OK, I am no Shattari or Ginsan (or insert your favorite master-builder here) but I gave it a run at the latest UI in Voxel Studio 3 just to see if it felt right. You can see a live capture here:
This build used lots of UV-mapped meshes. Well, it uses two or three different meshes many times over. This feels closer to building with props with the difference they are fully voxelized so you can copy-paste, deform, and continue to mess with them. When they intersect each other they behave like any other voxel content, you do not get hidden faces, you get only the surface. The mesh is gone after you voxelize it, which is a good thing otherwise this build would have dozens of thousands of individual props.
This was around two hours of work. I had little idea of what I was doing. You can tell I did not prepare well and I got a bit anxious to finish the bottom part so I could go to bed. However, I did like how the tools are arranged in the new UI.
I can hardly wait until this new generation of tools reaches the very talented (and patient) builders out there.
Yea you where doing great up till the end when you just randomly copied pits all over the place. :P
ReplyDeleteA symetry tool is missing. Select a center, number of sides, type of reflection and build things N times faster :)
ReplyDeleteI agree, although copy/paste can do that with a bit more work. I would not have used symmetry here anyway, this kind of setup always makes me feel constrained. But that is a personal choice.
DeleteIf the feeling of being constrained is from not having small inaccuracies then it's enough to introduce a deforming mirror or a mirror introducing random offsets to elements.
DeleteI know! Voxel deformation with any function! WorldEdit (a Minecraft mod) had that function, but it had limited capabilities because of how poor the voxel resolution was.
I just get a claustrophobic feeling I get with mirroring as things grow into each other.
DeleteI'm not sure what parts of the build will show symmetry, or what kind of symmetry it will be. Once I see something and it looks right, I consider it may appear on other places. It is too big of a commitment if I am free-styling.
Have you seen the design tools that Media Molecule are developing for Dreams? They have a symmetry/mirror function that looks incredibly useful and makes building certain shapes a lot easier
Deletehttps://youtu.be/mVfeeuuw83Q?t=11m54s
hey Ginsan here ^^ really cool video and progress guys, i see lot of potential here.
DeleteI played a little bit with the tools several times and tried to build something but, beside the fact that the software crashes several times when i come to test the geometry, i was a little confused by the lack of structure on the builder side. Guides, snapping, symmetry options, undo/redo, and stuff like that. I managed to create awesome shapes with the beziers curves (that are just fantastic), but once you lost your selection, there's no way to rework the shape, modify the exact points or faces of the shape you just did. I am not an expert at 3D modeling, but the number of points of your selection tool should update at the same time you modify this option. It takes a lot of steps to create the shape you want, and once you manage to have a good one, there's no way to precisely mirror it and edit the curves (unless you modify the entire thing). I really hope that you will develop this builder side of Voxel Studio, i have tons of ideas if you are interested. (for example, creating small map with no landscape or just a extend your instance window to make it more like a simplified 3D modeling engine (to be more effective for creating precise shape, with orthographic view) and the possibility to quickly add textures for newbies like me :p, i know how to create textures but i am struggling to understand UVs, because i would love to modelize directly in a Voxel engine (a lot more fun and intuitive than 3dsmax). Anyway, keep up the good work!
Thanks Ginsan, your input is priceless.
DeleteWe have been focusing a lot in the procedural generation aspects until now, but there is no question for me the future of this platform depends on creators.
The team is working hard making the new version more friendly for builders. We are sorting out the basic issues like undo/redo, crashes, snapping, etc, but I am afraid we will never nail it a 100% unless we pay close attention to feedback from builders like yourself.
I would love to go over your ideas, is there a way we can get in touch? You can reach me at miguel at voxelfarm.com anytime.
Ginsan here ^^, i didn't find your email so i sent you a message on twitter.
DeleteI so cannot wait, the capabilities you guys have put into v3 are amazing, its going to be alot of fun to work with.
ReplyDelete