Voxel Graphics

[JF_Aidan_Pryde]

What ever happend to voxels?
Outcast had a pretty nice engine but when 3D accelerators came, it just all kind of died. John Carmack discussed voxels a bit at his QuakeCon speech, it seems to still have some applications left.

In the spirity of a more "3D technology" forum, discuss the benefits and trade offs for voxel vs. triangle graphics.

 

[darkblu]

What ever happend to voxels?
Outcast had a pretty nice engine but when 3D accelerators came, it just all kind of died. John Carmack discussed voxels a bit at his QuakeCon speech, it seems to still have some applications left.

In the spirity of a more "3D technology" forum, discuss the benefits and trade offs for voxel vs. triangle graphics.

voxels actually did fair - they were mostly used in the form of 'surfels'. but now with the advent of displacement mapping this use of voxels will probably fade.

 

[BoddoZerg]

Do Voxels have any advantage whatsoever against displacement mapping?

 

[darkblu]

Do Voxels have any advantage whatsoever against displacement mapping?

off the top of my hat, voxels/surfels can take part in spatial calculations (like collision detection) while a displacement-mapped surface is rather 'ghastly' to the rest of the geometry. apropos, one way to make displacemet-mapped geometry more 'tangible' is to use a voxel image of the letter for all spatial calculations

 

[VFX_Veteran]

Pardon me for my ignorance of the subject, but what exactly do "voxels" mean in the realtime world? Here in the film industry, we use voxels to mean 3d cubes which are very useful for creating 3d textures and a lot of volume shaders (especially with hair construction).

-M

 

[Colourless]

MrBlue, pretty much the same thing

 

[fresh]

Voxels are to triangles, as pixels are to vector graphics. Yup, one day we'll move on from surface representations to full unique volume worlds. It's the next big step. Imagine making a level out of a huge block of marbel and just carving your tunnels/rooms into that.

Think back to vector graphics. You had lines represented by 2 points. That was because of memory limitations. Once we had more memory, we went to 2D sprites which represented pixels on the screen. Then you went to unique sprites for the whole world. Anyone remember Metal Slugs, where all the backdrops are unique? Right now we're in the "vector graphics" phase again! A triangle represented by 3 points. Once we get more memory, we'll move on to voxels. Things like collision,occlusion and shadows will become much simpler.

My $0.02!

 

[Dave B(TotalVR)]

I dont think we will ever move to accelerated voxel graphics in any serious fashion, CPU speeds are coming forward too fast, we will most probably make the jump directly to real time raytracing with radiosity (hah!).

Certainly if quantum computing were to arrive in the next 10-20 years then real time radiosity will be simple.

 

[antlers]

Actually, quantum computing should work with photon-mapping much better. It can represent the quantum properties of the photon, so you can have a scene with fewer simulated photons work much better!

 

[alexsok]

Actually, quantum computing should work with photon-mapping much better. It can represent the quantum properties of the photon, so you can have a scene with fewer simulated photons work much better!

I agree.

There are a couple of articles about Raytracing, Photon mapping and Radiosity here:
http://www.daimi.au.dk/~lai/lysrapport/

So far, Photon mapping sounds like a fine solution indeed!

How long are we from hardware that will support it?

 

[Saem]

There are a couple of articles about Raytracing, Photon mapping and Radiosity here:
http://www.daimi.au.dk/~lai/lysrapport/

And I found my news post useful.

 

[fresh]

I dont think we will ever move to accelerated voxel graphics in any serious fashion, CPU speeds are coming forward too fast, we will most probably make the jump directly to real time raytracing with radiosity (hah!).

Certainly if quantum computing were to arrive in the next 10-20 years then real time radiosity will be simple.

Voxels aren't mutually exclusive with radiosity, or with raytracing. It's just a way to store geometry.

 

[Saem]

I remember mention of the fact that voxels that were used for the terrain in Outcast couldn' have any over hangs of any sort. Any reason why this was the case?

 

[Xmas]

http://www.appeal.be/AW/html/outcast_gdc_1.htm

They took a heightfield-based approach.

 

[VFX_Veteran]

So far, Photon mapping sounds like a fine solution indeed!

Photon mapping? Ha! Try Final Gathering!

-M