RPGDX > Forums > Design and programming > voxels and isometric projection

Mandrake · Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2003 1:06 am Post subject: voxels and isometric projection

anyone know much about this stuff? just wondering.
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Ninkazu · Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2003 5:00 am Post subject:

I did once; not any more, heh.

BigManJones · Scholar Joined: 22 Mar 2003 Posts: 196

What do you want to know?

Ironshanks · Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2003 3:27 pm Post subject:

Do you mean like...at the same time?
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Rainer Deyke · Demon Hunter Joined: 05 Jun 2002 Posts: 672

Sounds like an interesting combination. With isometric projection, a (true) voxel would never be larger than a pixel, which means pixel-precise 3D rendering, something which is all but impossible in polygon-based rendering methods.

One source of confusion: many people use the term "voxel" when they mean heightfields. Heightfields are 3D projections from a 2D surface. True voxels are 3D, like a bitmap in three dimensions. Heightfields are relatively easy to do, but true voxels tend to be unusably slow (although there are ways around that in specific situations). Which did you mean?

BigManJones · Scholar Joined: 22 Mar 2003 Posts: 196

I assumed he meant (this is a lame example) viewing a pile of equally sized childrens blocks from an isometric perspective; using such blocks to build the game world; rendering would be fairly 'simple' using standard raycasting techniques ala

http://www.permadi.com/tutorial/raycast/

If thats not what he meant then, as usual, disregard this post :P

golrien · Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2003 10:34 pm Post subject:

Heh, mandrake, I've been wanting to code that engine for years. I think the furthest I could ever be assed to work out was having 1 voxel model turn round and round, and also I stole my iso code off a guy. do a good job with the engine though :)

Mandrake · Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2003 5:30 am Post subject:

syn9 · Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2003 5:10 am Post subject:

i did something like this with per voxel shadow casting a while back, was extremely slow tho

Mandrake · Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2003 7:32 am Post subject:

heh that's cool. The main problem I had was keeping the speed up to par when switching over to using list voxels. Displaying the voxels was fast, but editing them....I couldn't get the editor to work at a decent speed, sigh.

If you send me the source code for that project (I assume it's in QB), I cuold try to port it to C to speed it up for you.
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supergoat · Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2004 9:31 pm Post subject:

As someone who has played extensively with voxels, heightmaps, and heightmapped polys in realtime, believe me when I say it's really not worth it unless you really really need dynamic lighting or terrain that can be terraformed, blown up, etc. :P bitmaps and polygons yield more attractive and efficient results, and paired with a neat little terrain mesh there's really no need for voxels at all. Mostly what you wind up with is a lot of wasted detail with predominantly flat or contiguous surfaces.