If such a converter actually works, sure. Conversion does not need to be in real time. It's more than enough to do it once up front and if necessary cache the converted models on the HD. Of course they can create a lot of data in memory.
I just ran across this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marching_cubes
It's an algorithm, published in 1987, for creating a polygonal mesh from voxels (funny enough, despite being published in 1987, you couldn't use it until 2005; yay patents). There's even apparently some source code with samples down in the external links. This may also be relavent:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marching_Tetrahedrons
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DooMAD
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Re: Voxels?

Post by DooMAD »

Updated the test wad in zdoom_vox.zip again. Finished two more ammo pickup items, the single rocket and the box of rockets. And the two plasma cell pickups are also included this time (not sure how I forgot them in the first one). Exl put together a little utility to fix the offsets of all *.kvx files in a folder, so I've updated all the other items as well so they aren't rendering under the floor level now.

Image

//EDIT:

Updated yet again with the new SVN Build (cheers again to Exl). See Changelog for details.
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phi108
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Re: Voxels?

Post by phi108 »

Wow, these are neat in-game! Would it be possible to have a version with the models laying flat on their side on the floor, for items like the clip and shotgun? I might try to do that myself, though it could be interesting if VOXELDEF allowed TEXTURES-style 90 degree rotation and offset-modification...
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Graf Zahl
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Re: Voxels?

Post by Graf Zahl »

phi108 wrote:though it could be interesting if VOXELDEF allowed TEXTURES-style 90 degree rotation and offset-modification...

Unfortunately not. For that the voxel has to be turned around and all completely recalculated.
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Re: Voxels?

Post by NeuralStunner »

Would mirroring be impossible for that same reason?

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