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Voxeland - Voxel Terrain Tool

Discussion in 'Assets and Asset Store' started by Wright, Jun 25, 2013.

  1. nikita68

    nikita68

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    @Wright

    Is it possible to have each island as a separate terrain? We're planning on having a huge map, so i don't know how well creating it as one terrain will go.

    Thanks!
     
  2. Wright

    Wright

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    You can have multiple Voxeland objects in one scene. Theoretically every of the objects could be placed anywhere in scene (but recently I've got feedback that it can cause leaks, so now I'm checking it. Anyways if bug exists it will be fixed). Creating each island in a non-infinite separate terrain is a quite correct approach. You can even bake terrains to meshes if they should not be changed ingame.
     
  3. FranckS

    FranckS

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    Hello.

    I bought Voxeland yesterday, it is a very nice tech with a lot of potential. However, being used to voxel sculpting for many years using tools such as ClayTools and 3D-Coat, I have to say that unfortunately the ergonomy of Voxeland is terrible. I understand this is not a sculpting app per se, but if I want to create interesting shapes, the 'click' to add one bloc at a time paradigm is just a no-go.

    The first thing I noticed was when you tumble the view (Alt+Left Click) with the Voxeland object active this adds a bloc wherever your mouse was pointing. This for me is a show-stopper and must be fixed. You need to be able to tumble the view to evaluate your shape and having to un-select the object every time is just not going to work.

    The smooth option is nice, but we need more hi-level tools to make sculpting more useable. At least a flatten brush (flattens the brush area along the average normal) and a plateau brush (sculpts a plateau at a given height) would be a good start.

    Object brushes would be an interesting tool: Use a mesh as a brush (with the ability to change scale and rotation) and voxelize it to easily build repeatble features in the map (arches or whatever).

    Finally, as it has been suggested in earlier posts, we need a continuous sculpting brush, not just one click at a time.

    Also I would suggest interroperability with 3D-Coat, the most popular and afforable voxel sculpting solution out there.


    Keep-up the good work,
    Franck.
     
    ALUNBRA likes this.
  4. Wright

    Wright

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    I'll try to explain what Voxeland is and what it isn't. Imagine Minecraft terrain build of cubical blocks. These blocks are like pixels in raster image - they all build up in a grid. But this cubical terrain is smoothed, and terrain textures are blended. Following this ideology - a smoothed Minecraft - working with single blocks or block groups is ok, its just like pixel-art in 2d.

    Voxeland is not zbrush, mudbox, 3d-coat or any other sculpting tool made in Unity. I do not want to compete with pixologic or autodesk :) The best way to make a sculpted terrain - make it in zbrush and bake to mesh. This can save not only sculpting efforts, but it also will be better for ingame performance or level loading.

    So Voxeland is a smoothed Minecraft terrain. And it is not zbrush on Unity engine.

    And thanks for the feedback about Alt - I mostly used to rotate camera with right mouse. This will be fixed.
     
    Last edited: Jul 3, 2014
  5. FranckS

    FranckS

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    Hello Wright, and thanks for your response.

    I think I fully understand what Voxeland is at the moment, and I just would like to see it improve, much like you do and many others would I'm sure.

    I also understand the difference between surface sculpting tools such as zbrush and mudbox and volumetric sculpting tools such as ClayTools and 3D-Coat. 3D-Coat for instance uses marching cubes to render the surface of its voxels into triangles but the underlying structure is volumetric (unlike z-brush and mudbox). Hence the possible interroperability with 3dcoat.

    I also understand the level of detail of individual asset sculpting applications, and terrain sculpting tools is not necessarily the same. But some usage can certainly be learned from one another.

    I know I can sculpt a terrain in a 3rd party app and import it as a mesh (I've done that in many projects already, although it was using another game engine), and this is very efficient indeed in term of rendering performance, but it is a very static approach in term of production pipeline. To me the true power of having a terrain editor such as Voxeland inside Unity is having the ability to modify the terrain as you design the game for gameplay purpose, in-engine, without having to jump to an external application and re-process the mesh blindly (decimation, splitting for occlusion...and so on).

    You mention pixel-art as an example, but most pixel art nowadays is no longer made one pixel at a time using a mouse (I did that for years in the 80s and 90s on C64 and Amiga so I know what I'm talking about). Now it is done with a graphics tablet using Photoshop or other modern software. What I mean by that is that the effect might be on purpose old-looking, but the tools are modern and using much higher-level techniques. It all goes down to how fast you can build hi-quality content. As a professional game developer and artist, I'm always looking for the fastest way to create great content.

    So as promising as Voxeland is, my point of view is that many of its users would benefit from higher-level tools such as the ones I mentioned in my previous post. Not trying to be zbrush or whatever, but if you look at it, currently creating large and interesting terrain features one (or a few) bloc(s) at a time is quite tedious. Not to sound harsh but if that was already enough, why would you have a terrain generator included then.

    I'd be curious to hear what other users think about all this.

    Thanks for your time reading my rather long post, and looking forward to new Voxeland developments.
    Franck.
     
    ALUNBRA likes this.
  6. karmacomp

    karmacomp

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    I am considering Voxeland for my game, but a few questions:

    How is it on mobile? Will I get a decent frame rate on IOS? Android?

    Can I use other terrains with Voxeland? Can I mix Unity terrains with Voxeland?

    Can water be used with Voxeland?

    Does it play nice with UFPS, NGUI and Playmaker?

    Lastly, is there ever a sale/coupon on it because money is tight but I really would like to buy this. Can I 'earn' a copy?

    Thank you for your answers.

    Mike
     
    Last edited: Jul 9, 2014
  7. Wright

    Wright

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    The target platform is the PC. But users claim that it works well on iPhone, although I have not tested the performance on mobile devices. Dynamic build or terrain change can cause some lag on mobiles. But a baked terrain will work as standart meshes, so if your terrain must not change ingame you can bake it for mobile devices.

    You can have a standard Unity terrain along with Voxeland in one scene. As well as water planes or other objects.

    I can see no problems in compatability with UFPS, NGUI and Playmaker. Voxeland has a collider mesh and should be treated by UFPS and Playmaker as a standard Unity mesh.


    Well, there was a contest on the best demo scene screenshot, we even had a winner. But I think it could be slightly extended if there are people willing to take part.

    So, I have an announcement to all who are interested in Voxeland: it is possible to receive it in exchange for exciting screenshots made with the demo build. However, screenshots should really be gorgeous:) It's a win-win agreement - will I receive promotional materials, and you will get Voxeland. So go ahead, good luck!

    Demo build (all-in-one file, no installation, automatic unpacking)
     
  8. DaneC020

    DaneC020

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    I don't know how beautiful this screen shot is but it was fun building it! Made a little hovel in the side of the mountains and then threw some torches above the windows to cast come light. This engine is quite fun, my only feedback would be to have a Cntrl-Z feature since one mistake with a large spherical brush can destroy a good bit of work.

    Thanks for the demo Wright and good luck with the sales!

    -Dane
     
  9. karmacomp

    karmacomp

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    Thank you for the answers. My only dilemma is that web demo stutters something terrible on my high end laptop so I cannot imagine how bad it would be on low spec and mobile/tablet systems.

    Has this been fixed? Is there a more current demo?

    Mike
     
  10. Wright

    Wright

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    What are stutters? For how long they last? When do they occure?

    You can try non-web demo mentioned above.
     
  11. Skullbot

    Skullbot

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    I also get those loading hiccups.
    They seem to be related to LOD calculation, or at least the loading of full LOD terrain, or maybe just loading the terrain chunks.
    Checking the experimental multithreaded rendering seems to help a bit to reduce those loading times.

    Edit : Also happens in both web demo and offline demo linked above.
     
    Last edited: Jul 12, 2014
  12. zephren

    zephren

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    You know what people who make assets should do? Make time lapse videos, better of course would be an obvious tutorial or feature explanations. But a timelapse is so easy, just record your normal workflow and put on youtube. so people can follow you and see how you are using the features.

    You need a timelapse video doing the following:
    1. creating different types of terrain bodies such as, deserts, mountains, plains, canyons, perhaps even alien planets.
    2. Height map importation
    The reason I say this is, I can change these features press rebuild and nothing seems to happen.
     
  13. Wright

    Wright

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    I cannot say if stutters are normal or not while I do not know how often they happen and how long they take. Terrain change can slow down performance to 10 fps in worst case - when terrain changes every frame (hard to achieve in practice). And dynamic build calculates every 50 meters of camera position change. Dynamic build usually takes up to half a second to calculate. This is the price that should be paid to build and smooth voxel terrain and re-assign it's collision mesh.

    That's really something broke with PNG heightmap import. It will be fixed it in upcoming 3.11
     
  14. zephren

    zephren

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    what is this?
     

    Attached Files:

  15. Wright

    Wright

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    I have a request to all who makes the bug-report:
    • Please inform me about the steps how to reproduce the bug. Or at least indicate under what circumstances you've noted it. For example: "open Unity -> create new voxeland terrain -> press 'load from txt' -> load attached file". I cannot guess how to fix a problem from a console image, really. Nobody can.
    • If I cannot reproduce the bug I can ask for the terrain data asset and a scene with all objects removed, except Voxeland object.
    • If you have a question or report addressed to me personally - use my mail: mail@denispahunov.ru Usually I check the forum once a day, while mail is synced every time - I'll know about your problem faster and it could be more convenient to solve it. I guess when you encounter a bug you can be pretty angry on Voxeland and want to notify everybody about a problem - I have nothing against it, but would be great if you duplicate your report both to forums and mail. If you have a question or difficulties that could be interesting to others - definitely use forum only.
    Thanks.

    I figured out the problem. Your heightmap has to be inside assets folder, have a read/write attribute enabled and have no compression (be truecolor). Then it could be imported without any problems. I'll add a message notifier with heightmap requirements in new version.
     
    Last edited: Jul 16, 2014
  16. zephren

    zephren

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    Cool, as far as getting the problem. it only happens when I start using the prefabs that I want. I have entire voxeland just disappear. I need to use Unistorm, and MasterCamera. and if I try to import your terrain or if I have One already in the hierachy it will just disappear.

    I have it working but with a small terrain, I think at 300, but I would like a real big terrain preferably at 1024.

    Also I would like a terrain that has a lot less plateaus more like a beach area with cliffs some mountains how can I go about setting up a scene like that. using your generator?

    What do you do after changing the peramiters in the generator? Do you press rebuild because I never see any results.
     
  17. Ascensi

    Ascensi

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    This disappearing act happens to me, I've informed Wright.. other users suggested it might be about moving the terrains out of their default generated position. I can't use this until it's resolved.. I'm afraid of working on something, have it disappear.. Not only that I've received errors about memory from 10 terrains at size 50... and after some stopped showing.. I'd get a memory error or unity would simple crash and completely erase my unity scene file! This issue only applies to making a big terrain and moving it or a bunch of smaller ones and moving them.. I'd imagine that it works just fine for other people. I have a gaming Laptop "Asus G75V" 8 GB of ram, 8x 2.3GHz CPU cores, 2 GB of video ram (GeoForce 660M) my system should be powerful enough.. maybe we just need that 64 Bit Unity update ;)
     
  18. Wright

    Wright

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    zephren, check pm

    I don't think that it's a matter of hardware. I'll try to find out using zephren's data.

    By the default generator creates a terrain in the areas where there is no terrain generated. To overwrite existing terrain turn on 'Overwrite' checbox in Generator settings.

    To create "smooth" terrain (note that due to cubical structure it will be more ledder-like) with some cliff islands you can try increasing sediment amount (to 0.05 for instance) and valley opacity (to something like 0.75).
     
  19. Ascensi

    Ascensi

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    Hi Write, thank you for the new update! I've downloaded V3.12 and saw some new terrain position areas (Terrain Center) under "settings" then checked your documentation/pdf and realized it hasn't been updated with the new functions. If I am to safely create a few terrains and position them around a village/terrain for the center what would be ideal use transforms or Terrain center or both?

    - I do not yet know what Terrain Center's purpose is yet..

    Update: I just wanted to let you know that Unity crashed again.. I tried creating additional terrains and moving them into place. I think the issue might be with multi-threading enabled.. maybe once multi-threading is assigned to one terrain it doesn't share threads with other terrains?
     
    Last edited: Jul 22, 2014
  20. Wright

    Wright

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    zephren, your terrain disappeared because of internal 'visible' was set to false somehow. I'll add some functionality and bring it to inspector so user can determine if a terrain of a certain type should be visible or not (for example, for using cubic prefabs instead of terrain).

    Ascensi, multithreading is still experimental. It can cause terrain disappear for one frame. And probably it can cause bugs with several terrains, although it was designed with a multi terrain support.

    Terrain center and extend sets the shift of terrain from it's transform position and it's size. Terrain center is the analog of a camera position on infinite terrain.
     
  21. africanrhino

    africanrhino

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    I'm also having the stutters and it really makes voxeland tedious to work with. It's definitely a problem with dynamic builds taking too long to generate. I understand that building and smoothing the voxel terrain might take longer than a couple of milliseconds but I don't understand is why it can't do it in the background or maybe break the task into chunks that run the task just long enough not to skip too many frames.
    I really love voxeland, I think it is probably the best looking engine of its kind :)
     
  22. Johat

    Johat

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    I don't know if you're still checking here, but I recently got the your Voxeland package and unfortunately I'm running into a few issues with it. I really like the usability of the tool and the ease of creating interesting landscapes it provides, however the problems I'm having make it pretty much unusable at the moment.

    Firstly, I can't seem to get grass to show up outside of using generated terrain. When setting up block types, I'm aware that I need to tick the box that says "Grass" for it to have grass above it, but the grass never shows up when I build with this block. I have grass types set up too.

    Looking over the code a bit, it seems there's an extra parameter that goes along with the block type -- the grass texture -- but this never shows up in the inspector. I presume the expected behaviour is that this field appears when "Grass" is ticked. It'd be very limiting on the package if you could only have grass on generated terrain.

    Secondly, whenever using generated terrain and then using the brush to modify it yourself, there always comes a point where almost all the terrain vanishes permanently. Not sure as of yet whether this is simply after a matter of time or its to do with where you're building, but it appears at complete random. The vast majority of the terrain simply vanishes and the console fills up with index out of range exceptions. When this happens, the only solution seems to be deleting the whole terrain and starting again. The out of range exception comes from the GetBlock function in the ListWrapper class in the Data class. I don't know all the details of what the function's getting used for, but it definitely seems like there's a few places there where issues could arise with list bounds.

    Thirdly, which is more usability thing than anything else, I seem to have the same issues others are having with a bit of a stuttering when placing blocks. It seems to be effected by how many other blocks it's impacting, which makes sense. When building up and just placing one top of the other it seems reasonably smooth, but in any other situation there's always a pause, which slows your work flow down considerably. It can also lead to errors if you move your mouse before it finishes processing as it often ends up placing the block in the new mouse position instead. Further, it slows down panning around the scene quite considerably -- I know it's obviously heavier than a standard object because it's doing a lot of clever things under the hood, and my intention is to always bake down to a mesh (I don't need real time manipulation for my purposes) -- but again it does interrupt the work flow somewhat.

    The second one in particular, makes the package near unusable, unfortunately.

    For the most part I like the package and it has great potential to be a really powerful world-building tool. Just wanted to make sure you were aware of these issues as they're pretty severe! I hope I don't come across as too negative, because I really do believe in the potential of this package. Unfortunately, at the moment, it's a bit unusable in a real game environment.
     
  23. Ramsdal

    Ramsdal

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    Hey I have two questions.

    Firstly, is this asset still under development and can I expect future improvements?

    Secondly and most importantly, I have read a few places that it should be able to run okay on mobile. Did anyone here get that to work? I would like to know that before throwing money at it... :)

    Best Regards
     
  24. brzozowsky

    brzozowsky

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    Anyone knows how to add IBL-Skyshop to the Voxeland Triplanar shader?
     
  25. cda1987

    cda1987

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    I'm running into some of the same problems as Johat. I got one aditional problem whenever I make a 1000+ Voxelterrain, then use the painter I've been get presented with a error.

    Code (csharp):
    1.  
    2. IndexOutOfRangeException: Array index is out of range.
    3. Voxeland.Data+ListWrapper.SetBlock (Int32 y, Byte t) (at Assets/Voxeland/Scripts/Main/Data.cs:105)
    4. Voxeland.Data.SetBlock (Int32 x, Int32 y, Int32 z, Byte t, Boolean filled) (at Assets/Voxeland/Scripts/Main/Data.cs:326)
    5. Voxeland.VoxelandTerrain.SetBlocks (Int32 x, Int32 y, Int32 z, Byte type, Int32 extend, Boolean spherify, Boolean replace) (at Assets/Voxeland/Scripts/VoxelandTerrain.cs:896)
    6. Voxeland.VoxelandTerrain.Edit (Ray aimRay, Boolean add, Boolean dig, Boolean smooth, Boolean replace) (at Assets/Voxeland/Scripts/VoxelandTerrain.cs:596)
    7. Voxeland.VoxelandTerrain.Edit (UnityEngine.Camera activeCam, Vector2 mousePos, Boolean mouseDown, Boolean shift, Boolean control) (at Assets/Voxeland/Scripts/VoxelandTerrain.cs:548)
    8. Voxeland.VoxelandEditor.OnSceneGUI () (at Assets/Voxeland/Scripts/Editor/VoxelandEditor.cs:57)
    9. System.Reflection.MonoMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/monoAndRuntimeClassLibs/build/mcs/class/corlib/System.Reflection/MonoMethod.cs:222)
    10. Rethrow as TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.
    11. System.Reflection.MonoMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/monoAndRuntimeClassLibs/build/mcs/class/corlib/System.Reflection/MonoMethod.cs:232)
    12. System.Reflection.MethodBase.Invoke (System.Object obj, System.Object[] parameters) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/monoAndRuntimeClassLibs/build/mcs/class/corlib/System.Reflection/MethodBase.cs:115)
    13. UnityEditor.SceneView.CallOnSceneGUI () (at C:/BuildAgent/work/d3d49558e4d408f4/Editor/Mono/SceneView/SceneView.cs:1649)
    14. UnityEditor.SceneView.HandleSelectionAndOnSceneGUI () (at C:/BuildAgent/work/d3d49558e4d408f4/Editor/Mono/SceneView/SceneView.cs:1051)
    15. UnityEditor.SceneView.OnGUI () (at C:/BuildAgent/work/d3d49558e4d408f4/Editor/Mono/SceneView/SceneView.cs:928)
    16. System.Reflection.MonoMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/monoAndRuntimeClassLibs/build/mcs/class/corlib/System.Reflection/MonoMethod.cs:222)
    Any advise on this would be great!
     
    RealSoftGames likes this.
  26. Wright

    Wright

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    Hi all, sorry for the relatively long silence, now I'm back from vacation.

    africanrhino, right now I'm working on improving of multi-threading, it will take a lot of calculations to the background. And although it will not make plugin absolutely smooth (mesh calculations and collision creation has to be in main thread) it can increase running smoothness.

    Johat, I'll check the grass algorithm. And could you please send me a scene with a vanished terrain and terrain data itself?

    Ramsdal, I try to improve Voxeland and yet do not plan to stop. You can add feature requests on Idea Informer. And check the PM regarding the second question.

    brzozowsky, you'll have to combine Voxeland blending and triplanar mapping and skyshop features in one shader. There is no simple way to do it.

    cda1987, I'll look into Johat's scene or you can send me yours. Btw are you making 1000+ terrain without dynamic build?
     
  27. U2

    U2

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    Since the latest release I get crashes all the time now while it tries to generate the terrain. Either while loading a scene or by hitting the generate button. The error is a little pop up that says Too Many Heaps Error. Then the little pop up cascades with a lot more of them like I just won a game of solitaire. Pretty frustrating.
     
  28. GamePowerNetwork

    GamePowerNetwork

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    Hello, I have 2 questions.

    1.) Can a voxeland terrain be converted to a mesh?

    2.) Can a larget voxeland terrain be split up into multiple terrains? The reason I ask is because I'd like to create a large world that loads and unloads pieces of the terrain as needed.
     
  29. Wright

    Wright

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    U2, this error usually occurs when chunk has too many faces. What is your chunk size?

    PyroStudios, you can bake terrain to Unity mesh and save it as asset file. This asset could be used anywhere in Unity as a standard mesh, but you cannot export it for editing in other software (unless you uncomment .obj export code section - obj do not support vertex colors, so the exported terrain will loose terrain types information).

    Voxeland supports dynamic build out of the box. The large world is split in smaller areas, they build when camera comes closer and destroy when camera is far. Theoretically, terrain can be almost infinite. Building new chunks can cause a some lag, I'm dealing with it now.
     
  30. GamePowerNetwork

    GamePowerNetwork

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    Thanks Wright for the quick reply!

    One last question I forgot to ask... can I export a height map from a program like "World Machine" and have Voxeland build the terrain from that height map?
     
  31. Wright

    Wright

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    Yes, you can save heightmap in .png format and import it to Voxeland
     
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  32. GamePowerNetwork

    GamePowerNetwork

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    That's awesome! Thank you!
     
  33. Carnes

    Carnes

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    Hey Wright, bought Voxeland this weekend and really enjoying it. I was able to get some interesting terrain generated but only with one block type. I haven't looked at the generator code yet (currently at work). Do you have another tutorial covering random terrain generation?
     
  34. Carnes

    Carnes

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    Played with it some more. Pretty easy to get a mix of stone, dirt, and grass types. Haven't figured out grass prefab yet though. Really loving it : )

    I did find a small index out of range error that popped up occasionally. Data.cs, Line 57:
    Code (CSharp):
    1. if (num>=list.Count) { byteColumnLength=y; break; }
    2. //Changed to:
    3. if (num>=list.Count-1) { byteColumnLength=y; break; }
    num is zero based but Count starts at 1.

    Going to keep playing with it and see if i can get some generation of trees and prefab grass.
     
  35. Wright

    Wright

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    Carnes, you can set block type on each generation stage. For example, if you set type number of cliff in 'random' section, and type of grass in 'erosion' section, generator will make a sediment of grass blocks.

    Rather strange, I never experienced an error in that line. Thanks for advice, I'll do some tests and maybe include change in new version. For now I afraid Voxeland will loose top block of the column on terrain change. Would be great if you could describe the way to reproduce an error, or at least to specify the conditions under which it occurs if it is occasional.
     
  36. Carnes

    Carnes

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    Just removed my change and can't recreate the error : / If it pops up again i'll save the scene and figure out why.
     
    Last edited: Sep 25, 2014
  37. Tagaris

    Tagaris

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    Has anyone a suggestion on the most elegant way to use more than four textures in a single chunk?

    I was thinking about just stacking multiple voxelands (or at least multiple HiResChunks) on top of each other as kind of "layers" (the lack of blending would be a added bonus, not a problem). But I doubt that's very performant, and I would need at least three voxelands (12 different block types) with this approach.
     
    Last edited: Oct 2, 2014
  38. Wright

    Wright

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    The thing is that each of the texture corresponds to a color channel in vertex color information (RGB for 3 textures, 1-RGB for the fourth one, and alpha for ambient to be precise). But it does not mean that all the terrain block types number is limited to 4, you can use different textures on different chunks. As far as I can imagine the need to blend 12 textures in one a small patch occurs rarely, so maybe a good solution will be reducing the chunk size. Sure it;s better than drawing all the terrain multiple times.
    I think I know the way to increase number of textures per chunk, but it will cause re-writing current system and more heavy shaders. You can post suggestion on http://www.voxeland.idea.informer.com/, voting for it can show it's actuality.
     
  39. Tagaris

    Tagaris

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    Thank you for the response. I want players to mine large pre-generated ressource deposits that are buried in the ground. Since chunks are only two-dimensional, reducing the chunk size will not solve the problem of having different ressources on top of each other on the z-axis. Hopefully I'm not the only one that finds the "4 textures per chunk limitation" very restricting, because coding complex shaders myself is certainly not my strong point.
     
  40. RealSoftGames

    RealSoftGames

    Joined:
    Jun 8, 2014
    Posts:
    220
    Hi before i purchase this asset i have a few questions. Terraincomposer can make such large scale maps, but fails to do what ineed it to. my aim is to have several islands separated by water, which i hope this asset is able to achieve,

    am i able to create more than one island per scene.
    and max size of the terrain
     
    Last edited: Nov 5, 2014
  41. furiouslol

    furiouslol

    Joined:
    Aug 19, 2014
    Posts:
    19
    Hi!

    Is infinite terrain generation possible with this asset? I'm taken a look at others (e.g. TerraVol, Ruaumoko) and they seem to be able to handle this, however this asset looks somewhat more promising if infinite terrain gen is supported.

    Thanks
     
    RealSoftGames likes this.
  42. RealSoftGames

    RealSoftGames

    Joined:
    Jun 8, 2014
    Posts:
    220
    this is also a feature i have not been able to find with any terrain tool sets, if you have found a solution for this please let me know.
     
    Last edited: Nov 7, 2014
  43. Wright

    Wright

    Joined:
    Feb 26, 2013
    Posts:
    2,267
    aquilinajake, you can have several Voxeland objects in a single scene. You can make each island on a separate terrain as well as make all the islands in one. What way to preferу depends on the size of an islands and a distance between them - for small islands divided by a vast the separate objects would be better.

    furiouslol, Voxeland terrain is theoretically infinite. There are two limitations, though:
    - you can not see all of your infinite terrain at once (because, actually, nobody can see something infinite :) ) - new terrain chunks will be build as you will come closer to them, and
    - Voxeland does not have on-the-fly terrain generation. Assume that Voxeland is more level editing tool than ingame randomizer: level designer should generate some terrain area, make changes in it and then proceed to other area. All the terrain displayed in game should be made in editor.
     
  44. Hydroliquid

    Hydroliquid

    Joined:
    Dec 1, 2014
    Posts:
    2
    Hello Wright.
    Will this tool work with an already created terrain or can i apply a height map to it?
     
  45. Ufonautas

    Ufonautas

    Joined:
    Dec 4, 2014
    Posts:
    3
    Was wondering if it's possible to make it infinity randomly generated?
     
  46. Wright

    Wright

    Joined:
    Feb 26, 2013
    Posts:
    2,267
    Hydroliquid, you can import a heightmap (quite easy: save it as png -> Import/Export -> Import Heightmap).
    Ufonautas, I'll see what I can do. If I succeed to speed up erosion generator to make it work on the run I'll implement this feature for sure. There is no problem with noise and terraces, they work fast, but erosion... it requires time to calculate it right.
     
  47. Ufonautas

    Ufonautas

    Joined:
    Dec 4, 2014
    Posts:
    3
    As seen on Bitcoin forums, people do calculations on GPU, maybe it's possible to do all math calculations on GPU?
     
  48. Wright

    Wright

    Joined:
    Feb 26, 2013
    Posts:
    2,267
    Generally, I have high hopes for multithreading. I plan to create new land areas in a background thread, while other game logic will be calculated in due course in a main thread.
     
  49. bigd

    bigd

    Joined:
    Feb 14, 2014
    Posts:
    40
    Hi @Wright,

    I was browsing for a voxel terrain solution and stumbled across your plugin. It looks very promising! However, when I play your demo I'm noticing two pretty significant graphical bugs. I've included screenshots for your review.

    It seems to happen when I dig / add a new block next to a chunk seam, I can see right through the level. Any ideas?

    Also, I noticed sometimes when I build up a terrain and then remove a middle block, it sometimes leaves a small bit hanging in the air. See second screenshot. Any workaround for this?

    Are these apparent in the paid version?
     

    Attached Files:

    Last edited: Dec 29, 2014
  50. Daldegan

    Daldegan

    Joined:
    Feb 6, 2014
    Posts:
    3
    Hello @Wright , your engine is great! Clean and does the job very well, the way it's edit the voxels beats all others assets solutions found on the asset store. But i'm also experiencing the sluttering on both (web-player and non), i've tested this in three different machines, the result is the same. It always occurs when dynamic build takes place, but i can also reproduce it after something like 10 times digging. Un fortunatly this behavior breaks any partical Voxeland's applicability for a game with dynamic editing. Would you please take a look in this issue ? Voxeland's really seems to fulfill the needs of our project if wasn't this little issue.

    Thanks!