Voxeland - Voxel Terrain Tool

Hmm, that really might be something related with horizon height scale. Try selecting a horizon material from the Materials tab and scale the Horizon Height Scale proportionally.

Yes if it's Voxeland. But Voxeland does not give the "voxel ability" to the existing Unity terrain, you will have to export it's heightmap and import it to Voxeland first.

 

@Wright this is what happens if you use the smooth tool near the floor of the terrain
https://gyazo.com/a651e47b1a87e568fff43552cf5d0461

it would be nicer if it smoothed the edges as if it interprets the 'void' below the chunk as an iteration of itself.
also note, the sharp edges? that bug could totally be a feature

 

You can create the terrain of any height up the Y axis, however it will always have a zero level. There are no blocks below this level, so it cannot smooth the blocks that do not exist.

1-st level blocks have no bottom faces for a reason - otherwise these faces should be displayed under all of the terrain, that means a lot of overhead. If you need your terrain perfectly closed from the bottom add a 'bedrock' level (first level of blocks) that has an empty block types.

 

I agree with this, Voxeland needs improved smoothing to look more like a traditional terrain. Other voxel engines are certainly capable of this. Voxeland tends to produce a bumpy looking terrain even when you tweak the settings.

As far as I can tell Voxeland is not intended to create Minecraft style games, but it doesn't quite create natural looking terrains either. Everything else about it is fantastic, it just needs better smoothing.

 

Voxeland is something in-between, but still more of a Minecraft than the real terrain. But I've got your point. I will think of the way to make it more smooth - I have a couple of thoughts - but obviously can't promise it would be done.

BTW would be nice to hear more opinions if Voxeland should move the direction of other 'smooth' terrains or become more cubic with the support of crisp edges and such?

 

Is it not possible to have both? For my purposes smooth would work better as I'm aiming for a more realistic look overall. For another project the blocky look might be a better fit. It's more of a creative direction preference than technical.

 

200% on the focus on smooth terrain from me.
And maybe some focus on a pathing tool?






And I don't know if you changed the shader in some of the last versions but it looks great. I don't even have to use megasplat anymore.

 

There is no need for another minecraft engine. Voxeland is so close to achieving a realistic voxel terrain already, it just needs better smoothing so the games made with it are more playable.

 

Smooth for sure!

 

I‘ll just reiterate my need for smooth.

 

What I'd like to see is sharp voxel building tools and of course, a smooth tool with different strenghts.
I've tried the Evaluation Version and it seems a great asset for terrain editing. But the existing tools are not suitable for voxel building. I don't know if any of you remember Landmark the Game, created and sunseted by Daybreak Games. In there you could build complex buildings and structures achieving a great degree of realism. No other game or tool achieved that ever after (Landmark was sunseted on Feb 2017). Could Voxeland perhaps add voxel building brushes? Cubes adding sharp cubes, spheres being near perfecly round... you get the idea

 

@Wright smooth works better for tessellation/displacement as well. I have a possible game changing Idea for performance. What if on rebuild Voxeland dumps the mesh but keeps the colliders and outputs point data that can be streamed only to areas the camera can see? And if someone digs, it hits the collider and rebuilds the point data for that block? There are a couple things I'd like you to see to show this is possible and creates amazing frame rates for sophisticated scenes. 1.

2. It seems that @winning11123 created a Screen space displacement asset that doesn't require tessellation or dense meshes.. Edit: He created the point cloud streaming system shown in the video as well. With his SSD asset, and maybe the possibility of converting mesh to point cloud (maybe a GPU operation) and then streaming it may allow for Ultimate Unlimted detail terrains with incredible distance with no pops & allows detailed displacement.. at these frame rate specs larger textures such as 8k might be usable and still get over 100 FPS in VR! Anyone else up for 3k FPS for Voxeland?

Might later be called point cloud land

 

I played Landmark when it was in beta, it really did have amazing building tools. I like my terrain smooth and my buildings sharp!

 

Has anyone tried to use voxeland with unity's FPS sample?
I did and it threw.
Assets\Voxeland\Tools\Plugins\Editor\CompatibilityManager.cs(37,36): error CS0117: 'PlayerSettings' does not contain a definition for 'GetScriptingDefineSymbolsForGroup'.
It would be nice to get it working with the sample.

 

I was checking out the demo of a competitor voxel engine, and I noticed it can blend smooth voxels with hard edged ones like in the screenshot:


Is it possible to achieve this with Voxeland? If not and I wanted to implement this myself (assuming it's doable), where in the source would I have to dig?

 

It seems that Unity uses the same name 'PlayerSettings' both in editor and FPS controller. The whole FPS Sample project is build in a global namespace! How could they ever do so? This makes it incompatible not only with Voxeland, but with any asset that will be using PlayerSettings or probably other class named the same. Let me know if there is a special place to report FPS Sample bug so I could let them know.

As a workaround try removing CompatibilityManager.cs, however not sure if this let Voxeland compile.

Unfortunately I'm not sure that it's possible with the current Voxeland version. It does not support crisp blocks at all, all the terrain has unified normals for the performance reasons.

Yes, I was following this game from the times it was called EverQuest Next, but lately lost interest somehow. Could you link the videos showing the most interesting terrain editing tools?

 

That game was actually built on Voxel Farm as the foundation, with a bunch of custom stuff on top. There wasn't really a distinction between terrain editing and object editing, since everything was voxel based.

Here are a couple videos for your reference:

 

@Wright Easy & customized GPU accelerated Smooth landscape using tessellation with a height map to control the shape of the entire landscape with extremely low resolution (an option for those who can use tessellation to generate) Additionally to make a system that the heightmap image can be altered procedural or by dragging in stencils/alphas (visual heightmap nodes) to create one composite heightmap terrain image. An individual mini heightmap could designate a biome and have rules for Vegetation. Raycast might be required to calculate the surface height and might need a calculation for the block from each brush stroke. And For each landscape feature (mini heightmaps the size of icons or larger) you could change it's curve/brightness to blend in and change the scale. You would drag these small highlighted height maps over a larger black (empty) height map slot that represents your whole terrain. This heightmap icon concept is an easy & fast way to see what will be added to the terrain and where. You'd be able to select mini height maps from a list and drag them into place (node window/highlighted icon to be positioned). In the end you could add some randomness and noise to make it infinite.

I realize that you have MM for procedural building but this is more visual building, is less complex more intuitive and is made with nodes that doesn't use chains (unless heightmaps could be grouped to build biomes) People wouldn't be forced into buying MM having to learn something considerable complex & time consuming. Perhaps with your Voxel brush you could select/get a mini map from the same list and a sculpt on the terrain and it basically adds the position/coordinates and adds the heightmap to the Composite Heightmap Terrain Image window. I wonder if the brush heightmap stroke on the terrain would build it faster than before since it would only require minimal tessellation to get a basic shape but maybe if people want smoother terrains adding phong tessellation to it might be ideal..

 

Do you mean something like Gaia, but in voxel 3D space?

 

I don't know how Gaia uses height maps.. Unity terrain brush has height maps but as for Voxeland it would be system maybe like Megasplat or use Specific Height maps just to create the surface shape.. In a composite Heightmap window it would for example take the position of a heightmap mountain icon that you place in the composite window and then creates the mountain in Voxeland, maybe real time or by rebuild but it would be good to have the icons layer-able over each other so they blend -the position/coordinates would be the same based on the same user specified Voxel terrain size and top down view point. I think it could be set up either to work with your own array or Megasplat and just take the Height/depth map as is or perhaps use Geo scan data & color textures to fill in several chunks with Geo scanned Color & height.

 

Hey there, amazing product. Just curious on where I would start to lerp the building process. Changing the apply time to a float obviously helps smooth out the process but I'm looking to get some more control. Could I lerp the matrix from current to new positions?
Thank you.

Update: More importantly I'm looking to be pointed in the right direction to add a OnTriggerEnter so I can have a sphere with a collider hit the voxel terrain and alter the terrain that way.
would i convert the sphere gameobjects vector3 to the matrix CoordDir or get the voxel positions inside the sphere.
Just trying to learn by messing around with code. Any help with either of these two would be great. Even just point me to a line of code.

 

Sure thing, here are some videos by Tenma, an excellent tutorial maker for Landmark the game when it was alive. You'll see the use of the tools for building purposes:

Those were very nice times!

 

It's not quite clear the way it all should work. Can you emulate some screens or maybe a video if it won't bother you?

Voxeland uses the standard mesh collider's, so you can use all of the physics functions with them, including OnTriggerEnter. You can iterate all chunks, check its bound to find if it could be collided, and sent it's collider component as an argument of OnTriggerEnter. Don't have Voxeland by the hand now, but it seems to be pretty independent code.

 

Do you have a tutorial that show how to use an height map to create a new terrain?

 

Here is a quick tutorial of how to use a height map:
- Create a new Voxeland object, open Generate foldout and switch type to heightmap:

- Open the heightmap tab (by pressing a triangle icon), and assign a heightmap texture. Note that the heightmap should be readable (read/write should be enabled in texture's import settings):

- Press Reload button to load texture.
- Set the maximum height (the height that will take 100% white values) in Height field.
- Press Force Re-Generate button, and click 'Yes, Re-Generate' in a pop-up message. Then rebuild Voxeland and see your heightmap applied:

 

Hi, I've been using Voxeland for a few years now, almost every day in fact so very familiar with the older version and all of it's quirks also. In the latest update I can't seem to find the option bake meshes to scene? I have been using that feature extensively to maintain good framerate in VR in combination with some other baking assets, or export meshes etc. Without this feature the in the current version, it has become unusable for me. Is the feature gone all together or just hidden somewhere? Thank you.

 

The correct name for this feature is "Save Meshes with Scene" because actually there's no "baking" involved. It was renamed quite a while just to reflect the reality.

 

Right, just using the name you gave it so you know what I am referring to, what I am talking about is the option that in your own words is described as "Bake Meshes to Scene" tooltip > "Bakes Terrain to unity meshes and Turns voxeland script off. Meshes are saved to the current scene. Note terrain should not be infinite" Creating the "HiResChunk" and "LoResChunk" . Using this work flow we were able to do some nice optimization on the "LoResChunk" and turn Voxeland Script off./ It seems that in the newer update there is no way to create this loreschunk and turn off voxeland. That is the question, does this still exist? Or is there an equivalent asset created? Without this feature framerate on previously efficient scenes is now up to 10 x slower. I noticed a few others asking the same question further up in the forum also. This is important to know because it also seems that older Voxeland data saved in txt format is also an issue with importing from the older to the new version. Basically everything is broken when updating and I'm trying to find a solution to save over a hundred levels created with Voxeland or we are stuck on a pre 2018 version of unity. Have these features you named "Bake Meshes to Scene" "Save TXT" and Load TXT" been removed? and if so are you able to suggest solutions for re importing levels created using previous versions.The nearest option I currently see is "Store to Assets" that creates a single data file. Would appreciate any information you can provide. Thank you. and one additional thing, where can you set "Initial Fill Level" in the newer version?

 

Correct me if I'm wrong: so you still need Voxeland object to switch LOD level (and I guess colliders and grass as well), but don't want it generate new chunks? Then try using Dynamic Limited mode (in Mode and Ranges) and set the voxel range to the size of the whole terrain.

 

Generate - Generator Type: Planar - Level

 

I would be a huge fan of controlling the 'smoothness' on a per voxel basis. Having a nice realistically smooth terrain and being able to dig a nice crisp hole is the dream. Currently it can be achieved by scaling down the voxels a ton, and set the digging and placing to be 5x5x5 voxels (for example), and also setting a picking/placing 3d grid to snap to so the same intuition applies as picking and placing 1x1x1 voxels.

Obviously there will be a hit on performance for having ~125 times as many voxels for the same playable area, so it would be exceedingly beneficial to have the voxels only exist within range of possible player interaction and move with the player and have all other regions of the terrain set as an imposter of sorts, similar to the mesh horizon. Just spit balling here.

Ive also thought about having two different voxelland terrains in the same scene. One for the smooth natural terrain that would have very relaxed voxels, and one for the man made structures that would have much tighter/crisper voxels. The missing keys for this to work are the blending issues and lack of crisp digging.

 

Hello all. I love Voxeland and I really really want to get into using it. I am trying to create an infinite terrain and use MapMagic as the editor. Whenever I do this, I get huge seams that are noticeable in game. Outside of me scrubbing the entire area, how do I fix this and prevent this from occurring?

 

Is that the Horizon Mesh seam or a normal chunk seam? I've seen some odd seams pop up along the x = 0 and z = 0 axis before. Is that the case here?

 

That is a normal chuck seam. It is like that all around the chunk. That happened to me previously as well, with Voxeland when dealing with the infinite terrain of Voxeland, the initial chunk or section creates that oddity. Everything after that renders differently/as expected.

 

I might be missing something, but it's hard to say for sure where are the seams on the image. Could you please highlight them?
If you are talking about the bright pixels between the beige texture and dark green grass then it might be the textures bug. What are the heightmaps (if TA is on) and alpha channels of the textures?

 

Seam may not have been the correct word. What happens is the terrain is modified and the height map is created based on the MM nodes I connect. when I pan the camera, in the editor, new chunks will load (because I have it set to infinite terrain generation). When the new chunks load, they will be at the starting height map level, so all of the MM editor changes do not roll out to other loaded sections.

 

I purchased Voxeland to use as a terrain editor for caves and other underground segments in a platformer. The game uses entirely 3d assets but is mechanically a sidescroller. I did all the level design prototyping in ProBuilder and am trying to switch some of these areas to Voxeland to improve the graphical quality and am having a few of issues:

1.) Due to the nature of the game I don't need square Voxeland areas very often. Typically having 1 chunk of depth is enough, but I typically need at least 4 or 5 chunks of length for even a smaller level segment. What is the best solution to this? I tried making multiple 1 chunk Voxeland objects but aligning the edges became rather time consuming for a fairly simple task.

2.) In post #149 of this thread PISCES posted some DX11 issues where black values weren't shading properly. I get this problem when using the Aura plugin with Voxeland. Was this issue ever resolved or is a workaround known?

3.) Is there a good way of exporting a Voxeland mesh for editing in a 3D program? I saw some solutions for this in very early builds of the app but was not sure if they were still viable and found nothing in the wiki.

 

This might happen because you changed one or more blocks in these areas, and thus locked them from further generate. So when you assigned the MM graph they are ignoring it still using the older data. Try pressing the Force Re-Generate button in Voxeland's Generate foldout, this will force the locked chunks be re-generated.

I guess the best solution would be rotating Voxeland object 90 degrees on X axis. The problem is that Voxeland was not designed to work this way. I've just tried it and at the first glance it seems to be fine, I can even dig and add blocks properly, but pressing Rebuild rotates back all the chunks. So you will need some script that fixes the chunks rotation after rebuild.

Don't know if this related since the shader changed since that time. Is this still an issue when Aura is turned off? Could you post a screenshot?

You can try FBX Exporter. I haven't use it myself, but from the description it seems that it will do the job.

EDIT: quick fix on rotated Voxeland rebuild issue. Now it could be used rotated 90-degrees on X or Z axis, like in Terraria or something.

 

Thanks for the quick response. I made a new project and tossed Voxeland and Aura v1 in it and have attached a screenshot of the issue.

 

Could you please expand Block, General Material and Texture Arrays settings?
Does this issue happens only when using Aura?

 

I've only tested it with version 1 of Aura so far.

 

Hello, I am using two cameras in my scene with voxeland. I am also using infinite terrain generation.

When one player roams out far enough away from the other (splitscreen game) the other player eventually falls thru the map as it goes into LOD mode and eventually disappears when far enough.

How can I prevent this from happening?

 

Hi,

My project is a space game. I have several spherical planets which I can generate quads as a large concave terrain and manipulate their vertices according to a height map in .bytes format. There is atmosphere and the sun is moving. Is it possible for me to adapt this asset for my project or is it designed for classical plane shaped terrains?

 

Hello,
Is it possible to change chunk size on existing terrain? I would like to decrease size of chunk to achive better performance with occlusion culling. Also, I found in code public property size of chunk but I couldn't find it in inspector.

Another solution for my performance issues is baked light, but I have problem with this too. I clicked "Generate Lightmap UVs" on VoxelandHorizonMesh but still have error
"Mesh doesn't have albedo UVs. Please create them in your modelling package."
"Mesh doesn't have UVs suitable for lightmapping. Consider enabling "Generate Lightmap UVs" in the model importer."
Is there way to bake light on existing terrain without exporting every mesh?

 

Could you please expand the Block settings?
Does this issue happens when not using Aura?

Here is the way it could be fixed:
- download this fix and replace the original file. It has the "Tag" values exposed in settings.
- in Mode and Ranges turn on Generate Around Tagged objects, and select MainCamera tag (or any other you like). You can also disable Generate Around Main Camera just in case, however it should not affect anything.
- for all of your cameras make sure that MainCamera tag (or the tag you've chosen) is assigned.
Now it should generate chunks for each of the cameras, not the one that's currently assigned as 'main' in scripts.

I have not tried creating planets myself, and I'd rather mention that Voxeland was designed as a classical 'planar' terrain, but here is what other users do with it:

Try using the same fix. Now the chunk size could be changed in Settings. I've tested different chunk sizes quite a while ago, so I'm not sure that it won't cause any issues now. At first glance it doesn't, but I've marked it as experimental just in case.

 

Hello, I would like to create a low poly environment in my game, is it possible to create flat shading in voxeland now?

 

I would like something smoother

 

will this work for VR.

 

Have not tried using Voxeland with VR, but as far as I know some are using them together. Would be cool if they could share their experience.

To be honest I'm not a big shader expert, but I suppose that flat shading requires splitting triangle vertexes. It's not the thing Voxeland can do out of the box, so unfortunately I don't see an easy way to create such shaders now. But I probably will look into it if most users will decide that Voxeland should go low-poly.

+2 (prev post and like) for crisp, +1 for smooth

 

Hey guys!

As you might have noticed it is MAY SALE! 50% off is a bargain and therefore it's a good time to buy assets.

I have been keeping an eye on SECTR Complete for a while, which is only 47.5$ dollars right now:



Naturally, this is a question that most people will not have an answer to as it pertain to compatibility with SECTR and whether it's even worth to pursue such goal.

I own and will be utilizing Voxeland + MapMagic for the generation of my terrain, however the last time I checked I realized that whenever Voxeland loads a new chunck, it often lags a bit. I would like the streaming solution in SECTR which apparently seems to be amazing, to help me out on this. Would this be a bad purchase? Naturally Voxeland does chunck streaming of its own, so perhaps this would be redundant as performance might not be much better (since it might not be related to the streaming aspect of it). I'm sorry, I know I could do do tons of research on this but if someone has minimal feedback to offer it will help cut out the time invested in doing such.

At the same time, would I be able to stream "procedural terrain" or would it have to be baked onto static meshes before becoming streamable with SECTR? My terrain will be dynamic, therefore I'm not sure if SECTR can handle voxel terrains in the same way it handles anything else.

Naturally, if SECTR won't do the trick for me for this particular scenario, I might just not get it at all as there would be no point since I plan on incorporatingVoxeland + MapMagic in most of my projects.

Any feedback will be greatly appreciated! Thank you!