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Mathig

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  1. This is exactly what I was looking for, thanks. So, just to be clear, the only thing that worries me is whether or not the terrain shown at the beginning and end of this video is actually voxel based or something else. Now, I agree that the terrain shown in the middle absolutely is Voxel-based. However, I'm not convinced the two are the same. I'm also a little confused why the higher mesh detail isn't centered around the camera for that part of the video, but I imagine it would be almost as hard to program a fake mesh enhancement that convincing as a real one, so... @Wesbruce your example is poor, because it is very obviously voxel based. Note the texture is almost the same flat tone for everything. It's not displayed as cubes, but the data is obviously stored as cubes. What keeps tripping me up is those small indents on the ground and the lack of obvious tiling which you should see unless they are messing with the textures. Also, why the tower at 10 seconds is floating on the right. However, after staring at the terrain I can kinda sorta see tiling textures that are maybe randomly rotated or cropped (off of a larger single texture), perhaps based on a seed derived from it's coordinates? Perhaps small variations in height are actually non-existent and are really just baked on as part of the texture? Yeah, now I'm starting to see it. I guess I didn't understand that dual contouring was basically averaging terrain meshes over local space. I thought it was storing shapes as meta data. That explains a lot of why the spherical tool doesn't seem to "work" as intended, or behaves rather unpredictably. I have a very hard time believing that those voxels are 100 cm though. They look much more like 25 cm. Anyway, that doesn't matter either way. Thanks @Wesbruce for the pdf. While I probably didn't read it closely enough to fully understand it, it did help.
  2. As far as I know, voxel technology means saving meta-data to a grid of a certain mesh. In Minecraft that meta data is a block type which indicates which block it is, grass, dirt, what-have you. On top of the meta-data mesh, you need to generate a surface to attach textures to. Minecraft does this by generating planar faces in between the block and any transparent blocks. Dual Contouring, to my understanding, generates a surface based purely on that mesh. In their video here at 1:47, that is clearly voxel based. At 1 second, however, I'd argue the terrain isn't. I'll just assume the rocks are effectively elements and were custom designed. The terrain, especially towards the bottom right, however, does not look like it is flat except for the occasional 20cm change over a distance of 20cm. The terrain towards the middle-left isn't what I'm worried about, since I can't see it clearly. It's the bottom right that concerns me.
  3. Do you mean this? If so, then no, it does not answer my questions regarding voxel mesh size. If anything, those videos in specific imply something quite dishonest going on behalf of Novaquark, but as I've said, I thought to give them the benefit of the doubt. Specifically, this video seems to be an unmistakable example of non-voxel based terrain masqueraded as voxel based terrain generation. Would you like me to explain why that terrain isn't voxel based, why non-voxel based terrain is a terrible design decision(for Dual Universe), or what dark scheme I think Novaquark could be up to? It's obvious that either I'm missing some major feature of development, or NovaQuark isn't being honest with development, and that concerns me.
  4. So, I wrote this long comment, but it didn't bode well for Novaquark. So, I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt. What is the lowest mesh size for the voxel terrain. (If you aren't a dev, please link some form of source) I'm also curious why the smallest mesh size ever used is on the order of 100 mm, but the terrain looks to be on the order of 1 mm or even smaller.
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