Voxels are amazing. I wish that someone could come out with a voxel-based videogame. It wouldn't even have to be something complex, I'm sure something along the lines of a three-dimensional voxel Super Mario Bros. could be possible right now.
What about very thin opaque objects at a distance? Something like a big sail cloth. As I understand it, the SVO would generate transparent voxels because most of the volume is empty. However, the sail, although mostly empty space, should still be opaque. Maybe I am misunderstanding how the octree is rendered at higher and higher levels.
@Starioshka Voxels are rendered cubes, it doesn't have anything to do with your screen as such. If you're using voxels it means you are rendering an image without polygons and are using small blocks to build a picture, there are other methods for rendering such as point mapping but it seems that graphics are heading in the way of voxels right now.
@TheSleazySaint After looking into it again, I'm pretty sure I was wrong. If anything, it looks like Carmack is considering voxel terrains for Id Tech 6, but not 5. Considering that both aren't released yet, I didn't realize the distinction at the time. Either way, it looks like Carmack is enamored with the idea of infinite geometry and has been toying with the idea for a long time.
@nielzdg Sure you can combine them. Some nvidia demonstrations use bounded volumes with physically interactive smoke or the like inside. The volume is essentially represented with a simple box model which has a surface shader applied that performs the raytracing.
@YourPreciousOne, I don't think it will be long before they can become as easily animated as polygonal models. It seems that we're on the cusp of figuring that out.
can someone explain, i have pretty good understanding of computers but not fully, whats the difference between voxels and polygons? also how much memory/ processor e.t.c did this take it looks amazing, also why is this not used in games or is it? Can someone please explain this like message me or something because I am very intrigued.
No with current systems (but simple translation or rotation of the whole model). So for full static environnement only (technology used in the video-game Outcast, in 1999 in fact). Work very well in this case (authorize detailed and no-edge environnement, and great advanced lightning).
Voxels seem to be taking over for static stuff like terrain and certain props, but they're nearly impossible to animate. Polygons will be used for anything that moves in the foreseeable future.
@YourPreciousOne I completely agree with you, and well done GigVoxel a lovely piece of tech your showing here. With respect to the voxel nemesis that is animation Dennis Bautembach has done work on animated sparse voxel octrees there is a significant performance hit but the work is still very impressive. In the short term perhaps we will see a hybrid engine with voxel based static geometry and polygon based animation as we saw with doom which used sprites and polygons.
I really hope that hardware creators step forwards and help the migration or just support for this kind of technology. Atomic models such as voxels will ultimately surpass the surface ones. As will raycast replace the rasterization methods.
@CptSherpa Yes, Rage is pretty impressive. The uncompressed build supposedly takes up 1 TB. id's pushing the limit, as they always do. If my friends don't buy the game next year, looks like i'll have to buy it for them xD.
@SodanKerjuu Yup. Pretty soon something will have to come along to replace polygons: We've been living in worlds of photo-backed cardboard cut-outs for long enough! It's about time polyhedra came with interiors.
Polygons are triangles. They can be placed anywhere, and you cando pretty much anything with them. Voxels are like little cubes, and they are placed in a 3D grid. So, voxels don't really animate as well, and the 3D grid will take a lot of memory to store if you don't use the right tricks. Also, current GPUs only process polygons. Rendering voxels requires some serious shader effort or a difficult conversion into polygons. Voxels aren't really well-suited for games.
I think tesselation has eliminated the need for LOD Voxel rendering techniques for a while. I can scale level of detail on basically anything as much as I want using tesselation
I dunno... I'll double-check the video, but it seems to me that voxels can't be animated smoothly and parametrically like polygons, and they certainly shouldn't be able to ragdoll. I'll take another look at the video. Maybe they use some sort of poly->voxel conversion...
nah the LOD advantage seems exaggerated. there is no inherent way in the voxel premise of representing a voxel topology as a single voxel given material qualities and lighting conditions. it doesn't have a magic way of getting it right with just a single sample. it might be possible to implement a clever LOD scheme but it's not given. in practice it has no LOD advantage, even has a significant disadvantage. it's like doing PDF as bitmap because we can do mipmapping. not really better..
@MetrotomX5 We moved away because we didn't have the computer power to run games with voxels, THATS WHY!!! Imagine a whole game like this, 0.00000000000000000001FPS at best!
voxels worry me r.e. animation, but i'm sure they'll have good uses.. i gather for multiplayer online enviroments they're experimenting with generating voxels on a server and sending multiple views to viewers... that sort of thing
No, it's because it takes ridiculous hardware to get this level of detail, and because it doesn't fit into normal modelling techniques at all. If it were a matter of skill, the game developers could simply hire smarter programmers.
Voxels are amazing. I wish that someone could come out with a voxel-based videogame. It wouldn't even have to be something complex, I'm sure something along the lines of a three-dimensional voxel Super Mario Bros. could be possible right now.
Minecraft: hello there
The "cube" at 2:02 is the Borg HQ in the Delta Quadrant
What about very thin opaque objects at a distance? Something like a big sail cloth. As I understand it, the SVO would generate transparent voxels because most of the volume is empty. However, the sail, although mostly empty space, should still be opaque. Maybe I am misunderstanding how the octree is rendered at higher and higher levels.
@Starioshka Voxels are rendered cubes, it doesn't have anything to do with your screen as such. If you're using voxels it means you are rendering an image without polygons and are using small blocks to build a picture, there are other methods for rendering such as point mapping but it seems that graphics are heading in the way of voxels right now.
32GB of data? Great work, amazing.
@TheSleazySaint After looking into it again, I'm pretty sure I was wrong. If anything, it looks like Carmack is considering voxel terrains for Id Tech 6, but not 5. Considering that both aren't released yet, I didn't realize the distinction at the time. Either way, it looks like Carmack is enamored with the idea of infinite geometry and has been toying with the idea for a long time.
@nielzdg Sure you can combine them. Some nvidia demonstrations use bounded volumes with physically interactive smoke or the like inside. The volume is essentially represented with a simple box model which has a surface shader applied that performs the raytracing.
@YourPreciousOne, I don't think it will be long before they can become as easily animated as polygonal models. It seems that we're on the cusp of figuring that out.
The Voxel Cone Tracing uses this and it does support animation.
@CyrilCrassin You should take a look at Id's Rage Demo. If I'm not mistaken the level/world geometry is composed entirely of voxels.
It's on 2 DVDs. Also, ETQW already sues megatextures.
can someone explain, i have pretty good understanding of computers but not fully, whats the difference between voxels and polygons? also how much memory/ processor e.t.c did this take it looks amazing, also why is this not used in games or is it? Can someone please explain this like message me or something because I am very intrigued.
No with current systems (but simple translation or rotation of the whole model).
So for full static environnement only (technology used in the video-game Outcast, in 1999 in fact). Work very well in this case (authorize detailed and no-edge environnement, and great advanced lightning).
@CyrilCrassin what is voxel? Wikipedia says something like alternative to pixel, but the screen won't just change from 2d squares to 3d cubes?
But what about ANIMATING these data sets? How will we do that feasibly?
awesome, i hope game developers put this to good use
@super6plx
Zbrush or a 3d scanner is the only things that produce Voxels. Its not like you can just jump in the application and do amazing stuff.
@CyrilCrassin its used for the ground in crysis :-)
Voxels seem to be taking over for static stuff like terrain and certain props, but they're nearly impossible to animate.
Polygons will be used for anything that moves in the foreseeable future.
this is from 10 years back.. with a gtx280 :o wow
I believe Cryri Crassin's research is also a big influence on the new nvidia flameworks and Flex technology
@YourPreciousOne I completely agree with you, and well done GigVoxel a lovely piece of tech your showing here.
With respect to the voxel nemesis that is animation Dennis Bautembach has done work on animated sparse voxel octrees there is a significant performance hit but the work is still very impressive. In the short term perhaps we will see a hybrid engine with voxel based static geometry and polygon based animation as we saw with doom which used sprites and polygons.
@CyrilCrassin
What...? You can't combine voxels with polygons. :/
It's either all voxels or all polygons...
if you google unlimited detail ( or youtube it for that matter you will find the exact same system ) so, copyright it quick ?
I really hope that hardware creators step forwards and help the migration or just support for this kind of technology.
Atomic models such as voxels will ultimately surpass the surface ones. As will raycast replace the rasterization methods.
is there a more modern version of this tech? maybe from different serial pplications
Check out Dreams on PS4.
@CptSherpa
Yes, Rage is pretty impressive. The uncompressed build supposedly takes up 1 TB. id's pushing the limit, as they always do. If my friends don't buy the game next year, looks like i'll have to buy it for them xD.
you think they'll be making games with these in 5-6 years? or it'll be polys to the end?
Great work!, congratulations!
@nielzdg
Pretty sure Crytek would have something to say about that...
@SodanKerjuu Yup. Pretty soon something will have to come along to replace polygons: We've been living in worlds of photo-backed cardboard cut-outs for long enough! It's about time polyhedra came with interiors.
Polygons are triangles. They can be placed anywhere, and you cando pretty much anything with them.
Voxels are like little cubes, and they are placed in a 3D grid. So, voxels don't really animate as well, and the 3D grid will take a lot of memory to store if you don't use the right tricks.
Also, current GPUs only process polygons. Rendering voxels requires some serious shader effort or a difficult conversion into polygons.
Voxels aren't really well-suited for games.
Geforce GTX 280. Ohhh that nostalgia
This looks much more advanced than "Unlimited Detail"'s voxel engine.
there is a videogame based on voxels.... its called outcast and its from 1997 AFAIK^^
I think tesselation has eliminated the need for LOD Voxel rendering techniques for a while. I can scale level of detail on basically anything as much as I want using tesselation
just a few more years.
@krux02 never is a very... very long time...
I dunno... I'll double-check the video, but it seems to me that voxels can't be animated smoothly and parametrically like polygons, and they certainly shouldn't be able to ragdoll.
I'll take another look at the video. Maybe they use some sort of poly->voxel conversion...
It's funny - we started with raycasting and voxels, then migrated away... but raycasting and voxels are superior!
Wow, purple artefacts! That's what we call over-heating ;-)
3:58 Hey there beautiful :D
nah the LOD advantage seems exaggerated. there is no inherent way in the voxel premise of representing a voxel topology as a single voxel given material qualities and lighting conditions. it doesn't have a magic way of getting it right with just a single sample. it might be possible to implement a clever LOD scheme but it's not given. in practice it has no LOD advantage, even has a significant disadvantage. it's like doing PDF as bitmap because we can do mipmapping. not really better..
wow u are a genius!
@MetrotomX5 We moved away because we didn't have the computer power to run games with voxels, THATS WHY!!! Imagine a whole game like this, 0.00000000000000000001FPS at best!
COOL!
voxels worry me r.e. animation, but i'm sure they'll have good uses.. i gather for multiplayer online enviroments they're experimenting with generating voxels on a server and sending multiple views to viewers... that sort of thing
nah just use blu-ray discs, i know that i got a blu-ray reader and a blu-ray writer in my computer
Bad assssss.
2:15 is like a maze in hell.
Åh, it's beautiful! :D
... but that last example was truly gross! @~@
voxel will never be in videogames again. But they will be usful in Medical Programms, because, they store volumetric Data.
chig it out, data flex!
we don't need no polygon!
VOXEL=MINECRAFT BASED THING
No, it's because it takes ridiculous hardware to get this level of detail, and because it doesn't fit into normal modelling techniques at all.
If it were a matter of skill, the game developers could simply hire smarter programmers.