5 ms·

High Performance Voxel Engine (2021)

66 points by bibanez 3y ago

bibanez 3y ago
A showcase of the techniques explained in the article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFUj53VwYvU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFUj53VwYvU https://douglasdwyer.github.io/octo-release/ https://douglasdwyer.github.io/octo-release/ (online demo) Lately I've been addicted to watching (micro) voxel engine videos on youtube. I need to resist my urge to write one (not that I think I would do a particularly good job). I've also found the voxel engine by John Lin to be particularly impressive.
bun_terminator 3y ago
I'm not a professional graphics programmer, but I dabble in it occasionally and hang out in GP communities. It's fascinating to see the wealth of voxel engines being written. Minecraft really had a massive cultural impact on the tech scene. Or maybe it's just that voxels are a particularly good target for various optimization techniques. Interesting either way! For the author: Any particular reason you don't seem to be using DSA in your OpenGL code? ie glNamedBufferData() and friends. I found it the single thing that transforms OpenGL into something very user-friendly.
- phero_cnstrcts 3y ago
  Has the definition of voxels changed recently? As far as I know voxels are pixels in 3D space. Minecraft is just a low poly engine based on marching cubes.
  - paholg 3y ago
    I think voxel has grown to have two meanings. One is as you describe, another is systems like Minecraft.
    - broast 3y ago
      As an example, a more modern and higher resolution implementation of this style can be seen in "Teardown"
  - bun_terminator 3y ago
    Minecraft is just polygons sure, but it has a "voxely" look, that's what I was getting at.
  - badpun 3y ago
    If you want to use rasterization part of your GPU, you're going to have to eventually convert the voxel data into triangles.
  - rzzzt 3y ago
    I'm also thinking Novalogic games and Voxlap: http://advsys.net/ken/voxlap.htm http://advsys.net/ken/voxlap.htm
  - paulddraper 3y ago
    If you're familiar with pixels, you might be familiar with "pixel art", even though you every image on a screen has pixels
  - Jasper_ 3y ago
    Huh? What about it uses marching cubes?
  - SkeuomorphicBee 3y ago
    Minecraft is just pixels in space. The world is built with a sort of very low resolution voxels. Yes, the 1m x 1m blocks that make up everything are voxels, they only have position (discrete, aligned to the 3D voxel grid) and "colour" (the type/material), and don't have dimensions nor rotation. That is prety much the textbook definition of a voxel. The fact that when rendered they are given texture is a rendering detail that doesn't erase the fact they are voxels.
pixelpoet 3y ago
I'd rather just directly raycast against a nicely compressed hierarchical representation than create horrendous amounts of triangle geometry and rasterise that. The code would be absolutely tiny, and not mostly a bunch of calls into someone else's code. But, you know, gotta do the OpenGL / DirectX / whatever vanilla API thing... that's what graphics programming is, isn't it...
- eddd-ddde 3y ago
  Would you happen to have a sample / example of this technique? I'd like to explore it.
  - pixelpoet 3y ago
    It's just normal old raycasting through a voxel grid a la Amanatides and Woo: http://www.cse.yorku.ca/~amana/research/grid.pdf http://www.cse.yorku.ca/~amana/research/grid.pdf https://github.com/cgyurgyik/fast-voxel-traversal-algorithm/blob/master/overview/FastVoxelTraversalOverview.md https://github.com/cgyurgyik/fast-voxel-traversal-algorithm/... Casting the rays from the camera will be nice and coherent, plus you probably get much better and easier shadowing using ray casts compared to shadow maps.
    - amoss 3y ago
      How does it handle dynamic scenes? The work by the OP looked like it took an update to the VAO/VBO if the chunk changed. What's the cost of rebuilding the acceleration structure here if the scene is updated?
- pton_xd 3y ago
  That's the future but raycasting currently has some major drawbacks... namely that everything looks like a noisy mess when you look around. Curious if anyone has plotted GPU compute increases against display resolution + update frequency increases? When do the two lines cross?
  - 3y ago
Duanemclemore 3y ago
Thank you, OP and everyone else who's commented. This is super helpful to see. It's great to learn about Nick's work specifically and as an introduction to the those working in this field - and to see the other helpful links everyone has posted. I wrote a library to implement (most of) the Space Groups in the visual programming environment Grasshopper, which is inside 3d modeling software Rhino3d. This was to get architects working with 3d symmetries, not just 2d; and to get architecture students learning the spatial symmetries in more rigorous and complete ways. The scope and aim are completely different than these engines. But I'm hoping to rewrite it into a standalone program soon, so it's very helpful and timely to get this influx of information I hadn't sought out before!
ricardobeat 3y ago
This brought back memories of Atomontage, a voxel engine which seemed to be way ahead of its time 10 years ago, but was never released, and became some kind of cloud platform. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J62z_7JaYMw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J62z_7JaYMw https://client.atomontage.app/view?m=5C1RGKu4vT67qEBLO4gqh https://client.atomontage.app/view?m=5C1RGKu4vT67qEBLO4gqh

66 points by bibanez 3y ago

A showcase of the techniques explained in the article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFUj53VwYvU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFUj53VwYvU https://douglasdwyer.github.io/octo-release/ https://douglasdwyer.github.io/octo-release/ (online demo) Lately I've been addicted to watching (micro) voxel engine videos on youtube. I need to resist my urge to write one (not that I think I would do a particularly good job). I've also found the voxel engine by John Lin to be particularly impressive.

bun_terminator 3y ago

I'm not a professional graphics programmer, but I dabble in it occasionally and hang out in GP communities. It's fascinating to see the wealth of voxel engines being written. Minecraft really had a massive cultural impact on the tech scene. Or maybe it's just that voxels are a particularly good target for various optimization techniques. Interesting either way! For the author: Any particular reason you don't seem to be using DSA in your OpenGL code? ie glNamedBufferData() and friends. I found it the single thing that transforms OpenGL into something very user-friendly.

phero_cnstrcts 3y ago
Has the definition of voxels changed recently? As far as I know voxels are pixels in 3D space. Minecraft is just a low poly engine based on marching cubes.
- paholg 3y ago
  I think voxel has grown to have two meanings. One is as you describe, another is systems like Minecraft.
  - broast 3y ago
    As an example, a more modern and higher resolution implementation of this style can be seen in "Teardown"
- bun_terminator 3y ago
  Minecraft is just polygons sure, but it has a "voxely" look, that's what I was getting at.
- badpun 3y ago
  If you want to use rasterization part of your GPU, you're going to have to eventually convert the voxel data into triangles.
- rzzzt 3y ago
  I'm also thinking Novalogic games and Voxlap: http://advsys.net/ken/voxlap.htm http://advsys.net/ken/voxlap.htm
- paulddraper 3y ago
  If you're familiar with pixels, you might be familiar with "pixel art", even though you every image on a screen has pixels
- Jasper_ 3y ago
  Huh? What about it uses marching cubes?
- SkeuomorphicBee 3y ago
  Minecraft is just pixels in space. The world is built with a sort of very low resolution voxels. Yes, the 1m x 1m blocks that make up everything are voxels, they only have position (discrete, aligned to the 3D voxel grid) and "colour" (the type/material), and don't have dimensions nor rotation. That is prety much the textbook definition of a voxel. The fact that when rendered they are given texture is a rendering detail that doesn't erase the fact they are voxels.

pixelpoet 3y ago

I'd rather just directly raycast against a nicely compressed hierarchical representation than create horrendous amounts of triangle geometry and rasterise that. The code would be absolutely tiny, and not mostly a bunch of calls into someone else's code. But, you know, gotta do the OpenGL / DirectX / whatever vanilla API thing... that's what graphics programming is, isn't it...

eddd-ddde 3y ago
Would you happen to have a sample / example of this technique? I'd like to explore it.
- pixelpoet 3y ago
  It's just normal old raycasting through a voxel grid a la Amanatides and Woo: http://www.cse.yorku.ca/~amana/research/grid.pdf http://www.cse.yorku.ca/~amana/research/grid.pdf https://github.com/cgyurgyik/fast-voxel-traversal-algorithm/blob/master/overview/FastVoxelTraversalOverview.md https://github.com/cgyurgyik/fast-voxel-traversal-algorithm/... Casting the rays from the camera will be nice and coherent, plus you probably get much better and easier shadowing using ray casts compared to shadow maps.
  - amoss 3y ago
    How does it handle dynamic scenes? The work by the OP looked like it took an update to the VAO/VBO if the chunk changed. What's the cost of rebuilding the acceleration structure here if the scene is updated?
pton_xd 3y ago
That's the future but raycasting currently has some major drawbacks... namely that everything looks like a noisy mess when you look around. Curious if anyone has plotted GPU compute increases against display resolution + update frequency increases? When do the two lines cross?
- 3y ago

Duanemclemore 3y ago

Thank you, OP and everyone else who's commented. This is super helpful to see. It's great to learn about Nick's work specifically and as an introduction to the those working in this field - and to see the other helpful links everyone has posted. I wrote a library to implement (most of) the Space Groups in the visual programming environment Grasshopper, which is inside 3d modeling software Rhino3d. This was to get architects working with 3d symmetries, not just 2d; and to get architecture students learning the spatial symmetries in more rigorous and complete ways. The scope and aim are completely different than these engines. But I'm hoping to rewrite it into a standalone program soon, so it's very helpful and timely to get this influx of information I hadn't sought out before!

ricardobeat 3y ago

This brought back memories of Atomontage, a voxel engine which seemed to be way ahead of its time 10 years ago, but was never released, and became some kind of cloud platform. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J62z_7JaYMw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J62z_7JaYMw https://client.atomontage.app/view?m=5C1RGKu4vT67qEBLO4gqh https://client.atomontage.app/view?m=5C1RGKu4vT67qEBLO4gqh