@StarvingFoxStd Both are precomputed so they’re the same at runtime. Definitely more expensive to pre-compute this than default because the default is just instanced cubes with the same normal information
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Dan Fessler
14.7K posts
Dan Fessler
@DanFessler
Dev by day, artist by night / Senior Engineer @Roblox / prev. CCO @incite_dev, CVO @CoreGames
Pacifica, CA Katılım Ekim 2008
1.8K Takip Edilen12K Takipçiler
@DanFessler How expensive is the middle algorithm compared to the default left one ?
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considering a voxel lighting algorithm that lights each voxel a uniform amount based on a calculated normal instead of using the cubic faces of each voxel.
Got a proof of concept working but now need better demo assets. Anyone have pixel-art quality voxel assets for me to try?
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@DanFessler have you written about your implementation anywhere? id really like to try to reproduce this in my own engine
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@DanFessler Yeah, 100%, but for big scenes it has to look cool af
One could probably try to mix both styles for edge cases but implementing this directly into a Minecraft shader may look rather cool for big builds/cities etc.
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@thelazyforger I’m not constructing a surface mesh in this process - but the goal isn’t to make a smooth mesh anyway, it’s to embrace the voxels
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@DanFessler It works well already (I'm working on something similar, although for a different purpose).... but once you have meshes anways, what's stopping you from implementing the marchin cubes algorithm?
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@FabriceNEYRET @gllmLoubet Nice! Thanks for the references! Will have to give it a deep reading
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@DanFessler Our most up-to-date smart filterable voxels with phase function, and indeed, progressive LOD from mesh to voxels via mixture, was work with Guillaume Loubet @gllmLoubet
inria.hal.science/search/index?q…
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@HBthisistempo Ah I think I see. I actually think you can have hard specular with this setup as it is. I’ll have to post an example later
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@DanFessler Well, your way of lightning smoothes the lightning, the face one makes it harder (in my perception), so you could have smoother materials vs things like metal and all the in betweens
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@DanFessler This is mega cool.
Oddly, reminds me of a snow cone.
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@HBthisistempo Having a hard time visualizing what that would look like
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@DanFessler Idea: could the face based be the "specular" and that way you can have a material going from your soft lightning to the specular one
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@elnanokiwi Probably not the best fit for Minecraft to be honest - this is best when the voxels are small
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@DanFessler Curious to see how this looks in Minecraft
Because it'll obviously fail for some cases (like 1-block-thick walls or ceilings) but for landscapes it may actually be fire
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@LincolnMargison If using hard edges the problem becomes “how do you tile the area without discontinuities or gaps” - cubes solve that nicely. Seems like Comanche solved it by oversizing the voxel squares?
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@DanFessler Yeah I guess it's not far from gaussian splatting. But you could make it not circles and not edge faded too. I think then it would resemble how it was done in this, which was far ahead of it's time: youtu.be/Uc3zGZnI6ak?t=…
YouTube
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@LincolnMargison Starts to resemble Gaussian splatting how you’re describing it. Probably could would but loses the pixel art charm that most people love the medium for
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Interesting. Could you not eliminate the blocky look entirely by instead of rendering a cube, you're rendering a circle (with soft edges so it blends to the next) which is camera-facing but has the normal as the same average you're using here? And scale the circle size based on the screenspace size of the cube?
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@crytr_ You’re right this has a flaw with 1 voxel-thick elements. Since the voxel is just one value and represents two opposite facing directions then it’s undefined what it should do. I have a few solutions in my head but haven’t fully tried them yet
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@DanFessler Does this cause light leaking on thin adjacent shapes? What happens with one voxel thick walls? 🤔
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@RefinedLurk I sample the neighboring voxels in a kernel to derive the surface normal
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@DanFessler Then don’t you need some kind of parametric representation to derive the Normal from? At which point is voxel efficient? I guess a voxel could always be a subset of a parametric shape
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@timsoret Nice I was wondering if you were doing something like that. I’ve seen a. Few people independently arrive at similar solutions but it’s a shame the voxel editors themselves don’t support this as a standard rendering mode
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@DanFessler Something I also developed for The Last Night!
It's the only way I could get lit animated 3D trunks & branches with a pixel art silhouette without the staircase look of voxels.
You can't see it here in this GIF, but trunk voxels have smooth normals.
x.com/timsoret/statu…
Tim Soret@timsoret
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@DanFessler Does every Minecraft build ever fit your voxel requirements?
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@ARSONIST_WOLF Nice I’ll take a look. I think I need higher resolution assets though for this rendering to really show utility
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@DanFessler gitlab.com/veloren/velore…
There should be some models here
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@DanFessler I tried to do something like that in Blender, once.
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@JoeSorgea Yeah I’m leaning towards the middle too. Nice middle ground while keeping a crisp pixel aesthetic
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@DanFessler I think the one in the middle looks really cool. The one on the right looks a little too simple
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@DanFessler Here's a voxel model from Barony's next expansion if you wanna try it out. SLAB format. #hpm67lzoYYEwrpQQwi22jw" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">file.kiwi/7a65b605#hpm67…
GIF
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@jere_codes Oh nice this is great. Yeah ideally this would be a rendering mode in magicavoxel or something but not sure if that’s feasible to extend. Might have to make my own editor
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@DanFessler I'm doing something similar
I've been hand creating voxel shapes using my own editor but it's pretty tedious.
x.com/jere_codes/sta…
Jeremiah Reid@jere_codes
too much fun at the beach. I use 3 techniques to make voxel items smoothish: 1) estimate normals based on neighbors 2) smooth estimated normals based on more neighbors 3) screen space normal smoothing at each pixel (toggled in the last few seconds here) every face of a voxel is shaded the same color, so top looks no different than side #ボクセル #インディーゲーム
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