Is it possible to have solid looking voxels?

[magneto]

Hi,

Is it possible to have solid/constant looking voxels? So if you had 2x2x2, it would actually look like actual hard shaded boxes on top of each other. Because when I set big chunks into the same color, it still looks very smooth, smoke like.

I am just wondering if there is a way to achieve sharp looking volumes in the viewport. Or is this only possible via shaders?

I assume the viewport uses a fixed shading for the volumes?

Thanks

[WesleyE]

Could't you could try make an isosurface from the volume with a high resolution.

Edited March 8, 2013 by WesleyE

[Akabane]

Could't you could try make an isosurface from the volume with a high resolution.

"With a high resolution" <- I doubt that's a good way around it. Res should be absolutely high and even then the "blocks" would have jiggly borders.

What I'd suggest, if what you're after is "solid boxes" look, try and go inside a vop, finding wheter a voxel is filled, if it is place a point in the middle of that voxel (maybe it can be done via scattersop or points from volume sop somehow?), then brutally stamping boxes /planes there?

[SpencerL]

in the isooffset set Output Type to Tetra Mesh and set Tetra Type to Cubes.

[magneto]

Thanks alot guys. Basically I was just trying to do this as an experiment. Something that looks like this:

But without creating actual geometry. Because I just wanted to change some voxels using the volume VOP and see their effect clearly in the viewport, without seeing a fuzzy volume.

You know like the difference between using point colors vs primitive colors. Point colors get blended with other point colors. But primitive colors are shaded sharp. They don't bleed into other primitives.

@Spencer: I just tried it on a volume but it didn't work. I imagine I have to mesh my volume first and then use iso offset? But then the boxes become warped.

@Wesley: I am using 100^3, should I go higher? Although I don't think that's it.

@Akabane, I guess copying boxes would work. I will try points from volume. I just thought I could achieve this look without actually creating new geometry.

I imagine this can easily be done with a shader at rendertime, but only an issue for the viewport?

Edited March 9, 2013 by magneto

[SpencerL]

yes, it works on a volume. you just need to change the mode from Ray Intersect (since the input isnt a surface) to Volume Sample. You may have to invert the sign on your volume before doing this.

[magneto]

Thanks Spencer, it works I wish it did have just a cube without any diagonal edges present. I guess I can delete those edges. Currently I am using Tetra Solid and transferring colors using the AttribFromVolume SOP, then promoting the colors to primitive colors. That's why I want to get rid of the diagonal edges.

[magneto]

I tried deleting the diagonal edges that I gathered in a group but dissolving, blasting or deleting doesn't work, as they seem to share pretty much all the points.

So I tried points from volume and attrib from volume and copied boxes on each point, then it works well. Although being able to shade the voxels in constant mode would be useful I think.

[malexander]

Because voxels are not drawn individually, but as a 3D texture on a series of screen-parallel slices, disabling the linear filtering on them would not give the result you'd want. A copy-stamped cube is pretty much the only way that you're going to be able to match the look in the image, primitive colors, shading and all.

[magneto]

Thanks Mark for clarifying it. Now it makes more sense.