The Inner Space of Voxelmancy

Nevermind the above, I just read Bumboo's post.

Ouch. Just plain ouch. At first blush - and this is my opinion as a creative gamer - this is a game literally surrounding players in a modifiable environment.

The fact that shapes can be made at all (using smooth, line, circle, etc) will make even novice players wonder why there is not a simple Chisel to slowly carve down a corner, or tweak tool to just grab and move a vertex.

I understand your vision may extend way beyond this, but you have to know you are frustrating the heck out of some very talented, artistic people. Wait - isn't there another building and design contest going on? Is it the last one? So, you do understand that you are seeing only a FRACTION of the potential from this game community, right? I simply don't have the patience to get half the stuff from my sketch pad into the game. I know I am not alone.

Please - Give us the tools! Let us build a City for you! or two or three! You have not seen ANYTHING yet!

I just want to thank you for this explanation of just what a voxel is. I've been a 3Dcreator for 14 years (and nowhere an expert) and have never understood just what we have been working with. I'm used to thinking at the vertice/face level and could not see how 3D surfaces were generated. Now all makes sense!

Please continue with these discussions!

First, let me say this was a great explanation Smokejumper. I think it was about as easy to understand as this material can be. Great job!

Now let me talk about the above tool and the idea behind it..
(btw this is a wonderful example of how this tool should work! Much better than I was imagining it in my head.)

The number one gripe is how complex and hard it can be to build as good as some "voxelmancers".

I get it guys - you don't want to make people more angry by making the game more complex."We are not making photo-shop the game".. etc etc.. However, by not adding these tools you are actually hurting the game. Because it FAR easier to use a complex tool than a complex workaround. Which is why people feel they can never build as good as the pros - because the workarounds are really tough to understand and very time consuming.

The best tool updates you have had so far are the following...

1. Paste with or without air --- allowed us to do stuff we could do before it was added by using a workaround. Thank you for eliminating the need for a workaround.

2. Scaling pre-made shapes --- something we could do before it was added with a workaround. Thank you again for eliminating the need for a workaround.

3. I'm excited about being able to paint and paste air --- allowing us to make Anti-shapes (anti-voxels) and many other things without a using workarounds. Again, thank you for eliminating the tedious task of having to use workarounds.

If the above tool is possible at all in the form shown... you have to realize how much more accessible pro building will become to the general player. I hope you are looking at all the complex techniques people show you - and the first thing that pops in your head is "How can we allow the everyday player to do this exact same thing without having to understand this 30 minute tutorial".

Indeed as a new player myself that tool ... and really even just those images displays in a simply visual way basically everything Smokejumper tried to explain in words. The tool may be complex but it appears simple and intuitive to use.

Most of my intricate creations in game come from guessing and checking... I wonder will happen if I do "this" or maybe if I do "this"... so on and so forth. With a tool like that I could just directly make the shape I want or correct the shape I've got.

The technical distinction is this:

"Texture" refers to the image file(s) that are mapped to a 3d surface. Also called a "texture map" or "map", especially in the context of a material (bump map, normal map, diffuse map, etc), though "texture" usually means the base color image (the diffuse map). Ex: hammered_copper.png (* Probably not the actual file name)

"Material" refers to the compiled textures/maps, shaders and various other data bits that combine to create the look of a 3d surface. Ex: "Dull Hammered Copper" might contain hammered_copper.png, hammered_copper_bumpmap.png, data to define how shiny it is (this may be another map called a specular map), data defining how it repeats and blends, and so on.

But like Dave said, they are often used interchangeably in casual conversation and most people who know the technical difference can figure out what you mean. People who don't know the difference, as far as I know, will be more familiar with "texture"; "material" is used more in the context of 3d creation software.

Thanks for making that clear. I don't have the 3d modeling background; what little I have done is more than a decade in my past.

Thank you for taking the time clarify the term voxel and the related voxel terms. I found the information most enlightening and useful. Plus the comments I have seen so far have also been very insightful.

Thanks

Thank you Dave! This was a helpful explanation and summary of a lot of different YouTube videos I've seen over the past few months. With that being said, I guess the one comment I would make is to trust your players, we can handle complex tools like a voxel manipulator if given the chance and if some people find it too complex they simply don't need to use it. I've been amazed by some of the creativity I've seen in this game, I would be ecstatic to see what the master voxelmancers could do if given slightly more complex tools. No matter your decision though, thank you and your entire team for a great game.

So the logic here is: "we are making game, where many (most) activities revolve around building, and we have this engine that allows for very cool manipulation of environment

BUT

we will not give people tools to make that in reliable manner, because it will take out fun out of game."

..... really?

We are talking giving us reliable, predictable and easy-to-use interface, so they will make most out this game without making it a job.

Showing people those better builds and then demoting them to minecraft-"I suck"-level is kind of weird policy, IMO.

I have repeatedly trained people to do basic modelling under 20 minutes. Good luck teaching all voxelmancy techniques and idiosyncracies to newcomer in landmark in that time.

Not having good interface ensures people will stay in minecraft-mode forever.

those are precisely the kind of tools needed as a start.

Now for advanced tools, those would be these :

nice, but not that important.

I would agree with this ONLY as long as it was plainly, clearly, and boldly flagged to indicated that it is advanced information. I could easily see the opposite effect if a new non-technical player stumbled onto this thinking it was necessary information, then got immediately dazed and confused and decided to leave.

So I don't think it belongs in the "new player" section - but more in the "advanced techniques" section.

But overall, yeah, stickied and prominent some place that it can be found easily and quickly referenced for those of us who guide new players to appropriate information.

And this is exactly the point. Depending on how large the "object" that you select to manipulate, instead of just the few corner points that you show, there would be dozens or even hundreds of individual points throughout the 3d space.

If you think it is hard/frustrating to grab an manipulate things now, that would add an order of magnitude or more to such issues.

Yeah, you <could> zoom in and work with smaller areas. But that would in turn mean that to create a large-scale surface you might have to do dozens or hundreds of such zooms and fine-tuning. And betting a "smooth" effect across dozens or hundreds of points would still be largely trial and error, and would take at least as long as doing things the current way.

Yes, it could be very useful for small volumes, particularly for working with "prop-scale" items. But they have already said that a prop tool will be added to the game later. So why spend a lot of time trying to modify this tool to do things that are already planned for a future tool?

And as has been previously pointed out, this is a GAME intended for a broad audience, particularly for people who don't have great artistic skill/talent or technical understanding. It is not intended to be an art tool for advanced techniques.

Yeah, it's equivalent to LEGOs. But what's wrong with that? If you want to sculpt with clay instead of building with LEGOs, then you can get that fine detail that you're looking for. But there are plenty of options around for doing exactly that. That is not the intent of Landmark. It is intended to be "good enough" for a wide range of users, not "perfect" for a smaller subset.

Well, it clearly would need to be worded in simpler terms for new player digestion, something along the lines of "When you smooth a shape and place it next to another shape, the shape you placed last will affect the shape of any voxel adjacent to it."

I've been trying to create this shape:

in cube space to use the new term or in 1 voxel to use the old. If each edge of the cube has 3 vertexes (voxels) then doing this should be possible... but I can't figure out how to do it with the current tools. The current methods keep pulling the points out of cube space and pulling the mid line voxels closer to the edge of cube space... and the whole thing looks like a dull and fat version of what I really want. If I had the ability to just click and drag the voxel points into the position I want all this stuff would become possible and easily done.

"If each edge of the cube has 3 vertexes".

Each edge has two vertices. In terms of edges per vertex, due to triangulation, 2 of the vertices have 6 edges each, and the other 6 vertices have 4 edges each.

With roaming vectors it is now possible to make a shape like this, but I don't think this is as easy as it looks.

I see 3 voxels (vertexes) on each edge of this cube. One at each end and one in the middle or mid-line. Each side has 9...

That's a 2x2x2 block of shapes. Not a volume which is a single voxel length on each side.

Hi Grumbles, take a look at my second post in this thread. I tackle how the tool could make selecting voxels more manageable. I propose the player could tab through corner, mid-line, and center voxels. I also keep the material fill so the player only sees the voxel they are facing. I also think it would be reasonable to make this tool only select one block at a time. Doing all this the player would likely only see 7 voxels at once.

I kindly disagree with you (and Smokejumper) about this tool not being for a broad audience. Unless the player is only building a Minecraft style house with smaller blocks, they will always be faced with warping. I believe this tool would help explain why warping occurs and allow everyone to recover from it.

Not according to Smokejumper. That's one cube of what we were calling voxels. It's not a 2 by 2 by 2 cube.

Thank you sooo much for this Dave,
i certainly have plunged in lol, even tho you say you do not need to read this to play the game i feel anyone who wants to become a voxel master one day should take 10mins to read through as there is alot of good info in there, plus now i no longer have to explain the same thing time and time again to noob players, instead i just chuck them the link to here and say this will answer all your question!!! lol