Voxeland - Voxel Terrain Tool

@Wright I forgot to mention Anio's tessellation shader does seem to work with Voxeland but only to increase polygons but the textures do not show.
The Terrain on your left is Unity Terrain with the tessellation shader.. the terrain on the right is Voxeland and is currently selected in the hierarchy. This image shows that the tessellation shader does work but doesn't reveal the textures.


Showing in shaded Wireframe mode the dark area of the terrains is dense with polygons and into the distance there are less. The shader has a smart LOD tessellation system.

 

Howdy! We've been learing how to use Voxeland and so far it is amazing! I do have a couple of questions that I hope someone can give me a little bit of mentoring...

1) My role is to merge UFPS capability into Voxeland, which I've done right up until customizing the actual terrain editing controls. We are doing (yet another) survival type game that allow the player to edit the landscape minecraft-style. The issue is (other than I apparently belong on the short bus) I can't figure out how to edit the normal "Left click to dig, right click to place xyz" to only occur if certain conditions are met (such as an shovel is equipped). I'm not asking for anyone to give me completed code, just a nudge towards the right direction.

2) Grass & trees. What is the secret sauce to putting these in? I realize there is something unique about the grass (kinda above me as I don't even know the terminology I need to search for that topic) but is there any way to control the tree spawning to spawn each typ together and not all mixed up randomly?

Thanks for any help!

 

Is a trial version still available? I suppose all I need to know is if the terrain chunks are able to be created from an existing mesh or if there is any way to have chunks of manipulable terrain not existing as sharply defined "tiles"

 

You can basically just take the included example code for dig/fill and reuse it. Just gate it by checking to see if the shovel is equipped or not. If it isn't, don't run that code - hence no terrain adjustments are possible.

 

Ascensi, we are arranging a voucher swap with Anio Dev Team.

That's right. Take a look at the VoxelandControlles.cs script:

Code (CSharp):

1.                 //reading controls
2.                 bool leftMouse = Input.GetMouseButtonDown(0);
3.                 bool middleMouse = Input.GetMouseButtonDown(2);
4.                 bool shift = Input.GetKey(KeyCode.LeftShift) || Input.GetKey(KeyCode.RightShift);
5.  
6.                 //getting edit mode
7.                 Voxeland.EditMode editMode = Voxeland.EditMode.none;
8.                 if (leftMouse && !shift) editMode = Voxeland.EditMode.dig;
9.                 else if (middleMouse) editMode = Voxeland.EditMode.add;
10.                 else if (leftMouse && shift) editMode = Voxeland.EditMode.replace;
11.  
12.                 //getting aiming ray
13.                 Ray aimRay;
14.                 if (cameraController.lockCursor) aimRay = Camera.main.ViewportPointToRay(new Vector3(0.5f,0.5f,0.5f));
15.                 else aimRay = Camera.main.ScreenPointToRay(Input.mousePosition);
16.  
17.                 //aiming terrain block
18.                 Voxeland.Coord coord = land.PointOut(aimRay, highlight:land.highlight); //note that a custom highlight could be added there
19.  
20.                 //editing
21.                 if (coord.exists && coord != usedCoord && editMode != Voxeland.EditMode.none) //if aiming to terrain (not the sky or othe object) and clicked one of edit modes
22.                 {
23.                     //setting terrain
24.                     if (land.selected>0)
25.                         land.SetBlocks(coord, (byte)land.selected, extend:0, spherify:false, mode:editMode);
26.  
27.                     //setting grass
28.                     else //for grass (negative selected num)
29.                         land.SetGrass(coord, (byte)(-land.selected), extend:0, spherify:false, mode:editMode);
30.  
31.                     usedCoord = coord; //preventing editing the same coord
32.                 }

Do not expect much from a Voxeland's generator. Briefly, it's just a randomizer. I plan to integrate Voxeland with one of the proper land generators, MapMagic.

Sure. But I'd like to disappoint you a bit: Voxeland cannot convert meshes to voxels.

 

Thanks. The mesh to voxel isn't really a problem - just having distinct terrain chunks only able to exist as large square planes. Guess I could just make a larger terrain than needed, elevate the relevant portions to what is needed, and have the flat edges inaccessible, hidden behind indestructible mesh within the terrain..

Is there any hope of seeing dynamic adding of colliders to floating meshes? Or is there any sort of direction you could point out that would help integrating that into voxeland?

Access to a trial would be appreciated to see if this matches our use case, I am eager to get working on the full asset., thank you.

 

@Wright "Ascensi, we are arranging a voucher swap with Anio Dev Team."
Awesome!! thank you! hopefully it all works out.

 

Can you get that nice low poly flat look in voxeland?

 

Hello , i got one question. How can i make so the terrain doesn't rebuild itself in play mode ? (aka the terrain already preexists without having to convert it to mesh)
Using limited terrain.

 

When do you think you'll have this out?

 

Wouldn't mind knowing this myself, I ended up testing version 3.1 then buying it when it was clear it would be useful. Something that is different between the 3.1 version I used and the newest version now I own it is that the terrain no longer builds within a second or two when using limited size terrain - in 3.1 it was almost instantaneous yet now there is a noticeable lag... not really a problem since you can check if the terrain is built before enabling "logical children" but still.

 

oh so i cant avoid it then , ok thank you

Btw i think i found a bug.
When creating a new block type and adding a prefab to it , i cant delete the prefab once it is placed on the terrain. I tried shift click ect. nothing works i can only delete it from the inspector but is this legit ? I mean yes i know it works but i want to be able to delete it from the voxeland brush editor.
http://imgur.com/As7drt2
image

 

Do you mean like Infiniminer/Minecraft type "low poly" or like this


because the latter can be achieved by turning down the relax values but would require a fair bit of playing.

 

Exactly like this. I don't have voxeland, just browsing around for the right look and tech so I can't test the relax value but figure the only way to get that look is to double each edge (unless there is somewhere a shader that compensate for the normal smoothing by generating a counteracting normal map on the fly).

 

Your asset is easily the most beautiful voxel solution I've seen. As an aspiring artist, that's even more important to me than performance! The fact that it has RTP support is amazing.

Just a few questions about Voxeland:

1. I'm making a top-down building game. Is it possible to remove layers of voxels so I can see units as they mine into the side of a cliff or dig underground? Here's an example of what I mean:

(the example starts at 0:40).

2. is it possible to adjust the size of the voxels to fit a particular grid size? I'm using Apex Path for pathfinding, so ideally one voxel cube would be the same size and have the same location as one Apex grid square.

3. Do you intend to continue developing this asset? A lot of voxels assets I've seen have fizzled out.

4. Would Voxeland be easy to use with my top-down game? The player destroys and builds terrain indirectly by issuing commands to units (similar to Stonehearth and Timber and Stone).

5. Is it possible to add particle effects and sound effects when destroying voxels? For example, when a unit mines stone a particle effect would be generated of rocks cascading down from the destroyed voxel in question.

6. Is it possible to edit the terrain at run-time so a completely flat surface is created? I'm thinking this would be important for making the foundations for a building in game.

7. Is it possible to alter the durability of voxels (number of hits before destroyed), and is there support for things like random ore spawns in rock voxels?

8: I love the curved forms created when digging terrain in Voxeland. However, is it also possible to create vertical slopes when digging? For example, I'd like to make a moat with vertical walls (or close to it).

9. Finally, if any of these are not possible with your asset, do you think they would ever be feasible with a smooth voxel solution? If so, would you implement any of them?

I apologise for inundating you with questions! It turns out I had more than a few

 

I will have a play later on and see if I can figure out if its possible, you can attach custom shaders and the light maping is already fairly decent even in caves as such. it even supports triplanar mapping so, it might be ok. Give ma a little while to play with it

 

Could you update the RTP integration video and docs? Seems like the latest version does not behave nicely or I just cannot find how the layers are supposed to be configured since the Voxeland/Standard (Triplanar parralax) material doesn't seem to connect to the actual layer configuration and just has splat textures.

There is also some inspector problems with what looks like Voxeland's Block and Grass foldouts (when folded out) causing problems with overlapping other scripts on the same object.

 

Went ahead and bought the asset the same day I made the previous post. Hoping to get some sort of reply soon, otherwise I'll have to conclude that the support for this asset is pretty bad :/

 

Seems he is concentrating on Map Magic a lot and just released a new version of it there. You may try contacting him in the Map Magic forums or directly.

 

Hi Sir,

i love your work !! and look the video.

i m looking Voxeland for merging with MapMagic.

Is it in your plans to add architectural structure like:

- building
- entrance
- more..

example:
- i would like to put in the world an entire dungeon (a prefab) and voxeland merge dungeon and terrain
- i would like to use house prefab and put house on the world

++

 

Just got the product and tried it and it is not working. A window comes up for you to size the terrain but there is no "create" button, so I cannot create a terrain. It gives me an error warning
"voxelland.VoxelandCreate must be insantiated using the ScriptableObject.CreateInstance method instead of new VoxelandCreate
uniteEditor.EditorWindow:.ctor()"

 

Have you tried re-sizing a create window?



I'd like to announce that I've started a huge Voxeland refactoring to make it faster, multithreaded and MapMagic compatible. This all will result in a new Voxeland5. Still can't say an ETA, but it will definitely take a time.

 

WOW!
Will it blend?

 

Will non MapMagic users still be able to use it ?

 

Okay, that worked. I thought I did try that before but I guess not. thanks

 

@Wright, any chance of an evaluation copy? We're highly interested in this asset but would feel better if we could evaluate before dropping money on it. Thanks!

EDIT: In case an evaluation copy is out of the question, could you please answer the following questions so we can determine if we want to move forward with Voxeland.

1) Do you know the largest terrain size we can build before we should expect to see major performance issues?

2) Can Voxeland be used in regards to AI with nav-mesh, pathfinding and the like?

3) Can we allow a player to not deform voxels anywhere that water might be impacted?

4) Can we have multiple textures that represent the same type of texture such as grass, dirt, etc?

5) Do you know if Voxeland is compatible with InfiniGrass? -- https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/45188

 

Are my eyes deceiving me or is the terrain self-shadowing shader no longer included?
Or maybe the effect is less pronounced now.

 

Hello,
I'm considering buying this asset but I have a few questions to make sure it will work for my game.
1) Is it compatible with mobile platforms ? I'll be using it for 2.5D platformer game with fixed screen so I don't need giant vistas etc.
2) Is it possible to "Destroy" terrain on larger scale? I saw in demo ability to add and remove cubes, but can I do something like grenade exploding and destroying cubes within certain radius?
3) Is it possible to assign some characteristics to cubes? Like some cubes can be destroyed, some can't.
4) Is it possible to replace textures or materials on terrain at runtime? For example to have a base terrain form and replace texture with white material in snow levels, yellow one in sand levels etc.


Thanks in advance.

 

Sure. They will not have an access to the new MMWG-compatible generate system, but in all other aspects it will be a fully functional Voxeland version.

No problem, just mail me to mail@denispahunov.ru so I could send you a link.

Do you mean ambient occlusion? It's still here, and still ranges from full ambient to absolutely black.

Gakhokidze, I've already wrote you back via email, but I'll repeat it here in case of anyone is wondering similar questions:

 

I specifically started using Unity to develop 3D representations of 2D game maps, with potential plans to make them interactable. Naturally, I almost immediately discovered both MapMagic and Voxeland and I am very excited to see that they are being developed with the intention of being used together.

 

Has anyone had any experience using this asset with large limited terrains?
I want to create a limited size of 70km2 - I want it to load dynamically
How would one go about this?

Thanks to you in advance

 

The only difference between the limited terrain and unlimited one is that the in the first case the whole terrain is built and displayed in full detail. And building - and displaying - 70 square km of a fully detailed terrain at once isn't a very performance-friendly thing.

Why don't use an infinite terrain? It has absolutely the same generate algorithm and data structure. I guess that using a limited terrain is the mean to limit your level - than better do it with a colliders or script than show the world's end to the player.

 

Hey thanks for getting back to me- yeah I realised that in the end and are now using unlimited and planed on having a bunch of mountains(meshes) blocking off the terrain.
I've been having issues with objects going through the voxel floor. - not sure what's causing it
and also When I use a horizon plane I get artefacts all over the place.
Also im getting land appearing in play mode which is not there in editor mode
and im getting a bunch of other errors in the console - Do you have an email I should contact you on - or do you do everything through here?

I could also use some pointers as to the best way to utilise this asset
thanks

 

Feel free to email me at mail@denispahunov.ru

Since I've started a big Voxeland refactoring many things will change - for instance there will be no more horizon plane, it will be replaced with the chunk ultra-lowres detail, so it's not topical anymore. But I'd really like to know about the collision bugs and console errors.

 

I have to say I cant wait for the voxeland/mapmagic integration. Perhaps you could still somehow use unity-terrains and fill under with voxel thus allowing us to use billboard trees and such. I simply cant wait............

 

In scope of the Voxeland refactoring I have to create a new material system, and this requires a new terrain shader. I decided to make a full-fledged 7-channel triplanar shader with height blending support. And because of the branching with tex2Dgrad it is 1.5 times faster than the old one and gives an adjustable mip map bias as a bonus.

​

It has even a multi-layered texture tiling - the far terrain tile is X larger than the close one to avoid noticeable homogeneous tiling effect, but still I've got to improve the performance of this feature.

Personally I'm not quite happy with the Unity tree imposters - they do not allow tree scaling and rotation when using tree models. I've made a short imposter script that can work with Voxeland, but it's surely is out of the scope of the voxel engine. Maybe one day I will release it as a separate plugin, but now I plan to focus on the new Voxeland version.

 

I saw that a new build has been created. When do you anticipate the voxeland amd mapmagic marriage? Should I buy Voxeland today as it is on sale...with the hope of a soon marriage with MM? Thanks

 

I'm working on combining Voxeland and MMWG now - literally, I've just finished the new data structure which can receive MM matrices as a voxel layers. I estimate the remaining work in a month or two, there are still could be pitfalls.
The last update is just a minor meta-files change, I've uploaded the relevant video and screens:

​

And yeah, as you noticed Voxeland is currently ON SALE, so if you were going to purchase it today you can get it for the half price.

 

Hello,

Congrats to the voxelland asset, it Looks great!

I am working on a minecraft / rpg game. You can do anything like Building stuff, digging holes and Caves etc like in minecraft, but it is more Story-driven and has quests, Buildings and cities etc.

Would this be possible with voxelland, too?

The Buildings could be added just like with my current voxelengine I guess.

I have a landscape with 10 different binomes, the land is 6000x6000 meters (currently large voxels) and 300 meters deep with Underground Caves. Buildings are premade but on random positions, the landscape and ist tunnels and Caves are randomized each time you create a new world.

Is it possible with voxelland to have something this large in real time, randomized and with different binomes in it?
If the Player Plays some hours and builds and digs stuff, would my harddisk explode or is that possible?

A few weeks ago it looked like this:

I am thinking if it is possible and makes sense to Switch to voxelland, which of Course Looks much nicer but also very different...

Good luck with the sale!

Thanks a lot!

 

So if I buy voxeland now will the update to the planned voxeland5 be free to existing cutomers ??

 

So, I took the plunge and bought voxeland but unfortunately I am having mixed results...

I'm using the latest version of Unity 5.4.1f1 and I created a new project.

The main blocker I'm experiencing is that my brush cursor is offset by a half-viewport both ways with respect to my mouse cursor. In other words, if I load the demo scene and put my mouse cursor to the bottom right of the viewport, the brush highlight will be located roughly in the middle of the viewport. From the couple videos I saw, this should not be the intended behaviour.

So far, I've tried the follow things with no change in behaviour:

1. Restarting Unity
2. Rebooting my machine
3. Deleting and recreating the voxel gameobject
4. Disconnect my mouse and use the trackpad on my Macbook

Any ideas?

 

works for me on win10. I would imagine checking some settings on your mac for mouse input

 

It has happened. The sale I thought would never happen for several months now.

Brings a tear to my eye.

I won't be able to try it out for a little but question : Does voxeland have it's own VOD/Occulation based on distance and/or visibility etc.?

 

would like to know also.

 

Firlefanz73, I don't think it's a good idea to change the core voxel engine if you got everything working. Despite of the nice look Voxeland missing some features your engine has - like stairs, columns, etc. Using your current art with Voxeland will not make your project look better.

Yes. All Voxeland owners will get Voxeland 5 for free.

Nope. It's a topic for the distinct plugin - rather complicated one.

Blackbox514, I had a similar bug report for my other plugin, MMWG. Looks like mouse pointer behaves differently on mac retina displays. I will publish the quick fix as soon as I'll found why.

 

Thanks for the quick reply! Just to clarify, the cursor does move smoothly but is simply offset by half the viewport height on the Y coord and half the viewport width on X coord so it should be a relatively easy fix. Perhaps like you say, it's related to a retina dpi issue.

If you need to me to try out something in the code, let me know and I'll gladly lend a hand if you tell me where to look or a hack I can try.

 

Thanks a lot for the honest Reply! I'll Keep an eye on this one maybe for a later time

 

Do you plan on adding pathing inside Voxeland? Or is there a way to have character navigate voxeland environment, like TerraVol?

 

Hey guys I'm new to deving here, seems that this demo scene is broken?? Here's a gif of the problem, any solutions??

https://gyazo.com/42f69fe91126f11368a81f750378e9d6

 

One question can we create arbitrary voxel grid objects that can be instanced? I mean let say I define a box of 9x5x4, generate some data inside, then spawn the mesh everywhere at different scale and rotation (useful for crafting and user generated objects)? Does it also support stamp? let say I generate data into a 3d stamp data grid, would it be possible to just stamp it inside the generated terrain (bonus if scaling and rotation is supported)? It would be cool because I want to take voxelized mesh data and bring them back, stamped in the terrain, for destructibility (think Sodom and Gomorrah salt statue, so a rough approximation lol). Can we change the grid resolution? Can we have multiple terrain at different resolution?