Voxeland - Voxel Terrain Tool

Hello,
I have a few questions regarding Voxeland and/or MapMagic.

1) Would there be a way to place voxels just given a Vector3 position? I have a class that contains list's of coordinates in 1 unit increments which form voxel versions of objects (humans, animals, etc.). I would like to "place" voxeland blocks at each of these coordinates. My plan is for all voxels to use the same block type (I am going for big stone statues). I see that the current Alter method requires the CoordDir structure and raycasting, though ideally, I would like to place a prefab object with my own generator class attached into the scene at runtime (using MM) and have it add the blocks on start.

2) I see that Megasplat is compatible with Voxeland now, and is also compatible with MM, though can all three be used together? If so, could we have some sort of tutorial, because when I try to add the Megasplat output node in MM for my Voxeland terrain (using a Voxeland MM generator) it throws errors and doesn't bring up the typical Megasplat node that we see if using a standard MM terrain.

3) Would it be possible to adapt the forest feature from MM to work with Voxeland trees? What is the major difference between the Voxeland trees and standard MM trees? And can I just use the MM trees in Voxeland (my testing tells me no, but it can't hurt too ask)?

Thanks,
P.S. Your assets are amazing.

 

Than I have to look into it once I'm done with MM2.

Yes, you can set the block at given coordinates with Alter method.

MapMagic just generates the heightmaps (and other maps) for Voxeland. You don't have to use the MegaSplat output nodes in MM, use the standard Voxeland node, but Voxeland object itself should have MegaSplat set up:

Sure, just output these trees with Voxeland Objects Output node.
There's no such thing as MM trees, MapMagic uses the standard terrain tree feature. It works with the standard terrains only and could not be used with Voxeland.

 

Hi guys!

Anyone knows if this plugin support the new High-Definition Render Pîpelane? Or in the future it can be used?

Also is posible to export this terrain in fbx with materials?

Thanks a lot! =)

 

It can be exported to FBX with third party plugin but as far as exporting with materials this developer is focusing on other enhancements/additions at this time and may or may not take on the ability to export painted Voxelands. The developer of the asset "Unity FBX Exporter" is or in the near future will be adding the ability to export textures from Voxel based terrains but there is no ETA. About the High-Definition Render Pipeline - I can't answer that one.

 

Quick question... Brand new Voxeland customer and I apologize if this has been asked already in this thread.. But is there/will there ever be a function to increase the voxel count beyond the scale of 1 voxel per world unit? Thank you.

 

You can export meshes, but you will need a special shader to apply material (textures) properly. If meshes is the only thing you need you can use something like this.

OMG, it costs more than Voxeland, does not support animations, and works on Windows only. And still it will not apply textures properly since it is the matter of shader rather then mesh file format.

Have not tested yet. But sooner or later I will have to make it compatible with HDRP.

It's done by scaling the Voxeland object down.

 

The problem with the obj exporter is that its bad for multiple chunks as it doesn't keep the chunk positions (my experience) unless recently this was fixed. I had to manually align chunks in Zbrush & other 3rd party animation programs piecing together the corresponding chunks of land. The FBX exporter keeps the position of chunks together.

The author of the Unity FBX Exporter had a pm conversation with myself you and jbooth to figure out how extracting textures with a custom UV generator writing to exported FBX could be done and in the end they both figured it could be done. I've updated the PM so you can see the "theorized" solution and UnLogick is apparently working on this as the next added feature. I didn't want to hassle/request from you if someone else already has a decent exporter and is willing/interested in adding that compatibility - you've already done an amazing Job on Voxeland, MM and Megasplat integration! I wouldn't want to trouble you any more unless there was something broken.

 

Hi, I started to try to use Voxeland with Mapmagic. Voxeland displays this message : "Mapmagic does not seems to be installed..." and turning on both compatibility just adds errors. Do you know if there is a fix to this issue? Thanks !

 

Is it recommended to include the Voxeland shaders to the "Always Included Shaders" of the Graphics settings?
Seems like I read that someplace before but I could not find where it was mentioned before.

 

@Wright odd brush/sculpting issue after the 64th + texture. I was using a 2k texture array I created with Megasplat in Unity 2017.4 2f2 -the brush controls don't work after texture #64 clicking does nothing and when I use shift to change a texture I painted, sculpting into the surface happens only.

 

What these errors are? Does this happens in a new clear project with only Voxeland + MM installed?

It's true if you are using dynamic terrain with "save meshes to scene" feature turned off. Should be somewhere in a manual (GitLab got an ugly wiki search). The point is that if meshes are not saved to scene Unity does not treat Voxeland shaders as dependencies, so they should be added manually.

Seems to be Voxeland 4 legacy, was made to load older scenes. It had only 64 possible block types, 64 for objects and 64 for grass. Now objects and grass use different byte arrays, so guess I can fix it. Is anybody using Voxeland 4 nowdays?

 

@Wright Yes this happens in a new clear project with only Voxeland + MM installed. With both compatibility enabled the error is : "Assets/Voxeland/Main/Generator.cs(877,19): error CS0234: The type or namespace name `Graph' does not exist in the namespace `MapMagic'. Are you missing an assembly reference?"

 

Is there a method for counting the number of blocks of a certain type in a chunk? I'm considering looping over the x,y,z for each block type but this seems like a very expensive way to go.

 

Graph? Are you using MapMagic2 beta?

You can speed up the process by working directly with data columns. See Data.cs for useful methods.

 

No i am using MapMagic v1.9.1 !

 

Try installing the latest Voxeland version. 5.3.2 has this line commented out.

 

@Wright would it be possible to export a height map from combined Voxeland biomes in MM? I remember you saying that performance is not yet ideal using MM, Voxeland and Megasplat but I think a good workaround just to get the landscape at least would be to be able to output a height map in MM then switch Voxeland Generator type to Height map to add it.

 

Hmmm, can't say that MM's Voxeland Output has a super-native-c++ performance, but I can't call it retard too. Maybe I just didn't made myself clear. Such features like "Polish" or "Remove thin layers" can slow down the performance, but turning them off will remove the overhead compared to loading the heightmap.
Anyways, it does not affect FPS since it isn't calculated in main thread, it is just a matter of the delay from the time camera first should see the chunk.

 

I guess I may have misunderstood from your post on page 38 a little different than a point you were making about using texture arrays? You had said: "Those who use texture arrays (and do not use MM) will find new Voxeland texture array tools faster and more reliable to use (improved texture arrays performance and possible crashes related with adding and removing of the new blocks)."

I took that as MM will cause a decrease in performance when used with Voxeland when using Texture arrays. I had to then rethink this and came to the conclusion that if I was to somehow create the Combined Biomes in MM with Voxeland, export the heightmap then switch to Voxeland only with the heightmap as the generator type and set "save non-pinned areas" I hope that Voxeland will no longer require the heightmap. If it does get loaded into memory once imported into Voxeland I'd hope the heightmap could be unloaded somehow if we no longer need to use it and free up some resources.

 

Guess MM users have already got the new feature I've mentioned so they will not see the difference. Sorry for not being clear. I can state that MapMagic works with Voxeland using texture arrays, MegaSplat and older non-texture array shader at the same speed.

 

@Wright ok how about this- 1. can users export height maps from combined biomes in MM made with Voxeland?

2. When in Voxeland only with heightmap set as the generator type does the heightmap itself load into memory?

I'd like to use the heightmap method to recreate the combined biomes then once generated save the non-pinned areas, save Voxeland Data and unload the heightmap from memory if possible (which ever would need to come first)

I realize the MM could be just as fast or faster with disabling the features like "Polish" or "Remove thin layers" but I'd like to simplify quick regeneration if needed and maybe later I could combine height maps in MM rather than make giant node structures.

 

Here's a cool video I made using the brush tool in the editor to redesign one of my levels:

 

Do you mean export heightmap from Voxeland?

Yes. When using infinite terrain Voxeland generates voxel data on-the-go, so it needs the source to generate it loaded. But for the fixed terrain you can turn off the automatic terrain generating in editor, this way Voxealnd will not load the heightmap at all, it will use voxel data only.

 

How do you get the shore generator to work with voxeland?

 

If Voxeland could export heightmaps yes otherwise I'd like to export a Heightmap from MM that made and combined Voxeland Biomes (if possible) then later use the heightmap in Voxeland Static because now as you say it doesn't load the heightmap into memory. I was getting slower performance with 3 Biomes in MM which could of been how my nodes were set up for each. I had created one main MM node project originally set up as infinite and loaded one biome created as static with size 600 and another set to 300.

The landscape looked great but somehow it generated two Voxel landscapes, one beneath the other. The project was very complex and Voxeland + MM tutorial has very limited/basic procedure to promote a very strong understanding for the kinds of outcomes that can happen - for example I'd like to know what would cause another layer of Voxeland to appear so I can prevent it.

Ideally I wish there a list of icon images representing the end result of a node structure or height map that can be set as a biome or infinite and can be chosen from a window pane to drag and drop onto a specific area of a flat Voxeland and then use transforms to scale, rotate or position them -this would be amazing and fast for making all kinds of interesting worlds.

 

There's nothing special in using shore with MapMagic for Voxeland: just make it the way shown in the tutorial video, but output the results using the Voxeland node.

Inserting an empty 'air' type in the middle. This is the way to make caves, but it seems that you've got a "cave" layer stretched to all of your terrain.

Hmm, that makes sense. Thanks for an idea.

Do you mean dragging heightmaps from project window to Voxeland terrain?

 

Interesting, my Caves were either disabled or displayed as caves but I'd have to double check that no additional nodes were somehow connected to that layer.. I stayed with the cave procedure in the tutorial but will have to look again.

Yes - if Voxeland could interpret that it is a heightmap after dragging it onto Voxeland and transform handles appear at that position. This would be the same if you see a list of icons in a window representing the geological form/features by its node structure, you could drag this onto Voxeland as well.. it may require some of the code the brush uses for position and highlight but likely in a semi transparent 3d cube or rectangle form to represent where the Volume/heightmap or node stamp will be placed but with transform handles.

 

Hi.
I'm having problems adding the voxeland grass using the mapamagic editor.
Does anyone have a solution for this?
Maybe a tutorial on adding grass and trees for voxeland using mm editor?

 

It doesn't seems to be very handy to place those heightmaps at the exact positions. However I'm thinking about a "texture stamp" brush that will apply the assigned heightmap the way you apply voxel stamp.

Everything seems to be fine with your graph. Can you place the grass manually with the brush?

 

If the brush could stamp heightmaps I'd be happy about that.. but hopefully the heightmap can be unloaded when not needed.. also bubble help/tip about size (mountain, parking lot, walking path etc) Perhaps the brush could have a setting for slope/angle influence so stamps could fade or become stronger at different heights or angles.

 

doesn't seem to want to work do I have to load a mesh or something?

 

I have provided the image of block setup.

 

Victor_cross, if you can't place the grass manually then the problem is rather in the Voxeland grass block setup than in MM's graph. Have you loaded the grass mesh with the "Load" button?

 

No I haven't do I load the mesh from the demo scene or something?
Where is the Mesh located to be loaded?
I ended up loading the mesh in from the voxeland demo scene grass.
Now for trees?
Is it possible to setup a multiplayer situation using the dynamic limited mode as this is a great feature?
Has anyone done this?

 

Hey guys any idea how I could Run another standard mm terrain layer under water level so it could be generated automatically.
You can see by my other posts I'm trying to make islands in a sea.

 

Денис привет подскажи, пожалуйста, я делаю мобильную игру с помощью Voxeland и у нас возникли проблемы.

1) Есть ли возможность увеличить количество текстур для земли больше 3х?

2) Есть ли возможность уменьшить количества полигонов изначально при построении карты?

3) Есть ли возможность вывести карту Voxeland в 3д мах и там занизить количество полигонов?

4) И возможно вывести Voxeland в ZBrush и там нанести на нее текстуры?

 

за ранее спасибо!

 

@Wright could you share when your next Voxeland update might be? I understand you were working on developing Voxelump first.. I'm hoping that the full megasplat 256 texture array can be utilized along with being able to use the Megasplat Vertex painter in the next update. A Spline path/rivers/caves system is awesome but I can wait. This is a video I made demonstrating using MS on meshes that has water/stream that I painted in. While painting streams Displacement dampening is used

 

I'm calling Voxeland.data.ToByteArray() to serialize Voxeland for saving and sending from the server to clients. I do this in a separate worker thread that I manage myself for long running operations and housekeeping so that the Unity thread doesn't pause while Voxeland is serializing. For some reason I thought ToByteArray was thread safe, but on occasion I get this exception while serializing it:

IndexOutOfRangeException: Index was outside the bounds of the array.
Voxeland5.Data.ToByteArray (System.Boolean pinnedOnly)

(sorry I don't know the exact line since this is from a runtime non-debug build, and it's really hard for me to duplicate)

I think what is happening is there are at least two threads (mine and maybe VoxelandGenerate?) modifying or reading Voxeland data at the same time which changes the state in the middle of the operation.

Is there some lock I can call/check to ensure when I call ToByteArray it won't conflict? Or is there a better way to call ToByteArray from a thread (so that I don't freeze up the main Unity thread)?

At the moment my work around is to catch any exceptions then retry after a few seconds, but that's really hackish and I'm worried it can cause data inconsistency if Voxeland is in the middle of rebuilding or being modified.

Thanks!

 

JasonCG, if you are using pure Voxeland, there could be several threads reading Voxeland data, but only the main thread change it. MapMagic can also change data in it's own worker threads.
The smallest independent part of data is an area Line - so you can try locking each line while reading it. Keep in mind that you will have to change data.cs to add locks here too.

Actually I'm currently working on MapMagic 2 Is there any problem using full MegaSplat texture array? Don't know about vertex painter though, it's more the part of MegaSplat than Voxeland.

Artem_mchs, unfortunately the answer is no for most of the questions:
1) not for mobiles
2) no
3) yes, but then you will loose texture paint information
4) not for Voxeland shader

Victor_cross, so could you finally load the grass mesh? What's wrong with the trees?

 

Any idea what I can do to stop trees from floating using voxeland and mm
I noticed by unchecking polish helped with this also.
But I do need to use the polish option.

 

What would be the best way to remove the beach voxel particles?
Apart from using polish.

 

I had said in a previous post: odd brush/sculpting issue after the 64th + texture. I was using a 2k texture array I created with Megasplat in Unity 2017.4 2f2 -the brush controls don't work after texture #64 clicking does nothing and when I use shift to change a texture I painted, sculpting into the surface happens only. You had replied:
Seems to be Voxeland 4 legacy, was made to load older scenes. It had only 64 possible block types, 64 for objects and 64 for grass. Now objects and grass use different byte arrays, so guess I can fix it.

So in the next Voxeland update I was hoping that might be resolved and the ability to switch to the Megasplat Vertex Painter because I can paint water/steams/puddles or lava but Voxeland currently doesn't allow the Vertex painter to be used.. if I paint anything the texture painted becomes super displaced and distorts the landscape. Maybe @jbooth might know what is wrong that would cause this.

 

HELLO i strongly consider buying your asset who by the way your asset look great !!!!! my project is about space and planet i have question is it possible to make spherical at planet scale with collider if yes do you have a doc with pipline or tutorial about that topic ?

thanks

 

Hi, I am using Unity 2017.4 and I cant build project.
I tried to make changes in code, but nothing is woking, theoreticaly it should work, but don't want.
Any idea why unity make this problem for real?

It is problem with compilation.

 

Try replacing the Voxeland/Tools/Extensions/Texture2DExtensions.cs with this one.

I have not tried it myself, but there are forum users who made planets with Voxeland.
Anyways, you can always try Evaluation Version to see if some feature will work for you.

Victor_cross, polish feature removes the blocks after the MapMagic height was generated, so there is no way to return to trees generators (scatter, forest or anything else used) and move the trees down. However, you can use the adjust node to lower all of the trees by half of the unit. The non-floating trees will be inserted deeper into the ground but still be looking good while floating trees will be floored.

Ascensi, try this fix.

 

I have also this asset: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/terrain/planetary-terrain-101118, and I am trying to figure how to transition from the last LOD to a MapMagic and/or Voxeland terrain (maybe with a curved world effect), that's why I liked the Ascensi idea about loading a heightmap.
Maybe it can be done in reverse way, or just use the same noise... too bad the author don't have a forum thread and I understand this is not in the scope of neither Mapmagic or Voxeland.

 

@Wright I upgraded to Unity 2018.1 and get the following errors even after removing Voxeland from scripting define symbols and restarting :
Apply Error: UnityEngine.UnassignedReferenceException: The variable hiMesh of Chunk has not been assigned.
You probably need to assign the hiMesh variable of the Chunk script in the inspector.
at (wrapper managed-to-native) UnityEngine.Mesh:ClearImpl (bool)
at UnityEngine.Mesh.Clear () [0x00003] in C:\buildslave\unity\build\Runtime\Export\Mesh.cs:512
at Voxeland5.MeshWrapper.ApplyTo (UnityEngine.Mesh mesh) [0x00002] in G:\Voxeland_5_With_MegasplatII\Assets\Voxeland\Tools\MeshWrapper.cs:44
at Voxeland5.Chunk.ApplyMesh () [0x000b5] in G:\Voxeland_5_With_MegasplatII\Assets\Voxeland\Main\Chunk.cs:615
at Voxeland5.ThreadWorker.ApplyFn () [0x00013] in G:\Voxeland_5_With_MegasplatII\Assets\Voxeland\Tools\ThreadWorker.cs:574
UnityEngine.Debug:LogError(Object)
Voxeland5.ThreadWorker:ApplyFn() (at Assets/Voxeland/Tools/ThreadWorker.cs:588)
Voxeland5.ThreadWorker:UpdateApply() (at Assets/Voxeland/Tools/ThreadWorker.cs:219)
Voxeland5.ThreadWorker:Refresh() (at Assets/Voxeland/Tools/ThreadWorker.cs:143)
Voxeland5.Voxeland:Update() (at Assets/Voxeland/Voxeland.cs:336)
UnityEditor.EditorApplication:Internal_CallUpdateFunctions()

I also get this error but don't know if it's Voxeland related: Assertion failed: Assertion failed on expression: '(srcData.GetChannelMask() & copyChannels) == copyChannels'

 

You don't turn off Voxeland by disabling define symbol - you just disable Voxeland Output for MapMagic. Voxeland is compatible with Unity 2018.1, so this error should not be related with Unity version. Might it be that you've removed Voxeland chunk manually?

 

I had it set to Heightmap.. mapmagic is not being used. I didn't delete anything.. I'll try a few more things.. maybe disabling MM compatibility since I'm now using heightmaps instead. By the way is there a way to safely extend the size of Voxeland with heightmap already generated to a specific terrain size (uncheck the resize heightmap to terrain size?) and then set the terrain to a new size or will Voxeland try to generate the whole area replacing all paint and sculpting I've done -thanks Denis.

Update extra info: I had backups of the data and the main data working in the 2017 Unity version without error. I tried my backup data and the message still remains.. I'll try copy everything to a fresh project and see what happens -the regenerate button doesn't even work.