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Latest video and voxel deformation


PetdCat

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I was watching the latest video on the voxel technology that is used by DU.  In the video the show where they created a large rectangle and used a sphere shape to remove an arc from the rectangle.  When this was done, there was a deformation of the remaining voxels along the line of the arc.  Given the nature of voxels, I would expect some of this. 

 

However, that does bring up the question that if the shape of the voxel is going to be dependent on the voxels that surround it, will it be possible to use a "voxel reactor" to create "special" voxel shapes that can be cut and pasted into things.  Those of you familiar with building in Landmark will recognize the "voxelmancy" (I hate that term) approach.  The other part of this, is will the texture that is applied to an existing voxel also modify surface of the voxel, i.e.  a rough stone textures will give the voxel and actual rough finish, or merely the representation of a rough finish by the shading of the texture.

 

Since we are dealing with a Sci-Fi IP, the ability to have crisp lines and curves is going to be important.  My concern is that we are going to need to jump through a number of hoops in order to get those nice smooth curves, using "putty", etc.... in order to get the presentation that we wish on our builds.

 

Judging from some of the names I am seeing posted in the forums, we have quite a few builders here that know their way around the voxel universe and I think a good discussion of what our needs and wants this early on in the game process might be worthwhile.   I don't think any of us want to have to jump through 20 hoops to make a 1x1x20 cylinder, or spend half a day making an alphabet.

 

 

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Voxel Reactor in Landmark was geometrical glitch in that ForgeLight engine.


It was a bug, that the programmers at DayBreak called "a feature", which is like working in a kitchen and when someone finds a hair in their soup, you call it "a gourmet dish".



What NQ has done, is ACTUALLY plan those features. They demonstrate incredible angles on constructs and I can see some creative "line tool" uses for us to create shapes we want, without having to recreate bugs and glitches like in Landmark.

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I was watching the latest video on the voxel technology that is used by DU.  In the video the show where they created a large rectangle and used a sphere shape to remove an arc from the rectangle.  When this was done, there was a deformation of the remaining voxels along the line of the arc.  Given the nature of voxels, I would expect some of this. 

 

However, that does bring up the question that if the shape of the voxel is going to be dependent on the voxels that surround it, will it be possible to use a "voxel reactor" to create "special" voxel shapes that can be cut and pasted into things.  Those of you familiar with building in Landmark will recognize the "voxelmancy" (I hate that term) approach.  The other part of this, is will the texture that is applied to an existing voxel also modify surface of the voxel, i.e.  a rough stone textures will give the voxel and actual rough finish, or merely the representation of a rough finish by the shading of the texture.

 

Since we are dealing with a Sci-Fi IP, the ability to have crisp lines and curves is going to be important.  My concern is that we are going to need to jump through a number of hoops in order to get those nice smooth curves, using "putty", etc.... in order to get the presentation that we wish on our builds.

 

Judging from some of the names I am seeing posted in the forums, we have quite a few builders here that know their way around the voxel universe and I think a good discussion of what our needs and wants this early on in the game process might be worthwhile.   I don't think any of us want to have to jump through 20 hoops to make a 1x1x20 cylinder, or spend half a day making an alphabet.

There was an official discussion about saving voxel shapes you have already created to your library, where you can copy and paste them onto the same structure or new structures. I'm thinking even if it takes jumping through some hoops to make a few shapes, it won't be so bad as we can re-use them again and again, or re-use parts of them to get a shape that we want.

 

Smooth curved ships, like the Covenant from the Halo series, might be pretty tough unless there is a "roundification" tool of some kind, or the ability to create anchor points from which to stretch and push parts of a sphere or cube (like working with clay). I wouldn't be surprised if that kind of thing was already on their radar, but I also wouldn't be surprised if it comes much much later.

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Voxel Reactor in Landmark was geometrical glitch in that ForgeLight engine.

 

 

It was a bug, that the programmers at DayBreak called "a feature", which is like working in a kitchen and when someone finds a hair in their soup, you call it "a gourmet dish".

 

 

 

What NQ has done, is ACTUALLY plan those features. They demonstrate incredible angles on constructs and I can see some creative "line tool" uses for us to create shapes we want, without having to recreate bugs and glitches like in Landmark.

 

 

Ok Twerk once again.  

 

You mean Voxelfarm not Forgelight.   Forgelight is a game engine and has literally nothing to do with voxels.

 

A "voxel reactor" isn't a bug or a glitch or anything really.  It's just a way of looking at a single voxel.

 

For anyone who isn't familiar a voxel reactor is a term from Landmark.  It's just 8 single blocks (voxels) arranged in a 3x3 cube with one at each corner.  You copy a single voxel and paste it into the center to get a better look at the shape and also to modify individual corners of it by swapping in other reactor corners.

 

I can't imagine any reason why we wouldn't be able to use the same technique in DU.

 

edit: here's a picture of a small voxel in a reactor, you can see how it pulls each reactor corner in to the center.

EB5ri84.jpg

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I can't imagine any reason why we wouldn't be able to use the same technique in DU.

 

 

If smooth tool will allow to create things like nanovoxels or zerovoxels, then probably we will be able to recreate voxel reactors in DU, which would be awesome :)

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to be honest @Petcat, the latest video doesnt show anything new, but a simple introduction to voxel build for uninformed public about voxels (that also have no idea that Landmarks exists)

 

the video doesnt give any answer to the community 

 

- possibility to smooth voxel (till a tiny voxel aspect)

- possibility sculpt voxel (as mentionned many times already, but not shown)

- possibility to rotate or scale voxels

- possibility to rotate, scale, strech, one face of a voxel

- possibility to build your own voxel creation while on moving voxel spaceship

- possibility to unify 2 voxel constructs together build by 2 different builders

- possibility to save as blueprint

- etc...

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to be honest @Petcat, the latest video doesnt show anything new, but a simple introduction to voxel build for uninformed public about voxels (that also have no idea that Landmarks exists)

 

the video doesnt give any answer to the community 

 

- possibility to smooth voxel (till a tiny voxel aspect)

- possibility sculpt voxel (as mentionned many times already, but not shown)

- possibility to rotate or scale voxels

- possibility to rotate, scale, strech, one face of a voxel

- possibility to build your own voxel creation while on moving voxel spaceship

- possibility to unify 2 voxel constructs together build by 2 different builders

- possibility to save as blueprint

- etc...

 

 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1949863330/dual-universe-civilization-building-sci-fi-mmorpg/posts/1694816

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Well, they've stated that they're using dual contouring, so in theory creating all sorts of shapes is possible, within the confines of the contour "stencils" or whatever you'd call those they'll end up providing. Right now they have a sphere, triangular prism (Toblerone basically), cube (basically no contour) and cylinder. Combining these, if I understand the technology correctly, would allow you to create more elaborate shapes within a 25cm voxel. E.g. if you place a sphere and erase everything except one border voxel, you'll have a round cap thing that could be used as like a rivet or whatever.

 

[EDIT] As for sculpting tools and the like, I don't see why at least something like that couldn't be implemented, seems like the technology would allow it, and it wouldn't be any more resource intensive assuming they have some kind of a lower bound on the octree resolution, or however that works =p

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  • 1 month later...

As I saw from the videos, we can already do the triangular prism and have it scale along two axis. i.e. having it 3 blocks high and 3 blocks wide results in a 45 degree straight surface. I do not think it would be too difficult to have the start and end points start tangent to the axis and curve to each other. Something like this image, where the X or Y can be different ratios. Here it is 1-1, but you could double the X axis and the curve would be 2-1. Pretty sure it only requires a change to the vector formula that draws the connecting line. Would make such a difference if they would implement this. Like, difference between minecraft ships and Star Wars episode 1-3 ships.

 13223.jpg

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