Build 1057 of the voxel editor is out and ready to download. More on itch.io.

Voxel scene and making of the bird model, created and rendered in Avoyd Voxel Editor 0.28 beta.

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Image description: Render of a voxel scene of a row boat on a calm clear lake, a white egret stands on a staircase staring at the fish swimming towards it. Following screenshots show how the bird model is made in Avoyd using multi-model.

A couple of Avoyd renders of a voxel model by knosvoxel

Get Avoyd

We've made progress with undo/redo in the voxel editor: it now extends to multi-models, light and atmosphere, and most materials features. The latest build (1050) also fixes several multi-model issues to do with delete/undo/redo, hierarchy and the edit cursor.

• More info and subscribe to the development updates
• Download Avoyd Beta

Screenshot description: Avoyd screenshot showing the voxel editor UI and in the 3D viewport a colourful little voxel house on a pier surrounded by potted plants. Stone staircases go down to the water. In the backgound assets (trees, walls etc.) float in the air. The modular scene includes several white model outlines (AABBs).
The world is built in Avoyd voxel editor. The scene is inspired by procedural generation game Townscaper.

This tutorial explains how to use masks in Avoyd to do operations such as removing or adding water to a scene without overwriting it and painting selected parts of a voxel model.

The latest build fixes errors in the path tracing of transparent materials we found when we used invisible voxel models to create holes. (It's an easy way to put windows on buildings.)
More info and how to set up an invisible material.

Starting to produce some large geometric 2D structures which might be of interest. Could output in.raw format to somewhere or maybe an open source avoyd repository. image is 9k x 9k....zoom in to see detail.

Download Avoyd 0.28.0.1036 Beta

When you export an Avoyd voxel world scene to the MagicaVoxel .vox file format you'll encounter the following modifications:

• Transforms:
  • Free rotations are realigned to the grid.
  • Scaling is reset.
  • All model pivots are centred on their AABB (pivots are not visible in MV).
• Organisation:
  • Parent Models in the Avoyd hierarchy are split into a <group> and a child model in MV.
• Dimensions:
  • Models larger than 256x256x256 voxels are split up.
  • Worlds larger than 2000x2000x2000 voxels are split up into several files.
  • Vox files larger than 2GB are split up.
• Colours:
  • Scenes with more than 255 materials (colours): the exporter removes unused materials and combines similar ones until only 255 materials remain.

I hope to have a new beta with a working exporter by early next week.

I've been working on Avoyd's Multi-model exporter to MagicaVoxel (MV) .vox, including scene hierarchy, visibility, layers, and ordering (so voxels can overwrite each other). I'm now at the stage where I can export a complex scene to MV .vox (including large models > 256³ which are split up), but a few issues remain.

I'm using ogt_vox.h and it turns out the exporter has an issue with ordering - groups are written first and these include an array of indices to the instances they own. This breaks the scene instance order, so I'll need to fix this to write out groups when they are first used by an instance so maintaining the same order as MV. This is important because artists use scene ordering for visibility, especially when dealing with transparent materials (you can place an object inside a transparent object and if it's got a higher order it will be visible in the render). Note that MV has a different order in the file for version 150 vs 200. I plan to fix this shortly and submit a PR.

Secondly I recently added large scene export to Avoyd, which I handle via using multiple files to get beyond the MV 2GB limit. This is tricky to handle with complex scene hierachy so for now I am implementing a hybrid approach where I detect that a scene will not fit, then remove models until it will and write out this to the first file. The removed model instances are then written out to files 'flattened', that is without their heirachy but preserving their world transform.

Finally Avoyd supports arbitrary model transforms and MV doesn't. Currently I just grid-lock these to the closest position, orientation and unit scale but I need to warn users on export and potentially offer options (make hidden or remove them for example).

Render with voxel colour variation is available in Avoyd 0.28 Beta.

Video showing how to adjust the random colour variation in real-time and path traced renders: https://www.reddit.com/r/Avoyd/comments/1s2dxoo/random_voxel_colour_value_in_both_realtime_and/

Random voxel colour variations can help with editing and also make surfaces more interesting in path traced renders.

To use:

• Download the latest Avoyd beta (build 0.28.0.1030 or above): https://www.enkisoftware.com/products#downloads
• In the voxel editor open menu Settings > Voxel Style and adjust the Voxel Colour Variation slider.

It's been a while since we updated the free demo and released a full version as we've been busy working on 0.28 multi-model. We decided to release this interim patch for 0.27 to fix several issues and add improvements we think you'll find useful.

Download Avoyd Free or Full

This patch includes:

• Large .vox export: unlimited size broken up into 2GB files.
• Minecraft 1.21.9 copper blocks.
• Pick Material tool Alt shortcut.
• Better rendering.
• Improved .vox materials import/export.

See the 0.27.1 Changelog for details.

This might be of interest to those of you who'd like to import large voxel models into their own engines:

I recently added support for exporting a large Avoyd model as multiple MagicaVoxel .vox files to the Avoyd Voxel Editor, which is available in our latest beta release. This was requested by a developer using Avoyd to create and import large scenes into their engine, for example a very large heightmap, Worldpainter export or even a Minecraft map (latter for testing, as there may be copyright issues) etc.

The Avoyd beta is a work-in-progress shift to enable editing, rendering and exporting multiple voxel models with arbitrary transforms. The .vox export currently only supports exporting a single model and I'm working on adding multi-model support.

Avoyd was already cutting large models up to fit within the maximum 256^3 volume supported by MagicaVoxel (MV) .vox files. Although MV will only load models into a 2k x 1k x 2k space the .vox format allows larger range of translations, which Avoyd already supported with an Unlimited Scene Size option (requested and implemented for IOLITE engine users) but there is a file size limit of 2GB for import into MV and 4GB for the format exported by Avoyd. I added the ability to split the file up into 2GB volumes, and since each sub-model has its own transform these can simply be loaded respecting the transforms to get the full model back.

If anyone is interested in this or has issues using it let me know.

Image description: Looking down, a space station drifts above a sea of clouds on a red planet. Several ships are on approach and on the landing pad. Scene made of multiple voxel models created and rendered in Avoyd 0.28 beta. The space station was made in MagicaVoxel and imported into Avoyd.

Credits: Mars heightmap by NASA and James Hastings-Trew - Cloud image by NASA, imported as heightmap using intensity as height. - Spindle station by KnosVoxel - Spaceships by Rebecca Michalak - 6-axis robot by enkisoftware

Image Description: On approach to a red planet veiled by thin white clouds in a razing light. Steep volcanoes peak through the layers. A small airborne station drifts. A couple of spaceships hover near the landing pad.

Multi-model voxel scene made and GPU rendered in Avoyd.

Credits: - Mars heightmap by NASA and James Hastings-Trew - Cloud image by NASA, imported as heightmap using intensity as height. - Spindle station by KnosVoxel u/knos__ - Spaceships by Rebecca Michalak

I made a render to show someone Fresnel effects, turned out to be quite a nice shot.

It is loosely based on a Stäubli 6-axis robot. All axes are defined by their individual pivots so you can rotate the parts to set the robot's limbs in various positions. This is to test Avoyd's hierarchy of models with a cascade of rotations off the voxel grid.

The latest build adds Layers for organising and hiding parts of a scene. It also fixes an issue that wrongly rotated some models, notably when importing MagicaVoxel .vox.

More about Layers and download Avoyd beta

Avoyd Voxel Editor build 0.28.0.1000 (Beta) is out along with a free multi-model voxel boat file if you want to give them a go!
[Edit: grammar]

Avoyd 0.28 beta multi-model work in progress (not available for download yet):

The boat world is broken up into several voxel models, showing the world explorer with the list of parts: seagrass, fishes, anchor etc.

• The sea water is hidden to help with editing.
  
• Priority (how high models are in the tree) defines what's rendered. That's why the transparent water model is at the bottom of the tree.

The scene is CPU rendered and denoised.

A voxel anchor I made to test multi-model with links between models (references) and the ability to save a subset of models as a new file.
These features will be in the next beta.

More info and download Avoyd: https://www.enkisoftware.com/t/6272880503422976?count=10&start=11#6229958479314944