Voxel Doom Port!

[Quasar]

A pure voxel engine is very likely to use techniques such as octtrees, ray optimization, etc. which would either be impractical, superfluous, or totally impossible to combine with the DOOM engine.

[b0rsuk]

I've found something interesting. Apparently voxel models can be made generated from traditional models. The process is described here:

http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/11/Triangle-mesh-voxelization

So, if you already have some faithful high quality models for DooM, perhaps they could be used to ease the conversion ?

[DaniJ]

There are several ways to turn a complete (i.e., closed) 3D polygonal mesh into a voxel representation. The method discussed in that blog seems overly complicated and it won't scale well at all when dealing with very large models (as in "physical" dimensions vs voxel granularity).

[b0rsuk]

DaniJ said:

There are several ways to turn a complete (i.e., closed) 3D polygonal mesh into a voxel representation. The method discussed in that blog seems overly complicated and it won't scale well at all when dealing with very large models (as in "physical" dimensions vs voxel granularity).

I'm not saying this is the best way - I barely understand it. And I'm not saying this should be done in realtime. But I think it would be easier to generate character animation from traditional models than to create them by hand, 3D pixel art way.

[boris]

b0rsuk said:

But I think it would be easier to generate character animation from traditional models than to create them by hand, 3D pixel art way.

That would pretty much defeat the point in using voxels. In my eyes the advantage is that the voxels shown in this thread are very close to the sprites (which they are directly based on), while the existing 3d models are just too different.

[b0rsuk]

boris said:

That would pretty much defeat the point in using voxels. In my eyes the advantage is that the voxels shown in this thread are very close to the sprites (which they are directly based on), while the existing 3d models are just too different.

Too different, as in not faithful enough ? I understand voxels like pixel art can be manipulated by hand. My idea was this: generate voxel models from traditional models, then edit them manually to make poses more interesting and better looking. It could serve as a starting point.

Anyway, I'm happy there are still people working on the project, whatever their methodology. First and foremost it should look good.

[Graf Zahl]

Reality check: In 17 years nobody has made faithful models of the Doom monsters. So what would you want to make your voxels from?

[Stroggos]

Yeah all of those 3D Doom ports kind of took me out of the DOOM element, they just don't fit into a 2.5D world.

[phi108]

These are some cool recent models, but it's not the whole Doom set yet, and animations aren't done: http://www.doomworld.com/vb/wads-mods/51845-my-3d-doom-monsters-image-heavy/

They aren't exactly like the Doom sprites, though I'd like to try them out, and converting them to high-res or Doom-res voxels might be easy with Poly2vox or something else.

[DooMAD]

Been having a bit of a history lesson thanks to this thread and it turns out that John Carmack was actually looking at the possibility of using voxels in Doom and even made a voxel editor. I doubt the editor will be much use to us, as it outputs to a different format and has a somewhat unusual interface which, while intuitive, is very restrictive. Fun to mess around with though.

[_bruce_]

phi108 said:

These are some cool recent models, but it's not the whole Doom set yet, and animations aren't done: http://www.doomworld.com/vb/wads-mods/51845-my-3d-doom-monsters-image-heavy/

They aren't exactly like the Doom sprites, though I'd like to try them out, and converting them to high-res or Doom-res voxels might be easy with Poly2vox or something else.

His stuff is awesome.

[DooMAD]

4mer has finished both the Short and the Tall Gas Lamps. Updated zdoom_vox.zip yet again.

[Maes]

DooMAD said:

BJohn Carmack ... made a voxel editor.

Hey, there's even the source code for it :-)

There must be something special about a utility whose source code has this DooM feeling about it...and feels like a game, rather than tool :-p

I'll be LMAO if the format this outputs is nothing more than a layered patch_t or somesuch ;-)

[DooMAD]

Another update from Scott_AW for his strip2voxel program:
http://64digits.com/download.php?id=29920&dir=0

Now supports a custom background colour, which should be very useful. And also "vertical reading". Not quite sure what that means, but if I had to guess, maybe it means you can do the layers top-to-bottom, as well as the current front-to-back method.


//EDIT: Okay, the custom background colour thing doesn't quite work properly yet. It's being looked into, but at the moment it turns both 0,0,0 black and the specified custom colour transparent. The current recommendation is to change any pure black to 7,7,7 before converting to vox.

[DooMAD]

Apologies for the lack of progress on my part over the last few weeks. Still trying to overcome some technical difficulties. Started on the BFG now:

[b0rsuk]

Wow, this looks really good ! I thought it was a sprite until I took a closer look.

[Mechadon]

That's awesome DooMAD :D

[_bruce_]

Excellent work Doomad.

[Koko Ricky]

Pretty awesome considering how awkwardly shaped the back of the BFG is. I guess you wear it like a harness?

[Maes]

It always looked to me as some form of extensible folding stock -presumably with a heavy recoil absorbing system and some secure fastening gizmo.

[Tormentor667]

Absolutely brilliant Doomad! Keep it coming :)

[Dee]

what is the progress on this project? like % wise

[Swiss_Cheeseman]

I have a feeling that the reason why this is taking so long is that there isn't a single decent Voxel model creation tool. They're all cripplingly terrible in their own special way.

You'd think there would at least be features as simple as:

1. Select a layer -> Extrude x amount of pixels on whatever axis
2. 3d spherical expand/contract tool for creating natural looking body forms
3. An interface that isn't completely terrible and broken.

[Dee]

the progress really isnt that terribly slow though. it seems to be going rather well.

[DooMAD]

Swiss_Cheeseman said:

I have a feeling that the reason why this is taking so long is that there isn't a single decent Voxel model creation tool. They're all cripplingly terrible in their own special way.

That sums it up pretty neatly, really.

Slab6 is the most "complete" editor in terms or what it can do, but sadly also has the most baffling and convoluted interface. Every time I use it, I have to go through the readme file again to remember what all the random buttons are.

Voxel3D has the best interface (IMO), but seems to be strictly limited on the dimensions it can support. Even the BFG is apparently too big to open and the program just grinds to a halt.

Strip2voxel is a compromise of sorts and is still in development. It does what it's supposed to for the most part and the interface sort of makes sense. It's just that it doesn't really help you to visualise the 3D shape when you're only working with 2D slices, so it can be difficult to figure out what to draw and where to draw it. At the moment I'm using this one the most.

Paint3D looked like the answer to all my problems, only to find that it won't run under my chosen OS because it requires .NET something-or-other and refuses to install. Still haven't had the chance to try it out yet, but looking at videos on youtube the interface seems to be quite intuitive.

[Swiss_Cheeseman]

Dee said:

the progress really isnt that terribly slow though. it seems to be going rather well.

It could be going a lot faster if there was better tools.

[Dee]

yeah i know, thats like anything really

[Csonicgo]

DooMAD said:

Paint3D looked like the answer to all my problems, only to find that it won't run under my chosen OS because it requires .NET something-or-other and refuses to install. Still haven't had the chance to try it out yet, but looking at videos on youtube the interface seems to be quite intuitive.

Do you have the latest Service pack (SP3)? I've had no trouble with .NET with WinXP since then.

[iori]

I think he might be on Win2k.

[Csonicgo]

iori said:

I think he might be on Win2k.

Limiting your options by clinging to an out-of-date OS I have no sympathy for. Sorry. Yes, I used win95c at one point but it was on the era hardware for it.

WinXP Pro and Win2000 are pretty much the damn same anyway (sans some GUI tweaks here and there) so I really don't get it. As Memory Usage is not even a factor with new computers, I don't see using win2000 anymore. Or even winXP, for that matter.

But to each his own, I suppose.