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Ghostpilot

Voxels (are they the future?)

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Hello.

I have been investigating if it's possible to add voxel support in DooM or ZDooM.

Why bother I hear you ask.
Well, by adding md2 models you can make DooM look VERY good.
But that is the problem itself according to me. The models are just too good looking for DooM.
Voxel models would be as "ugly" as DooM is and the final overall result would be better.

My question is this.
Is there any good voxel model editor out there?
I know there was one with the Buildenginge games like Blood and Shadow Warrior.
But I don't own any of them. I'm looking for a free good voxel editor so that I can make some test models.

This is important to me because I can not start working on my per-pixel-collision-detection" until I have
investigated the option of voxel models.

EDIT--------------------------------------------
Super ugly basic page with WIP shots

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Blood didn't come with a voxel-editor. Or at least, I haven't found one on my CD.

Voxels didn't make the cut because hardware companies went the way of the polygon model, amongst other things. Carmack had some things to say about voxels vs. polygon models you might be interested in, but I don't remember the link to that article.

And yes, I do agree that voxels look more natural for a Doom-style game.

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Korn: Was that voxel editor for C&C only? Or can I use it to make general .VXL models?

I have roamed around on Ken Silvermans homepage, and he wrote that Shadow Warrior had a voxeleditor that was called slabspri.exe that could transform a set of sprite angels into voxelmodels.
I have placed a bid on SW cd on tradera.com so I can get that editor.
But that editor is probably simple and for DOS only.
I need something, well... Something more user friendly.

I have checked the ZDooM forums and Randy have no intention on adding voxel support right now.
But if I find a way to make decent voxelmodels for items and skins, he might be interested.
Otherwise I can try to implement voxel support by myself for my sparetime project. It can't be too hard.

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Mordeth said:

Blood didn't come with a voxel-editor. Or at least, I haven't found one on my CD.

It didn't?
Maybe only Shadow Warrior comes with the voxel editor then.

Mordeth also said:

Carmack had some things to say about voxels vs. polygon models you might be interested in, but I don't remember the link to that article.

Please, can you try to remember where to find that article? I'm writing my graduation report at university about voxels, and I need articles and books to read.

Mordeth agrees to:
And yes, I do agree that voxels look more natural for a Doom-style game.

Good to know that someone knows what I'm talking about.

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I certainly agree with you that polygons look too good for Doom's enviroment. Especially in ports which don't have slopes or much level content released for them (meaning they have to stick to older maps). I seemed to remember Blood coming with utilities, but I'm probably wrong. I remember Shadow Warrior coming with more though.

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ToXiCFLUFF said:

Especially in ports which don't have slopes or much level content released for them (meaning they have to stick to older maps



Isn't it strange that the source ports with high level content released don't support models and those which do support them almost have almost no specially made levels available? I don't think that's a coincidence. Don't forget that models and high res textures are useless as soon as a WAD uses custom graphics, making any 'advanced' mod 'unplayable' for model fans.

Regarding voxels I must admit that I don't like them. Every demo I have seen had an ugly 'blocky' look. I'll stick with the original sprites.

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I remember finding a voxel viewer on Ken Silverman's page. Dunno if you could edit with it, but I have a strong feeling you could.

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Theres a .3ds to voxel converter somewhere on Kens site, so if you have anything that exports to polygon models to 3ds you will be able to use that.

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When I get home I'll try and dig up some of this stuff you're looking for, Ghostpilot. As encouragement, the filename "slabspri" does ring a bell here.

Graf Zahl said:
Regarding voxels I must admit that I don't like them. Every demo I have seen had an ugly 'blocky' look. I'll stick with the original sprites.


Go see the items lying around in ShadowWarrior (after enabling voxel models via the setup/menu). Or better, hunt down a copy of Blood and watch the voxel chairs, eg. episode 2, "Haunted". Those get no complaints from me, and I'm pretty picky.

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Mordeth said:

When I get home I'll try and dig up some of this stuff you're looking for, Ghostpilot. As encouragement, the filename "slabspri" does ring a bell here.




Go see the items lying around in ShadowWarrior (after enabling voxel models via the setup/menu).



All I can say is that I never liked them, even in Shadow Warrior.

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Ghostpilot said:

Korn: Was that voxel editor for C&C only? Or can I use it to make general .VXL models?


I believe the files where saved as .vxl format. It was a while ago when I had used the program though.

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KoRn said:

I believe the files where saved as .vxl format. It was a while ago when I had used the program though.

Do you have a link or maybe a name of the program?

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Graf Zahl said:

Regarding voxels I must admit that I don't like them. Every demo I have seen had an ugly 'blocky' look. I'll stick with the original sprites.

?!?!??!?!

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Interesting demo.

How can a voxel based model look as good as one based on polygons? Any diagonal line is always going to be blocky.

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Ghostpilot said:

Do you have a link or maybe a name of the program?


This

It has been a while, so I am not sure of it's capabilites or reletivity to what you want.

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chilvence said:

Poly2kvx on this page if anyone is intrested in the converter.

http://www.advsys.net/ken/download.htm

You probably wont be able to use the voxels outside of Blood/SW, but maybe some Duke3d port has added support for them as well.

Certainly has. I believe it's colourless' port. As far as I can remember, it implemented them in a pretty cool way too (automatically adding them over switch textures and stuff).

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Linguica said:

Voxels are too blocky, but sprites aren't?!?!


And here's the answer:

Any diagonal line is always going to be blocky.



A sprite naturally has no diagonal surface so it's not that much of an issue.

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Graf: It seems to me that the voxel resolution could be increased, though, or perhaps some interpolation could be applied. With sprites, doing the same seems just to yield a BLURRY blocky image. Case in point: Weapon sprites in JDoom being mip-mapped or whatever but not at a really high resolution really, really suck.

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Bloodshedder said:

I dunno, the Cave Demo looks pretty impressive.

Indeed, and the slightly grainy quality of it only enhances the atmosphere. Something about it being less crisp just makes it more enjoyable.

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I was thinking this a while ago, and I think its a great idea. The look of doom sprites...that you can walk around? How cool is that! ..the specs for the kvx's are included with Shadow Warrior IIRC. I'd love to see this take shape, if at all.

With shadow warrior's format there was a way of importing the sprites into Kens tool and then expand on them with the internal tools. Thats how all the guns and stuff were made, so I hear (Although there werent multiple directions of weapons in the ART files).

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I was pretty impressed by the way the cave demo looked actually, and the way groups of voxels would collapse if you severed their support was good. In fact I was impressed altogether with the way the scenery deformed.

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So voxel-based deformable terrain with a dynamically generated polygon layer intersecting at the surface-points (any point that is not shared by pieces of other voxels I think) in order to cover up the blockiness with a nice smooth surface might be an abso-fucking-lutely marvelous solution for deformable terrain in "modern" polygon-based games! THINK ABOUT IT.

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