Doom Voxel Project

[DooMAD]

After this thread some months ago, a project began to convert many of Doom's items into a 3D voxel format. A demo site was put up to show progress, but sadly it didn't last long. Fortunately, I managed to contact Ghostpilot, who started the thread, and he sent me the voxel models he had been working on. I've added those to the ones I made and put up a new webpage to showcase them all:

 

http://teamhellspawn.com/voxels.html

There are quite a few images, so it may take some time to load on slower connections.

 

 

//2022_EDIT:

Dormant project is very dormant.  Updates are highly unlikely at this stage.

Edited May 5, 2022 by DooMAD : zZzZzZ

[Captain Red]

Hey Graf! add voxel support to gzdoom!

(uh, if you can)

edit: please.

[TheDarkArchon]

OpenGL and Voxels are mutually exclusive.

[DooMAD]

TheDarkArchon said:

OpenGL and Voxels are mutually exclusive.

A quick google search found this:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~notnot/breed/BREEDdemo.html
Although it uses a different voxel format to the one we've been working with.

Also, this:
http://snarfed.org/space/Voxel

Since the scene data in Voxel Hunt is made of voxels and not polygonal surfaces, OpenGL's poly routines cannot be used to rasterize the scene. Therefore, OpenGL is only used as a graphics library to blit pixels to the screen - I wrote my own framebuffer and call glDrawPixels only to draw a frame to the screen.

I wrote a number of renderers in the process of writing Voxel Hunt. I first wrote a poly renderer that draws each voxel as a cube with 6 faces. Needless to say, this was ass slow. I then wrote a number of raycasting algorithms before settling on the "look angle" algorithm I use now. Two of the more significant optimizations I wrote were a special fixed point data type (operations on it are much faster than floating point), and a lookup table of cosine and sine values for "look angles."

Would it be possible to use a similar method for one of the OpenGL source ports?

This site also has some really cool stuff on it, such as an OpenGL rendered, voxel based Legend of Zelda OverWorld map.

[Koko Ricky]

It's a cute novelty, but I don't see the point considering source ports like Doomsday and Risen 3-D support models.

[leileilol]

they may support 3d models, but everyone who does them suck at faithfulness.

[Graf Zahl]

Any method to render voxels in GL has severe disadvantages. You have to completely circumvent all the things that make hardware rendering interesting.

gargoylol said:

they may support 3d models, but everyone who does them suck at faithfulness.

I have to agree about the existing models though. Especially the monsters are so far off the originals that they are not a worthy replacement. I think the problem is that most model makers are obsessed with high resolution and 'improving' everything. Faithfulness doesn't count for these people.

So why does nobody create models that are as faithful as these voxel sprites? If someone could make real models out of these they might be of some use.

[ducon]

Hehehe, looks like Lego.

[DooMAD]

Graf Zahl said:

Any method to render voxels in GL has severe disadvantages. You have to completely circumvent all the things that make hardware rendering interesting.

But it is possible. People just don't seem to want to admit it for some reason.

[zark]

Voxels for the win. I think this would be a really good idea.

[Graf Zahl]

DooMAD said:

But it is possible. People just don't seem to want to admit it for some reason.

It's not about admitting anything. It is about completely ignoring the limitations of hardware rendering. Voxels are a pain to render, plain and simple. And why even bother when models are so much easier to handle? I honestly don't think you will get much support from source port developers for this.

[Julian]

Marching Cubes anyone?

[Koko Ricky]

Graf Zahl said:

Any method to render voxels in GL has severe disadvantages. You have to completely circumvent all the things that make hardware rendering interesting.




I have to agree about the existing models though. Especially the monsters are so far off the originals that they are not a worthy replacement. I think the problem is that most model makers are obsessed with high resolution and 'improving' everything. Faithfulness doesn't count for these people.

So why does nobody create models that are as faithful as these voxel sprites? If someone could make real models out of these they might be of some use.

I don't understand. I use the model pack for Doomsday and it looks pretty faithful to me. All the enemies and objects look instantly recognizeable and don't seem to have any gratuitous features added. They even try to recreate most of the death animations accurately.

[Mindless Rambler]

The JDoom models dont look that bad, they are great 3D repesentations of the doom monsters. Also, the Voxel models looks like the sprites were just stretched out to create depth. How can md2 models be 'too good' for Doom? Can't Doom look as great as it truly is?

[Manc]

May or may not help, but here's a demo with source code using the marching cubes algorithm in opengl (be sure you get the framework and libs at the top of the page to compile the source).

[Dittohead]

I personally think voxels and doom are a good match. Good luck!

[-_DLD_-]

Looks pretty neat. Stuff like this is one of the new things you can still do to the DOOM engine without making it a whole new game.

[Linguica]

I would never play Doom with 3D modelled enemies because it just looks too weird. I don't even turn on bilinear filtering because that's not the way the game was supposed to look. However if someone actually managed to make voxels for all the monsters that were actually faithful to the originals I would use them in a minute. Part of Doom's charm is its pixelly goodness and 3D models just kill that, especially when the models are not pro-quality. Say what you will about the sprites but they ARE pro quality.

[quakis]

I really love voxels and those on the site look really sexy.
I prefer DooM in the original classic mode , so these will be very great to use when completed.

[Mordeth]

I'd love to see voxel support, since polygon models just don't look "right" in Doom.

Also, the Doom monster sprites do have many inconsistencies and small errors. You can't just translate the sprites into voxels, since a voxel model requires perfect angles. Eg. the A5 image of the Imp has a much lower height than its A1 counterpart, which isn't possible to render into a model. So, a "true" rendition of the monsters into voxels isn't possible.

I would be very surprised if any of the authors of the existing source ports will embrace voxel models at this point. Your best bet would be someone starting a new proof-of-concept port (based off a basic "clean" source, like PrBoom or Chocolate Doom) incorporating voxel rendering.

[DooMAD]

Mordeth said:

I would be very surprised if any of the authors of the existing source ports will embrace voxel models at this point. Your best bet would be someone starting a new proof-of-concept port (based off a basic "clean" source, like PrBoom or Chocolate Doom) incorporating voxel rendering.

A new source port seems a bit of a long shot at this point. If we could save the voxels in a different format, we could use them in the Build engine, as a demo of sorts. Unfortunately, it seems Voxel3D (the program we're using) is no longer under development. Ghostpilot is in contact with the author, asking politely for the source code to be released.

[Dco16]

OMG Voxels, fucking win. Can you make animated voxels? Or does it require them to be different files, like different sprites?

[Scuba Steve]

Love the voxels EXCEPT the soulsphere. Don't use voxels to make a sphere when a 2D sprite works better.

[Fredrik]

It would look better if the shading was disabled.

[DooMAD]

Fiend said:

OMG Voxels, fucking win. Can you make animated voxels? Or does it require them to be different files, like different sprites?

Yes, it needs seperate files for each frame. A Hell Knight, for exmaple, would need 13.

Scuba Steve said:

Love the voxels EXCEPT the soulsphere. Don't use voxels to make a sphere when a 2D sprite works better.

I suppose that makes sense, partly because they are solid and it doesn't convey the idea that it's something inside a sphere, rather than something plastered around the outside of one. Good thing I didn't start on the megasphere, heh.

Fredrik said:

It would look better if the shading was disabled.

Sadly, another limitation of the program. It's sorely lacking some features. Even simple stuff like copy and paste isn't implemented.

[infurnus1]

OMG! Those voxel doom items look GREAT! I agree with Linguica, 3D models don't feel right in Doom.

Also, there's a port for Shadow Warrior, and SW has voxel items, and IIRC, it uses Polymost, the renderer that is going to be used in ZDoom in the future, so I was wondering if those kind of voxels would work?

[Snarboo]

Don't the Jonof ports for Shadow Warrior and Duke 3D support Open GL voxels? I seem to remember reading about it recently, anyway. If you want a port to have Open GL voxel support in the future, you might want to check the source.

[Mordeth]

DooMAD said:
A new source port seems a bit of a long shot at this point. If we could save the voxels in a different format, we could use them in the Build engine, as a demo of sorts.

The problem is not the voxel models... it's the rendering part. Once somebody has made a proof-of-concept Doom port, the main port authors might be inclined to consider looking into it because it has now be shown to work. Just like a room-over-room feature was shown to work in RORDoom.

[Optimus]

Voxels: Interesting for coders, blocky for the rest :)

In Doom: voxels fit well, I don't like playing doom with filtering and 3d models too, I like to watch those texels, so I'll do fine with voxels too.

I really love voxels, they look so great like lotsa 3d cubes in order. I used to watch those so called voxel landscapes in old demos, beautifull, though they used heightmaps. Voxels look so real in Ken Silverman's Voxlap! CUBES =)

Any doom port displaying voxels? I'have seen voxel objects in Blood, for graves, weapon pickups and other stuff. Preety neat and ran well in my old Pentium.

I can't beleive what the Doom scene is on these days! Interesting forums. For a tiny moment I thought I was reading a demoscene or graphics programming forum!

Which programm have you used to draw those voxels btw? I really really want to see if it's easy or not to manipulate pixels in the 3d space. I am curious..

p.s. What's next? Doom raytraced? ;)

[Snarboo]

Optimus said:

p.s. What's next? Doom raytraced? ;)

Doom's original renderer actually used a "primitive" version of Raytracing known as Raycasting. Where as Raytracing traces all the pixels on screen, Raycasting only traces vertical columns of pixels.