1. Two Methods for Voxel Detail
Enhancement
Adam M. Smith
adam.smith@hackerdojo.com
@rndmcnlly

2. Two Methods for Voxel Detail Enhancement
Adam M. Smith (presenter)
expressiveintelligencestudio
UC Santa Cruz
amsmith@soe.ucsc.edu
PCGames 2011 – Bordeaux, France

3. Prelude
EXPLORATORY DESIGN
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4. Exploratory Design
• Design
– Analysis × Synthesis
• Exploration
– travelling for the purpose of discovery
• Exploratory Design:
– Extracting interesting nuggets
– Building new components out of them
– Examining implication for design of new artifacts
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5. Where does exploratory design
happen?
Location Events
The Independent
Game Jam
SuperHappyDevHouse
Hacker Dojo
Mountain View, CA, USA
“Hacker Dojo is a community
center for hackers and thinkers South Bay Game Jam
to meet, discuss, learn, create,
build and play.”
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6. Interesting nugget #1
VOXELS
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7. Woxel’s a Voxel?
Pixels in Wolfenstein 3D Voxels in Voxelstein 3D
(voxel: a colored cube in space)
(pixel: a colored square on a plane)
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8. Voxels in Action
• Minecraft
– Player-created architecture
• Ace of Spades
– Combat on top of player-created architecture
• Voxatron
– Retro-inspired arcade, bulk destruction
• Atomontage
– Photorealism, limited editing
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9. Interesting nugget #2
PIXEL ART SCALING ALGORITHMS
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10. Pixel Art Scaling Algorithms
2xSaI
Super2xSaI
hq3x
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11. The new component
VOXEL DETAIL ENHANCERS
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12. Recursive Subdivision (Diagrammed)
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13. Recursive Subdivision (Demonstrated)
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14. Direct Resampling (Diagrammed)
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15. Direct Resampling (Demonstrated)
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16. Implications
DECOUPLED MODIFICATION AND
INTERACTION MECHANICS
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17. Decoupling
Enhancement
Rendering
Perception
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18. Exploring a Design Space
Dwarf Fortress (2006) Minecraft (2009) Terraria (
Wolfenstein 3D (1992) Voxelstein (2008) Ace of Spades (2011)
Voxatron (201x)
Wolfenstein (2009)
??? (20xx)
Braid (2008)
Hardware-accelerated
Voxel detail enhancement
voxel rendering engines
Hardware-accelerated
Pixel art scaling algorithms
triangle rendering engines
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19. Related Concerns
• Visibility
– Ignore the voxel unless it has a different neighbor
• Computational Complexity
– Terrains are 2D manifolds  only n2 of n3 are visible
• Neighbor Dependence and Caching
– Deterministic, finite domain – memoize it!
• Physics
– Voxel normals only point in grid directions…
• Lighting
– Emit many wandering snowflakes, they each lives long
enough with hitting terrain, accumulate intensity
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20. Exploratory Design … on Mars?
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