System Integration

Here is a scene that combines all the recent developments in Voxel Farm:

This integration is subtle. There are no giant turtle mountains here, but the same system we used for the giant turtle is applied here to produce the natural rock pillars that are connected by the bridges, also the platform where the pyramid rests:

These natural structures are defined by a low resolution mesh that captures the basic shape. This is expanded in realtime into detailed features like rocks, sand and dirt using procedural materials that we call Meta-materials.

The large terrain around the pillars and the pyramid's base is using Voxel Farm's standard procedural terrain.

This scene also uses UV-mapped voxels. This is a different method to apply textures to voxels. It allows much finer control. The entire pyramid is using them:

There is also the new instancing system, which is responsible for all the trees plants and rocks you see scattered around. You cannot see this in just screenshots, but this new system is able to preserve existing instances even in the event of user edits and destruction. This avoid the visible "replanting" of vegetation and rocks around edits.

And all this is running in Unreal Engine 4. I would say the UE4 integration is the last of the systems than went into taking these shots.

Voxel Farm 3

I'm happy to announce Voxel Farm 3, a new version of our tech, will be available August 2016.

The team has been working hard towards this next major release. There are still a lot of bugs to squash, but pretty much everything included in the release is ready.

The major items in the release are:

• UV-mapped voxels
• Meta-materials and Meta-meshes for large, custom procedural objects
• Improved Unreal Engine 4 Integration
• New instancing system, both voxel and mesh-based
• Intelligent Biome Terrain Synthesis
• Continent and landmass generator

I have covered most of these already in earlier posts. There are some other items under wraps that we have not disclosed yet, mainly because we are not sure if they will make the release.

The new version will bring a new business model. We are dropping the monthly fees and royalty payments. The new model is simple: you purchase for a one-time fee and you get one year of free updates. To make it fair, we have implemented these changes already for the current version. And everyone who has a Voxel Farm 2 license will get an upgrade to version 3 at no additional cost.

Gearing up towards the major release, we have just updated the company's website at: www.voxelfarm.com

There is a new WebGL demo that shows Voxel Farm in action over the web (it is in the Showcase section.) We also added Forums, something our users have been demanding almost since last year's launch.