5 ms·

The Perfect Voxel Engine (2021)

75 points by helloplanets 2y ago

bun_terminator 2y ago
This might profit from some context: This is written by "John Lin", who is famous for his impressive voxel videos on social Media. He became a hallmark name in voxel discussions. See for example his youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCM2RhfMLoLqG24e_DYgTQeA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCM2RhfMLoLqG24e_DYgTQeA
- actionfromafar 2y ago
  As far as I can tell, he got famous for the voxel demos, then decided to not do voxels, based on feedback from fans. Edit: I misunderstood.
  - bun_terminator 2y ago
    Huh, interesting. Even today when there's a voxel discussion on graphics programming communities - john lin comes but all the time
  - TheRoque 2y ago
    From what I've read (the pinned comment in the aforementioned video), he just decided to ditch high resolution voxels for lower resolution ones, as the feedbacks said they preferred a more pixelated art style. But still voxels. But looking at his latest blog post, it seems that he's not focused on voxels at the moment yet. Or maybe got hired and can't talk about it, who knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  - Crestwave 2y ago
    Hm, do you have a source for that? It's possible that you're mixing it up with his decision to shelf "micro-voxels" in favor of the traditional, chunkier voxel art style. https://youtube.com/watch?v=8ptH79R53c0 https://youtube.com/watch?v=8ptH79R53c0 (see pinned comment)
    - actionfromafar 2y ago
      Thank you, I think you are right.
truckerbill 2y ago
It's a shame he disappeared for some reason, his stuff was crazy
- TheRoque 2y ago
  His latest blog post/tweet was less than a year ago https://voxely.net/blog/using-a-rnn-for-2d-tile-map-synthesis/ https://voxely.net/blog/using-a-rnn-for-2d-tile-map-synthesi...
ganzuul 2y ago
It would be interesting to have some interpretability to how the YouTube algorithm suddenly picks out these 'old' gems.
- actionfromafar 2y ago
  ML directed A/B testing to see what sticks, is my uneducated guess.
  - ganzuul 2y ago
    I'm really hoping for a more human-centric version of 'interpretability'. That might be how the algo picks up what to trend but it doesn't tell us what sparked it.
OtomotO 2y ago
For anyone interested, these days there are multiple people working on impressive stuff, sometimes it's even open source: https://www.youtube.com/@GabeRundlett https://www.youtube.com/@GabeRundlett (open source engine in C++ with e.g. Rust bindings via C) https://www.youtube.com/@DouglasDwyer https://www.youtube.com/@DouglasDwyer (proprietary, using Rust and WGPU but interesting videos) https://www.youtube.com/@xima1 https://www.youtube.com/@xima1 (afaik proprietary, using WebGPU and typescript) Open source stuff: https://github.com/ria8651/alex https://github.com/ria8651/alex (Rust) https://github.com/davids91/shocovox https://github.com/davids91/shocovox (Rust) There is a myriad more, many discords...
- sambeau 2y ago
  The Minecraft team at 4J have just announced a new voxel-based crafting game platform. https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/dundee/4988656/4j-studios-stampy-cat-new-game/ https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/dundee/4988656/4j-studi...
- longor1996 2y ago
  With the help of the voxelgamedev community, I'm maintaining a relatively large listing of such projects over at https://voxel.wiki/wiki/projects/ https://voxel.wiki/wiki/projects/. Sadly, a lot of projects get abandoned.... :(
einpoklum 2y ago
While I got a nice grade in my Computer Graphics intro course back in the day - I have not done any CG since. I have a dumb question: Why is it better render small cubes, then to render triangles (or polygons)? I mean, a cube is, eventually, 6 squares, or 12 triangles, in a certain formation, right? So is the entire benefit captured by this 1/12 ratio? Or is there a deeper motivation for this pseudo-rasterization?
- hoseja 2y ago
  Not sure I'm fully understanding your question but the primary reason for the voxel engines is interactibility. They're trying to be Minecraft 2, not Crysis 5.
- Maxatar 2y ago
  Most voxel engines end up rendering triangles. The voxels are used to represent the world to allow for cool physics, in particular destruction.
  - HelloNurse 2y ago
    Unlike general meshes, the low-level triangles used to represent voxel surfaces can be easily computed in a shader rather than stored explicitly, and even per-voxel data can sometimes be recomputed on the fly because of procedural generation.
- qingcharles 2y ago
  All of these demos are surely using the same rendering engine underneath as a classic mesh 3D, but voxels let you smash stuff up easier than trying to figure out where to make breaks in meshes and close the holes. As Lin says "Universe = voxels" .. insinuating that atoms are essentially voxels.
jak6jak 2y ago
Are voxels the goto method for easy mesh manipulation without worrying about vertices? I’ve been trying to research ways to 3d model without worrying about topology. So far all I’ve found is CSG and voxels.
- magic_hamster 2y ago
  Can you even call voxel objects a mesh?
  - owenpalmer 2y ago
    Why not?
- arjonagelhout 2y ago
  There’s also SDF (Signed Distance Fields) modeling, such as present in multiple modeling tools like Adobe Substance 3D Modeler [0] or WOMP [1]. I suppose this is similar to voxels in that the data is stored in a uniform grid, but the way it gets rendered is different. [0] https://www.adobe.com/products/substance3d/apps/modeler.html https://www.adobe.com/products/substance3d/apps/modeler.html [1] https://womp.com/ https://womp.com/
  - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
    SDFs don't inherently have a grid, right? You can use marching cubes to sample them along a grid, but you can also do ray marching
    - skykooler 2y ago
      It depends on the representation. SDFs can be pure mathematical functions, in which case there is no grid, or they can be a grid of values representing distances to the implicit surface, in which case they do use a grid. The latter representation, to my knowledge, is rarely used in 3d, but it is used in 2d for SDF fonts for example.
rscho 2y ago
Hijacking the thread: I'm looking to compute sciency stuff on a grid of truncated octahedrons, and rendering that to voxels. Does anyone know a good way to do that??

75 points by helloplanets 2y ago

This might profit from some context: This is written by "John Lin", who is famous for his impressive voxel videos on social Media. He became a hallmark name in voxel discussions. See for example his youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCM2RhfMLoLqG24e_DYgTQeA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCM2RhfMLoLqG24e_DYgTQeA

actionfromafar 2y ago
As far as I can tell, he got famous for the voxel demos, then decided to not do voxels, based on feedback from fans. Edit: I misunderstood.
- bun_terminator 2y ago
  Huh, interesting. Even today when there's a voxel discussion on graphics programming communities - john lin comes but all the time
- TheRoque 2y ago
  From what I've read (the pinned comment in the aforementioned video), he just decided to ditch high resolution voxels for lower resolution ones, as the feedbacks said they preferred a more pixelated art style. But still voxels. But looking at his latest blog post, it seems that he's not focused on voxels at the moment yet. Or maybe got hired and can't talk about it, who knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- Crestwave 2y ago
  Hm, do you have a source for that? It's possible that you're mixing it up with his decision to shelf "micro-voxels" in favor of the traditional, chunkier voxel art style. https://youtube.com/watch?v=8ptH79R53c0 https://youtube.com/watch?v=8ptH79R53c0 (see pinned comment)
  - actionfromafar 2y ago
    Thank you, I think you are right.

truckerbill 2y ago

It's a shame he disappeared for some reason, his stuff was crazy

TheRoque 2y ago
His latest blog post/tweet was less than a year ago https://voxely.net/blog/using-a-rnn-for-2d-tile-map-synthesis/ https://voxely.net/blog/using-a-rnn-for-2d-tile-map-synthesi...

ganzuul 2y ago

It would be interesting to have some interpretability to how the YouTube algorithm suddenly picks out these 'old' gems.

actionfromafar 2y ago
ML directed A/B testing to see what sticks, is my uneducated guess.
- ganzuul 2y ago
  I'm really hoping for a more human-centric version of 'interpretability'. That might be how the algo picks up what to trend but it doesn't tell us what sparked it.

OtomotO 2y ago

For anyone interested, these days there are multiple people working on impressive stuff, sometimes it's even open source: https://www.youtube.com/@GabeRundlett https://www.youtube.com/@GabeRundlett (open source engine in C++ with e.g. Rust bindings via C) https://www.youtube.com/@DouglasDwyer https://www.youtube.com/@DouglasDwyer (proprietary, using Rust and WGPU but interesting videos) https://www.youtube.com/@xima1 https://www.youtube.com/@xima1 (afaik proprietary, using WebGPU and typescript) Open source stuff: https://github.com/ria8651/alex https://github.com/ria8651/alex (Rust) https://github.com/davids91/shocovox https://github.com/davids91/shocovox (Rust) There is a myriad more, many discords...

sambeau 2y ago
The Minecraft team at 4J have just announced a new voxel-based crafting game platform. https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/dundee/4988656/4j-studios-stampy-cat-new-game/ https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/dundee/4988656/4j-studi...
longor1996 2y ago
With the help of the voxelgamedev community, I'm maintaining a relatively large listing of such projects over at https://voxel.wiki/wiki/projects/ https://voxel.wiki/wiki/projects/. Sadly, a lot of projects get abandoned.... :(

einpoklum 2y ago

While I got a nice grade in my Computer Graphics intro course back in the day - I have not done any CG since. I have a dumb question: Why is it better render small cubes, then to render triangles (or polygons)? I mean, a cube is, eventually, 6 squares, or 12 triangles, in a certain formation, right? So is the entire benefit captured by this 1/12 ratio? Or is there a deeper motivation for this pseudo-rasterization?

hoseja 2y ago
Not sure I'm fully understanding your question but the primary reason for the voxel engines is interactibility. They're trying to be Minecraft 2, not Crysis 5.
Maxatar 2y ago
Most voxel engines end up rendering triangles. The voxels are used to represent the world to allow for cool physics, in particular destruction.
- HelloNurse 2y ago
  Unlike general meshes, the low-level triangles used to represent voxel surfaces can be easily computed in a shader rather than stored explicitly, and even per-voxel data can sometimes be recomputed on the fly because of procedural generation.
qingcharles 2y ago
All of these demos are surely using the same rendering engine underneath as a classic mesh 3D, but voxels let you smash stuff up easier than trying to figure out where to make breaks in meshes and close the holes. As Lin says "Universe = voxels" .. insinuating that atoms are essentially voxels.

jak6jak 2y ago

Are voxels the goto method for easy mesh manipulation without worrying about vertices? I’ve been trying to research ways to 3d model without worrying about topology. So far all I’ve found is CSG and voxels.

magic_hamster 2y ago
Can you even call voxel objects a mesh?
- owenpalmer 2y ago
  Why not?
arjonagelhout 2y ago
There’s also SDF (Signed Distance Fields) modeling, such as present in multiple modeling tools like Adobe Substance 3D Modeler [0] or WOMP [1]. I suppose this is similar to voxels in that the data is stored in a uniform grid, but the way it gets rendered is different. [0] https://www.adobe.com/products/substance3d/apps/modeler.html https://www.adobe.com/products/substance3d/apps/modeler.html [1] https://womp.com/ https://womp.com/
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
  SDFs don't inherently have a grid, right? You can use marching cubes to sample them along a grid, but you can also do ray marching
  - skykooler 2y ago
    It depends on the representation. SDFs can be pure mathematical functions, in which case there is no grid, or they can be a grid of values representing distances to the implicit surface, in which case they do use a grid. The latter representation, to my knowledge, is rarely used in 3d, but it is used in 2d for SDF fonts for example.

rscho 2y ago

Hijacking the thread: I'm looking to compute sciency stuff on a grid of truncated octahedrons, and rendering that to voxels. Does anyone know a good way to do that??