hey... i have seen a lot of voxel related screenshots on flipcode recently and have wondered where the people are learning about this stuff. i havn''t been able to find any good resources on the net. does anyone have any good resources? about voxels: do people make those voxel scenes by having a 3d grid of bools, and creating a polygon border around the ''empty'' locations? -PmanC

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Original post by PmanC
hey...
i have seen a lot of voxel related screenshots on flipcode recently and have wondered where the people are learning about this stuff. i havn''t been able to find any good resources on the net. does anyone have any good resources?

about voxels: do people make those voxel scenes by having a 3d grid of bools, and creating a polygon border around the ''empty'' locations?
-PmanC

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Um...not me...

but I can say this one tidbit: no on the huge bool array method. It''s a subdivision kinda thing. Aka you take one cube, the world, and divide it into 8 smaller cubes (2x2x2). If they need to be subdivided, then they are. That way, a large solid box dosn''t need a 100x100x100 bool memory for itself...it can be something like ''a 64x64x64 square + a bunch of 32x32x32 ones + even more 4x4x4 ones'' (only with more data of course...).

As for rendering...um...no idea. You could brute force it (draw every cube), but I don''t think they usually do that...

anyways...i''ll shutup now and let someone who knows about this post :-p

I''m also unable to describe the techniques used today, but I think I have an idea about how this _was_ done in the early days =). Voxel landscapes is about having a heightmap and rendering by drawing a line from the pixel''s 3d position to the bottom of the screen.

This basic idea could be improved by taking larger "pixels", drawing foremost things first (and leaving out the non-visible) and so forth.

I think the Delta Force games did something like this. They also used pure polygon-based 3d for the houses etc.

hm.. you''re on flipcode and you don''t know where to find a voxtut? a hint: its on flipcode:D

www.flipcode.com/voxtut/ is it if even, if i remember correctly..


the rest, yep, boolean 3d array, and marching cubes, thats the thing used in the current imageoftheday. you can of course compress the boolean array with a octree

"take a look around" - limp bizkit
www.google.com

I think there is a voxel tutorial here on GameDev..

The way they work is based on a heightmap, and a simple form of ray-casting (just like Wolf3D / Doom).

A heightmap is just a 2D array (myHeightmap[320][240]) where each element in the array corresponds to a height.

It''s really pretty easy to get working, and there are ways to make it faster / nicer looking.

Cheers,
Will