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Voxels! - Introducing Cubiquity, a voxel plugin built with C++ and PolyVox

Discussion in 'Works In Progress - Archive' started by DavidWilliams, Apr 29, 2013.

  1. Yog-Shoggoth

    Yog-Shoggoth

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    Came across Cubiquity while looking into Voxel tech for Unity.

    Thought I'd have a bash at replicating this http://codeflow.org/entries/2010/dec/09/minecraft-like-rendering-experiments-in-opengl-4/ using the procedural example provided in the latest Git commit.

    Managed to knock this together, through implementing the generation approach in the link and brute force tweaking of the parameters. Not the greatest, and I'm sure the more experienced Unity users could get something better. Still not bad for a few days hacking around.



    I had one quick question regarding creating the voxel volumes. Is it possible to move them once generated? For example the volume shown in the screenshot is generated from a script attached to an empty object. However when I move the empty object, the volume doesn't move with it. I assume either this isn't implemented yet, or I've forgotten to include something in my generation code?

    Looking forward to seeing how Cubiquity develops and cheers for making it free for us Indie users :D
     
  2. DavidWilliams

    DavidWilliams

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    Thanks a lot! These kind of comments are really motivating :)

    You mean building structures out of voxels? The system is designed for terrain, but in theory it is possible to abuse it slightly by setting the density values such that sharp corners are created (I forget whether I said this already). I suspect that the number of available materials will be the biggest limitation here.
     
  3. Claes

    Claes

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    You're very welcome, keep up the good work, I'm sure even more people are lurking in this thread ;)

    In regards to the structures, yes, I mean building structures out of voxels. I'd like it if I was able to use the editor to place square voxels on a smooth terrain, effectively allowing me to build any structure on any terrain I so desire. So far, it seems it's either blocks or smooth terrain. Will it be possible to use both techniques on the terrain? The building wouldn't necessarily have to connect completely with the smooth terrain.

    I'm thinking it could work by creating a transparent grid over the smoothed terrain. When placing blocks, they're only placed in that grid. When editing the smooth terrain, the square grid is unaffected. This would most likely cause floating/burrowed structures in places, but with a little finesse in editing the smooth terrain, I'm sure most artists would find a way around this. This would allow for structures in a regular block-style, on a smooth terrain. I'm sure there's a better way to do this, but this could probably work. Or am I completely off here?

    Anyway, it's only a suggestion, and regardless of what you decide to do I'm still following this project. I would need to place structures for my game to work, but if a workaround allowed me to do that as well, I'd probably be satisfied ;)
     
  4. NarkLord

    NarkLord

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    Try creating both a smooth terrain and coloured cube terrain at the same location. Build your buildings on the coloured cube terrain.


    This plugin is looking reallly good. The two main features of interest for me regarding the coloured cube terrain are making really large (streaming ) terrains. I don't want to say infinite, but that kind of idea. The other is the ability to add user data to individual voxels. Also the ability to mark a voxel as blocked even if it is empty. This way you can place trees or other objects embeded in voxels without worrying about rendering voxels over them.
     
  5. DavidWilliams

    DavidWilliams

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    Combining smooth terrain and structures is something which will need some experimentation. As NarkLord says you can indeed simply overlay a cubic and smooth map, but this will have performance (and other?) limitations. But if it works for your purposes then great.

    It should be possible to create cubes directly within the 'smooth' terrain though I don't yet know how flexible this will be. It's not the aim of the system so if it works then consider it a bonus :) I don't think we'll add it into the editor, but we should make an example script for this kind of behaviour in-game as I think many people might be interested in it.

    Actually, as I refactor the code I can see a lot of stuff moving from the core to become examples instead. I think this is a good thing as it will show there are many different styles of terrain which can be created.

    This will come eventually. The data is already streamed to and from disk on demand, but the limitation is currently the rendering. We build an octree around the specified region and generate the mesh for this. Ideally we would move this octree with the camera but at the moment it is fixed.

    We do intend to do some work here, but I've mentioned elsewhere that you may just be able to store properties in an array if you environment isn't too big. If you just store a byte per voxel then you can easily have millions of these (i.e. a few megabytes).

    I've also realized that we should allow some user data to be embedded directly in the voxel, because then it can be passed to a user's custom shader for any special rendering tricks.
     
  6. Fishypants

    Fishypants

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    This is really awesome! Great work!
     
  7. DavidWilliams

    DavidWilliams

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    I've made another simple demo which shows how to import an image of a maze and convert it into a voxel model which you can walk around. Again this isn't core Cubiquity functionality, it's just an example which you can tweak for you own purposes. The input image looks like this:

    And here is the voxelized version:


    You can also put a first person controller in the scene and walk around the maze (it's fully destructible of course!):


    Anyway, it's nothing too fancy but I thought it was worth sharing. You can see the generation code here. Just throw in some enemies and you've got a basic game :) You could also generate the maze at runtime or even switch it for a more complex dungeon generator - there's loads of examples for this floating about the internet.
     
  8. DavidWilliams

    DavidWilliams

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    Hi guys,

    We've finally made another video showing our Cubiquity voxel engine in action, and released the corresponding snapshot for download!

    [video=youtube_share;3kckUJG0KBA]http://youtu.be/3kckUJG0KBA​

    The main new features are:

    • New file format using an SQLite database.
    • New licensing model such that the system is now completely free for non-commercial use.
    • Various API improvements to make it easier to work with volumes from code.
    • Collision mesh support for the smooth voxel terrains.
    • New examples of procedural generation and creating a maze from an image.
    More details are available in our latest blog post: Cubiquity for Unity3D progress update (Nov 2013)

    You can download the snapshot here (Windows-only at the moment):

    Hope you like it and let us know what you think!
     
  9. Axel59

    Axel59

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    That's a great preview. :D
     
  10. voxi

    voxi

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    Will there be ways to convert animated poly models into voxel data, somewhat like the old Voxlap and Eledraw engines by Ken Silverman? (He uses Poly2vox for the conversion)

    Also, I would rather make my terrains in Blender so I can carve caves and ledges in my terrain. Will there ever be a way to convert a UV mapped and textured mesh into a voxel terrain?
    I made some levels for a game called Voxelstein a few years ago, and building the levels in Blender was really fun. Most of what I made could never be achieved with just a simple heightmap.

    I want to add things like castles and trees to my worlds. It would be much easier for me to just model those things in blender, then convert them over.
    I really hope there is some sort of importer.

    Thank you for making this. I am going to be a commercial user as soon as we get our funding cleared with CSS.

    Please excuse my poor english. I am not from here.
     
  11. DavidWilliams

    DavidWilliams

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    Hi, glad to hear of your interest :)

    Cubiquity is for representing environments so it can't do animations in the way that you would want for a character. You can add and remove voxels, and you will soon be able to move volumes around, but that's not exactly what you need.

    However, there is also this system for Unity3D which should do what you want: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/205624-Organic-model-to-voxel-generator-including-SkinnedMeshes!

    I think that it makes a lot of sense to use that system in conjuntion with Cubiquity. You can use Cubiquity for the envirments and that system for the characters.

    Eventually yes, though I don't know how soon it will come. First we will provide tools to convert from other voxels formats, so you may be able to use something like Qubicle Constructor to turn your mesh into a volume, and then use a tool from us to import the Qubicle Constructor volume into Cubiquity.

    Sure, I remember it well. Ken Silverman's engine was a really inspiratinal piece of work. I believe the game 'Build and Shoot' is based off his engine, and we do have an importer for those .vxl maps. I don't know whether they changed the file format at all though. You can see a 'Build and Shoot map in our Tank demo here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhV2dcM4IkE

    When I get time I would like to investigate the possibility of exporting voxel maps directly from Blender. My idea would be to set up a camera with the near and far planes very close together so that it renders a 'slice' through the scene. Then I would animate the camera to move it through the volume and render out the images. We already have the ability to import volumes from many image slices so this would then give you a volume.

    It's just an idea and I haven't thought it through fully, but if it works it should also let you bake Blender's lighting into the voxels (only if you want to).
     
  12. DavidWilliams

    DavidWilliams

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    @Yog-Shoggoth - I'm sorry, I missed your post!

    Very cool, I remember reading Florian's post a while ago and it's full of good ideas. I think it's really the lighting which is the main difference his images and yours, and in particular the ambient occlusion. A while ago we did some experiments with ambient occlusion but it hasn't been exposed to Unity yet. We should try and get that in though as it makes a big visual difference.

    At the moment the volumes do not move but we need to fix this. They should eventually behave like any other game objects, allowing scaling, rotation, and translation. It would be nice to support two voxel planets orbiting each other, or to have a voxel asteroid floating in space.
     
  13. Yog-Shoggoth

    Yog-Shoggoth

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    Actually my post did a bit of time travelling, for some reason it got caught in moderation limbo and didn't actually appear in the thread until about a week ago if that. So no apology necessary :).

    Thanks for the answer regarding the movement of volumes. I'll keep an eye out for that feature appearing in future builds.
     
  14. Jagwire

    Jagwire

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    @DavidWilliams this really is great work, I'm excited to take Cubiquity out for a spin! I don't suppose there are any thoughts on fluid dynamics or such being integrated in for flowing water, lava, or such?
     
  15. DavidWilliams

    DavidWilliams

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    I don't think we will integrate fluid dynamics as such, but it would be nice to provide an example of how to implement it on top of Cubiquity. You have direct access to the volume data through the getVoxel()/setVoxel() function so it should be possible to build a cellular automata based approach using this.

    Another interesting idea would be to use one of the existing fluid simulation packages for Unity (there is at least one available for free) and then draw each particle as a cube. The position could be snapped to the nearest integer position which should give a nice voxel effect as the water flows. I've not tried it but it seems like an interesting idea.
     
  16. Jagwire

    Jagwire

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    @DavidWilliams bummer, but I understand.

    Since what I'm about to ask is off-topic, I'll be brief. I've tried to wrap my head around fluid dynamics but I'm afraid differential equations is a bit much for me at the moment, is there a particular resource you suggest as perhaps a more gentle introduction to the implementation of fluid dynamics?
     
  17. voxi

    voxi

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    Thank you!



    Are there any instructions on how to get a VLX map working?

    Edit:
    The poly converter looks cool, but it rotates the voxels which looks undesirable. Blender has a Re-mesh tool that will not let anything rotate. You may want to link people to that as well in the future. It has a more natural look to it.
     
    Last edited: Dec 8, 2013
  18. DavidWilliams

    DavidWilliams

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    Actually I'm not particularly knowledgeable about fluid dynamics myself. For Minecraft games Cellular Automata are quite a popular approach:
    But actually I'd rather investigate 'real' fluid physics, and there is an extension on the Asset Store which provides this for free:
    You might start by playing around with that (even outside Cubiquity) and then see if there is a way to replace the particles with cubes.

    No, it's not quite ready, but I'm actively working on it (I was working on it today in fact). It should be exposed in the next snapshot.

    I think we're talking about slightly differnt things here. I wasn't referring to any existing tool in Blender, I was just suggesting the you could render a 'slice' of the scene by setting the near clip plane of the camera to be close to the far clip plane. Then you could create an animation by moving the camera through the scene. The frames of your animation would be slices through the scene, and you could then combine them into a volume.

    But like I said I don't know how well it will work...
     
  19. voxi

    voxi

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    What VLX format are you going to use? The 512x512x64 one that Ace of Spades used? or the Voxlap version that is 1024x1024x256?
    If it is the bigger one could you supply the .EXE you built so we can all use it? The version of Voxed Ben Aksoy modded for Ace of Spades is really buggy.

    I am sure your other users will want the 1024x1024x256 version too.

    Thanks in advance if you , or someone in the community can do this for us.
    here is the source :
    http://advsys.net/ken/voxlap.htm
     
  20. DavidWilliams

    DavidWilliams

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    So far I've only done the Ace of Spades format, and the reasons for this were simply that I found some code for loading the volumes (see here) and also that there were a large number of interesting maps available for testing. Are you aware of any nice maps in the larger format? I guess there's some for Voxelstein, though I prefer to work with something a little less controversial ;-)

    I've written the AoS .vxl importer in C using the CubiquityC.dll directly, it is also possible for users to implement their own importers within Unity by just writing the required code in C#.
     
  21. voxi

    voxi

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    Thank you very much DavidWilliams!!
    I made a gift for you!

    http://voxi.t15.org/prop/tank/tank.html


    I can make you a map if you would like. I do not have the larger format voxlap. I can make you one for Ace of Spades Voxlap though.

    I can also supply you with some KVX or KV6 trees and buildings for further testing.

    I hope you enjoy the tanks, I hope you find them useful.
     

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    Last edited: Dec 7, 2013
  22. DavidWilliams

    DavidWilliams

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    Wow, those are really cool! When we released the Tank demo we only provided the binaries and not the Unity project file, and the main reason for this was that the tank model was from the asset store and so we didn't have the rights to redistribute it. If we use your tank model instead then we could make it into a nice example which could distribute with the engine.

    I tried loading it into Unity and it does work, but actually it also gave the following error repeated many times:

    But I can still drag the tank into the scene and view it.

    I will have to do some searching but I should be able to find the Turret script which I used in the tank demo for aiming the cannon. Hopefully this will 'just work' with your prepared model.

    Also, do you have a license for this tank model? One of the Creative Commons licenses would be great, and it's nice if it is as open as possible. Note that it would need to allow commercial use, because we can't have a situation where commercial users of Cubiquity actually get less than free users ;-)

    In other news I just added the .vxl importer to the Git repository. To use it you will need to download the very latest version of Cubiquity, which you can get as a zip file by clicking here: https://bitbucket.org/volumesoffun/cubiquity-for-unity3d/get/master.zip

    You need to add the stuff in the 'Assets' folder into the 'Assets' folder of your own project (maybe make a new test project!),
    and you will then find the converter at \Assets\StreamingAssets\Cubiquity\ConvertToVDB.exe

    Place your AoS/BnD map in the same folder as the converter, launch a command prompt, and run something like:

    Code (csharp):
    1. ConvertToVDB.exe -i yourmap.vxl -o output.vdb
    You can then go into Unity, create a new scene, and add a Colored Cubes Volume. If you select it and go to the inspector then you should see a button called 'Load Voxel Database'. Click and find the .vdb file which you just created and hopefully it will open :)

    You can see that we need to improve the workflow, but let me know how it goes for you.

    If (as suggested) you want to make an example map for Cubiquity then that would be awesome. As the artist I think you should have the choice about what kind of environment you want to create, but I can give a few pointers:
    • If it is for a tank demo then be aware that the tank does not do well on hills. The industry map was almost completely flat, and having at least parts being flat would be required for a tank demo.
    • On the other hand, it might be nice it we could also use it for a first person example, in which some areas with hills, buildings, or other more complex geometry would be fun.
    • Avoid baking the lighting into the map. Cubiquity's lighting is not advanced, but it does at least do shadows and more advanced lighting should come later.
    • If it's just an example rather than being playable then I guess it doesn't need to be balanced for two teams like an AoS map, so just have fun making it interesting.
    • Keep your source assets so that we have the option of making a higher resolution version of the map when Cubiquity supports it.
    Anyway, this is really great stuff so I hope you have fun playing with Cubiquity :)
     
  23. voxi

    voxi

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    Yay! Ok I will get started no on the map!

    I will update the tank with the new licence, and see if I can get some sort of control script working with it.

    Well so far the AoS voxlap maps port in without a hitch. Colors look 100% perfect!

    I do not have the old Voxlap compiled yet, I will give Qubicle construct first try for a 1024x1024 tank demo map.

    I have a little man model I made in Qubicle, and rigged in blender. He might be perfect for a FPS or third person camera demo.

    Oh this is exciting! I had no idea the import would be this easy!
     
  24. DavidWilliams

    DavidWilliams

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    @voxi - That's great news, just what I wanted to hear :)

    @Jagwire - Last night I had a quick look at Fluvio for fluid dynamics. It seems Fluvio actually uses Unity's built-in particle system, so it might make more sense to start with that and learn how to render Unity's particles as axis-aligned cubes. I think you can probably just specify a mesh to render, or if you want to get fancy you can possibly do it with a geometry shader.

    I didn't have much time, but I'd like to look at Unity's particle system again in the future to see what I can come up with. Should be possible to do voxelised smoke and other effects, as well as water.
     
  25. Jagwire

    Jagwire

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    @DavidWilliams

    Interesting. We had looked at Fluvio also, and noticed we couldn't scale up as far as we needed to and keep performance integrity. See, we're working on an educational game to teach young students water-cycle models. The basic idea is that students will be able to build their own landmass and simulate various water flows to run "experiments". We've looked into TerrainEngine by dyox and we like Cubiquity's price tag, as well as you 10 times more than TerrainEngine and dyox. Let us know how we can help in the future. For what it's worth, I think the smooth terrain is more our bag than the blockiness, but it seems like Marching Cubes lets Cubiquity give us the desired smoothness. As an aside, is there interest in using Dual Contouring or another algorithm? I admit, I'm ignorant of most of them, I've just found more options to be better than fewer.

    Thanks for keeping us in the loop!
     
  26. voxi

    voxi

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    Hi DavidWilliams,

    I got a little delayed today, but I got a nice armature all set up, and a little block man. Next avatar should have a Bazooka, or something to shoot with.
    http://voxi.t15.org/demo/AvitarTest1.exe

    I am amazed at how fast it is to set up a simple scene in Unity. The Cubiquity plugins are just as easy to understand and use! I have the click to explode, and camra scripta plugged right into my avatar with no problem!

    The map is a test from the Qubicle VXL exporter. Your Cubiquity seems to ignore the full bright lighting data from VXL files too, so I do not need to use a stripper anymore when i use the Qubicle export.

    This is my first Unity scene, and compiled EXE. Your system is truly newbie friendly , and fool-proof.

    More to come soon :)
     
    Last edited: Dec 10, 2013
  27. DavidWilliams

    DavidWilliams

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    @Jagwire - It sounds like a great project but I agree that fluid simulation will be a challenge. I assumed you wanted cubic terrain in which case you could probably get away with a small number of particles (as the whole thing looks 'low res' any way), but for smooth terrain I think the required number of particles will be more than the CPU can handle.

    There are other systems on the asset store (here and here) and at least the first explicitly states it runs on the GPU. I've never tried them though, and I'm not sure what setup will required to get them working with Cubiquity. But I'm inspired to try playing with fluids in the future :)

    As for Dual Contouring, it's very interesting and long term I'd like to see it in Cubiquity. EQ Next will drive a lot of interest here. But I don't think it will happen in the next year as we need to focus on polishing the features we have already.

    That is seriously cool stuff! Both the character and the maps are really nice, and I'm sure we can come up with a great demo. You could post some screenshots so other people can see what you are working on?

    That said, the demo didn't actually run for me due to a bug in Cubiquity. It looks like I've saved the absolute path to the voxel database rather than the relative one... so it's looking for the .vdb in the wrong location. But I was still able to view the maps with a separate tool I have, and will try to get this issue fixed soon.

    Unity is an amazing tool, and it's just so easy when you've come from a background of programming C++, setting up libraries, and dealing with low-level details. It's hard to imagine going back now. We're trying hard to do things 'the Unity way' so I'm glad it feels intuitive.
     
  28. voxi

    voxi

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    haha! OK :) looking forward to the next release then.

    Sorry for the bad post, here is a webpage plugin of the new avitar:
    http://voxi.t15.org/char/sarge/webpage.html

    When I get done with treatment today, I am going to give it another go with Cubiquity and i will post some nice screen rips for you.

    EDIT:
    OK, well I used a batch-file that pumped in the absolute path rather than the relative one, Could that be the problem?

    The batch command was simple, here is a copypasta:
    ConvertToVDB.exe -i %1.vxl -o %1.vdb

    I will give it a go when I get home.
     
    Last edited: Dec 10, 2013
  29. DavidWilliams

    DavidWilliams

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    I think it's most likely an issue with Cubiquity, so don't worry yourself with it too much. I'll try and get it fixed soon because I really want to try see your map properly :)
     
  30. voxi

    voxi

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    Ok, I will wait :)
     
    Last edited: Dec 11, 2013
  31. voxi

    voxi

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    I did a quick rendering test today on some of my upcoming games assets, I thought you guys would like to see the pictures.









    I will be doing some work on the demo map again today. Hope i can get the tank working :)
     
  32. DavidWilliams

    DavidWilliams

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    Love it! You've done really great work on that map and I can't wait to give it a go. I'm trying to sort out the path issue at the moment, but actually there are currently some other things broken so it might be a few days before I get the repository in a stable state again.

    Hopefully you can get the basics working (driving, collisions, etc) but the turret and cannon can be tricky. I managed to find the two scripts which were used for this in our tank demo. One controls the rotation of the turret and the other controls the elevation of the cannon. You can't use them directly because Cubiquity has evolved since and they also reference specific object names, but they should be a starting point. You can find them attached to this post and use them however you like.

    The structure of the tank in our demo was as follows:

    $structure.png

    If you need more help with the turret/cannon then let me know. Of course, you might rather control the turret/cannon directly rather than having it follow the mouse, in which case you won't need the scripts anyway. Depends what's best for your project really.
     

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  33. voxi

    voxi

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    This is WONDERFUL! Thank you very much, the scripts will really help me out in this case!

    There has been a slight delay, I found a crippling bug in Unity Unite from Qubicle, and now I need to re-make a bunch of my content.
    http://www.minddesk.com/vanilla/ind...n-models-with-qubicle-unite-in-unity-#Item_26

    It seems that Qubicle unite does not weld the UV maps, or make water-tight meshes. So I am going to re-make the tank and some of the other things. It should not take me very long.
     
  34. DavidWilliams

    DavidWilliams

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    @voxi - I think I have fixed the problem with the paths. You can try using the following revision instead of the one I gave you previously:

    https://bitbucket.org/volumesoffun/cubiquity-for-unity3d/get/a3b6a54.zip

    This should let you do a build which will then run on another computer, but right now I don't have a second PC to test on.

    Do a backup first, and then replace the Cubiquity assets in your project with the latest versions from that file. You should test it on a clean scene first, and you will need to delete and recreate your volume from the scene view when you later test on your existing scene.

    Let me know how it goes...
     
  35. voxi

    voxi

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    Hi DavidWilliams,

    Here is a snapshot from my laptop:

    http://voxi.t15.org/demo/1.png

    Greetings from Skullville :) I think you can call this a success.

    Thank you very much :)
     

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  36. voxi

    voxi

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  37. The_Code

    The_Code

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    Looks very good!
    Good luck with this!
     
  38. DavidWilliams

    DavidWilliams

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    @voxi - It looks very good, I tested the demo and it works fine so I think the path issue is fixed. I really like the character animation. I found the controls a little difficult, but it's really nice the way the turning and jumping animations map to a character made out of blocks.

    @everyone - I've done some more work on the converter and it can now import MagicaVoxel models. MagicaVoxel is an open source voxel modelling application which has a number of powerful editing features. Actually the volumes are quite limited in size but I think it still has some uses, and maybe the size limitation get raised in the future:


    And this is some characters imported into Cubiquity:


    I don't think the program supports animation so it probably makes more sense to use it for props and small maps. I'd like to add Qubicle Constructor support as well but I think that will have to happen after the next Cubiquity snapshot is released.
     
  39. voxi

    voxi

    Joined:
    Dec 3, 2013
    Posts:
    60
    Oh my goodness! Christmas has come early!



    I think I just requested this very feature in your PolyVox forums.

    Thank you so much!
     
  40. TehWardy

    TehWardy

    Joined:
    Mar 20, 2013
    Posts:
    38
    WOW !!!
    Just ... WOW !!

    Out of curiosity ...
    @Voxi - what happens if you run that map of yours through cubiquity in smooth mode?
    Your project looks awesome !!!

    Also ...
    How are you guys doing the animation with voxels, surely you're not updating the raw data every frame are you, my guess is the resulting mesh has bones applied?

    I'm a total noob to this stuff so need the dumbest guide ever, my situation is one of a little larger scale ...
    I need to take about a billion voxels and see how they interact when part of 2 large objects that are smashed together :)

    When it comes to positioning you guys don't seem to be getting the problem I get ... everything seems to render on the same spot in the center of the scene for some odd reason.
    Am I being a total retard?
     
  41. DavidWilliams

    DavidWilliams

    Joined:
    Apr 28, 2013
    Posts:
    522
    Unfortunately this isn't possible as the smooth mode requires quite different data (it needs a continuous scalar field rather than color values). However, I would be interested in making it possible to apply the lighting 'per-voxel' rather than 'per-face' which might allow for some interesting visual smoothing effects, even though the mesh is still cubic. This won't happen soon but I am curious to see how it can look.

    Edit: To clarify, I'd be interested in making images like this possible. Notice how you can't see the individual voxel faces but just the voxel as a whole:
    $9410296_orig.png
     
    Last edited: Dec 22, 2013
  42. Yog-Shoggoth

    Yog-Shoggoth

    Joined:
    Mar 23, 2013
    Posts:
    13
    I know it's a long way off, but I'd be very interested in making images like that with Cubiquity too :D.

    Out of interest, how was that image made?
     
  43. DavidWilliams

    DavidWilliams

    Joined:
    Apr 28, 2013
    Posts:
    522
    It's from this fine chap: http://www.gavanw.com/

    I believe his voxel engine is/was based on raycasting though I don't remember for sure.

    Actually, in a sense we can already do this in Cubiquity. If you turn of dynamic lighting then the voxels have a single color, and you can then bake lighting directly into the voxel data. Of course, if you bake the lighting then you can't make significant changes to your environment. We have an old video which demonstrates something like this:

    [video=youtube_share;t2AENTctzyY]http://youtu.be/t2AENTctzyY
    (Source data here: http://zero-k.info/Maps/Detail/19378)​

    It also shows LOD but you can't have that yet ;-)
     
  44. NuclearSyncGames

    NuclearSyncGames

    Joined:
    Jan 28, 2013
    Posts:
    42
    Your Doing a Minecraft Terrain Creator..... Not Exactly My Choice Since There Are At Least Ten Starter Kits For This Kinda Game. But You've Done Too Much to Give Up. So Do You Have Plans Of Releasing A Polished Version of This for A Profit In The Future???
     
  45. DavidWilliams

    DavidWilliams

    Joined:
    Apr 28, 2013
    Posts:
    522
    Yes, though the system you will be able to buy is the same as the system you can download for free, but getting a license will allow you to use it commercially. So if you are interested in a voxel terrain system then it's well worth giving it a try to see if it meets your needs.

    That said, it's still in development so you can't buy the commercial license quite yet, but it should be on the asset store in the next couple of months.
     
  46. ScTar

    ScTar

    Joined:
    Oct 7, 2012
    Posts:
    14
    I seem to be having some problems with importing the dll. When I try to make a volume I get an error "DllNotFoundException" but the dll is in the project's root folder.
     
  47. DavidWilliams

    DavidWilliams

    Joined:
    Apr 28, 2013
    Posts:
    522
    Any chance you are on a Mac? The system is Windows only at the moment. Actually I did add a warning to alert Mac users to this issue but I notice it got #ifdef'd out at some point.

    If you are on Windows we can investigate further.

    Edit: For everyone else, things were quiet over the Christmas period but a lot of progress was made. It's mostly polishing and robustness improvements but I'll have some stuff to show in the next week or so.
     
  48. ScTar

    ScTar

    Joined:
    Oct 7, 2012
    Posts:
    14
    I'm on a fresh install of Windows 8, does it have to be on 7?
     
  49. DavidWilliams

    DavidWilliams

    Joined:
    Apr 28, 2013
    Posts:
    522
    I have Windows 8 myself so that should be fine. I just tested it myself with the following ZIP file: http://www.volumesoffun.com/downloads/Cubiquity/cubiquity-for-unity3d-preview04.zip

    Which I extracted on my computer. I then created a new Unity project and did Assets->Import Package->Custom Package and found 'cubiquity-for-unity3d-preview04.unitypackage'. When I try to create a warning I see the following warning:

    It works as expected, and to avoid any confusion my project folder looks like this:

    $ProjectStructure.jpg

    If it's not working for you then I guess you won't have the Cubiquity log file, but maybe you can check for any further errors in your Unity log file?

    There is also some chance you need the VS2010 redistribtable though I haven't really looked into that: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=5555

    I should set up static linking to make sure this isn't required (if it is required now...).

    Let me know how it goes.
     
  50. ScTar

    ScTar

    Joined:
    Oct 7, 2012
    Posts:
    14
    My project folder looks good. I just finished installing VS13, no change. Doing a system update now and then installing VS2010. Here is the error I get whenever I try to create a volume: