Voronoi 3D Diagrams - Realistic Environment Interaction

Below is an example of a much older software which has been used for movies, and has had a lot of time to grow and become rather perfect at what it is.

Basically the idea is to reach a subtle version of where they are, but for unity3d and cost effective. At the time being I am going to release this script closed source(obfuscated DLL) for $25.00; But the price will depend on the poll, something like this requires time to make, and experience, and I would like to get something out of it for that time spent learning new stuff such as the triangulation, and implementing it into Unity where no one else has released any triangulation, so in some sense its two birds with one stone; 25.00 is a competitive price, but if 3 people buy it, that's not really going to pay off the hours of time I am spending on it; So we'll see.

But it currently is not quite ready to be released and considered usable for every scenerio.
The three big issues at the moment are:

• Triangulation ( for non-simple concave polytype with holes )
• Triangle Optimization (use as few triangles as possible without loosing any voronoi information )
• Data Structures ( KD Tree and Octree will speed up this process quite a bit enabling real-time performance on CPU/PCs )

Some important features that will eventually be included perhaps not in the first release are:

• Geometry based point data
• Texture based point data
• Procedural point sets to handle different material ( wood/glass/rock )
• 2D Voronoi tesselation - Creating small voronoi based cracks/ridges on the surface of each shard
• Impact based destruction, where you shoot, is where it break, extruding into large pieces further from the impact point
• Ability to break cells into smaller cells

Some things that for sure will be implemented are

• Complete Editor Tools to make it easy to use and visualize
• In-Game interaction and automated rigid body / (mesh/sphere collider) component injection
• Joint system with editor allowing one to control how much force it takes to break these peices apart;
• Convex Shapes Squares, Spheres, Pyramids
• Special Material(shader) - For handling inner and outter textures of the mesh

Further into the future:
If I can get my hands on the pro version unity, I could speed all of this up much much much more, using the GPU in ways the indie version does not allow me and release a pro version, but for now that's speculation. lets see how this sells. and whether or not people want to donate for that.

If people would like to discuss more about their use of this, and anything ideas for it, let me know, i wish to make this a great component for any unity game(that finds use of it);

Other possible uses of Voronoi:
Off the top of my head, it can be used to generate roadways and land masses for city generation;

 

Heh this is nice coincidence.. Yesterday I was researching same topic for myself Will keep an eye on this.

 

I thought the video was in unity and almost pissed myself. But then I realized it wasn't

 

Are you using custom code or some dynamic-link library?

 

I voted "no use for it" because you are releasing it as an obfuscated dll. We have been burned too many times by "disappearing asset creators" to be stuck with code we cannot debug.

 

@cupsster :
im writting the code from scratch, into a .net dll, and then obfuscating it, to keep the price down, if anyone wants open source to learn from, post their own version of the product to compete, etc etc, then it'd be worth more.

@jaimi :
Why would it need to be debugged? I would not release it to you without first telling you what it can do, cannot do, limitations, and stuff of that nature. if someone was to try and do more then that's not a problem of me. I would sell it for $75.00 + with source code.

 

Wow, I am definitely interested. Working on 2D Voronoi on a side project from time to time. A 3D one would have many uses.

 

I have no problem at all with obfuscated code if it is tuned and properly documented. Will keep an eye on this. 3-4 years ago I made 3d voronoi script in Rhinoceros that does pretty same thing. But my head was about to explode. It was before GrassHopper era so no fancy click here-there and you are set

 

Working on triangulation, the first release may not support holes.. sorry, i've done all of this except triangulation out of 11 years, somehow i skipped that part, its more challenging then I expected.. though I've got some fairly nice triangulation in the works without the holes, just a couple concerns with it i'm going to try and work out before i release it.hopefully no one wants to crumble a doughnut(torus) or something of that nature.. cause there may be instances where it doesnt quite work, though it may in others..

anyways, for $25.00, i guess you can't really ask to much, specially since the current poll only says ima make $150 from this, which I was really expecting more. :O i may even consider paying someone using the money i make to write the triangulation for me. xD

[edit] so im not happy with the restrictions of not being able to triangulate holes, and polygons which are not connected immediatly during the triangulation, so i went ahead and started the KD tree in the meantime, hopefully I'll figure out a nice triangulation before to long, don't want to bore anyone.

 

Another option is to go for DLL and just pass that DLL points. I don't know if you also plan to support UV but this can be way to go. I think you can find some nice DLL that can make this happen and just implement wrapper for it to comunicate with yours DLL.

 

Will this works on webplayer?

Great work, I am really interested to buy it.

Kenshin

 

@kenshin: well, it really would work anywhere, considering it uses the unity3d engine, so anything that works on this should work on, the only issue in terms of using anywhere else other then a PC is speed, but the webplayer works through the computer, in addition the first issue may require pre-computing the voronoi cells, and just using them in the game, opposed to calculating them at run-time, which i may include in a pro version later on using the GPU.

p.s: if you're interested in purchasing it, why not vote on the poll "all the way", inferring you will purchase this asset. I'd really like to see that the money I am getting out of this is really worth the time I am neglecting on other projects, in addition the features this thing will support in many ways can be used for several different application types, such as the triangulation, it will be a much more complicated triangulation not something that should only handle few types of triangle hulls, second the octree can be used for several optimization purposes to any applications, third the KD-tree offers much help for realtime computation of NN-search(nearest neighbor) and increases speed, as well the the Geometry utility I am making that handles some rather neat math as well.

personally this will offer some nice features that are useful in many games, not including just the 3d voronoi. so in reality it should be worth more then $25, since i can find someone selling 3D models of grass for more then that. But in the end, its not about the price as its ment to be competitive, its about bringing something fun to the unity3d games made here.

note: the reason this is obfuscated code at least for the $25.00 price(maybe i'll release source under the condition its not shared for a bit more like $75.00); is because its only ment to introduce these features, where if you wanted to actually learn from it, or steal and claim it as your own, it'd cost more.

also, i decided that if I do raise enough money from this(which I highly doubt), i will make a pro-version which does some of the math on the GPU enabling real-time interaction and more realistic effects.

 

Hi N1nja,
I think here is a little misunderstanding... may be I have not correctly interpret the pool but from the beginning this post wasen't so clear for me.
Anyway after some additional research I understood and evaluate usefull for my work, for that reason I wrote a post to support you.

About your additionl considerations I can only respect it, is your work, your asset and your business.
If you do a good job I'm sure you'll find people who will pay to buy your product, as already happens for other products on the asset store.

Good luck!
Kenshin

 

sorry kenshin, not all of that was geared towards you, just the first two paragraphs, the rest is statements towards anyone who says "im not buying this cus the code is obfuscated", and "cant afford it";

[update 8/27/12]


almost done.