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There's so much misunderstanding and wrong terminology surrounding voxels. Voxels are a way to store world data in memory, basically 3d bitmaps. They won't give
by veli_joza 8y ago
There's so much misunderstanding and wrong terminology surrounding voxels. Voxels are a way to store world data in memory, basically 3d bitmaps. They won't give you infinite details, just the opposite - they can only give you single '3d resolution'.
To actually get infinite details, you have to switch underlining world representation from static data (meshes, voxels) to mathematical (perlin noise, fractals). Here you make an important trade-off - mathematical representation is harder to make changes to, because each modification would increase complexity of math formula used to describe the world. You can see lot of deformations in voxel demos but they are global transformations (scale, shear).
Minecraft uses hybrid approach. Inital world is described by math (called world generation) but it's then serialized (sampled) as data with specific voxel size, that you can easily manipulate.
Edit: another, IMO far more impressive approach is Media Molecules' upcoming Dreams software that uses constructive solid geometry and sparse distance fields to describe and manipulate 3d geometry. Here's a detailed tech talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9KNtnCZDMI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9KNtnCZDMI