Voxel Displacement Renderer – Modernizing the Retro 3D Aesthetic

That&#x27;s a very appealing aesthetic (possibly because I&#x27;m old enough to remember downloading games over a 2400 baud modem!). Very nice work!<p>That video looked great, and (at least for me) felt very evocative. In the section where the roof was too low, I started feeling claustrophobic and cramped.<p>Those rock and sandy-floored caverns, and the cavern with boulders (which are gorgeous!) made me think I&#x27;d love playing a Myst or LucasArts-style adventure game using this as the renderer. Spelunking through caves, or archeological digs, etc.<p>Can&#x27;t wait to see where you take this!

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20240524065427&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.danielschroeder.me&#x2F;2024&#x2F;05&#x2F;voxel-displacement-modernizing-retro-3d&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20240524065427&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.dani...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=1xFEbXWstCM" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=1xFEbXWstCM</a>

There&#x27;s another approach - Deep Bump.[1] Addresses the same problem, but in a totally different way.<p>Deep Bump is a machine-learning tool which takes texture images and creates plausible normal maps from them. It&#x27;s really good at stone and brick textures like the ones this voxel displacement renderer is using. It&#x27;s OK at clothing textures - it seems to be able to recognize creases, pockets, and collars, and gives them normals that indicate depth. It&#x27;s sort of OK on bark textures, and not very good on plants. This probably reflects the training set.<p>So if you&#x27;re upgrading games of the Doom&#x2F;Wolfenstein genre, there&#x27;s a good open source tool available.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;HugoTini&#x2F;DeepBump">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;HugoTini&#x2F;DeepBump</a>

This is neat, but I&#x27;m wondering how well the authors approach will map to animated 3D models. I&#x27;m guessing, at best, it might look something like the &quot;Voxel Doom&quot; mod for Doom [1] [2].<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;media.moddb.com&#x2F;cache&#x2F;images&#x2F;mods&#x2F;1&#x2F;55&#x2F;54112&#x2F;thumb_620x2000&#x2F;pinky_3.gif" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;media.moddb.com&#x2F;cache&#x2F;images&#x2F;mods&#x2F;1&#x2F;55&#x2F;54112&#x2F;thumb_6...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;media.moddb.com&#x2F;cache&#x2F;images&#x2F;mods&#x2F;1&#x2F;55&#x2F;54112&#x2F;thumb_620x2000&#x2F;caco_attack2.gif" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;media.moddb.com&#x2F;cache&#x2F;images&#x2F;mods&#x2F;1&#x2F;55&#x2F;54112&#x2F;thumb_6...</a>

This looks a lot like what Notch is working on (see his twitter feed). Another kind of voxel rendering. This, however is using C++&#x2F;Vulkan and looks stunning!

I wonder how this approach compares to Unreal Engine 5 nanites, or maybe Unreal Engine is actually doing something similar?<p>I remember one motivation for using voxels in older games (like Comanche[1]) is that you can get seemly more complex terrains that, when modelled using triangle meshes, would have been more expensive on similar hardware. The author mentions 110FPS on a RX 5700 XT, I am not sure how that compares to other approaches.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Comanche_(video_game_series)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Comanche_(video_game_series)</a>

Love hearing about new methods in the voxel space!<p>It&#x27;s a bit unfortunate the article conflates voxels with a specific rendering technique. Voxels are just the usage of the 3d grid. It seems like based on the middle section that the author is equating voxel usage with cubic style rendering, or what we often call bloxel renderers (Minecraft).<p>It is also mentioned that the triangle geometry can be import d and used in engines directly, but I think the author is forgetting that bloxel, or really any rendering process can do the same thing, this is how typical voxel rendering plugins that use other styles already get first class support in existing engines.

I wish this was open-sourced! I wish!

I love love love it. Ultima Underworld comes to mind.

This should be the future of modernizing retro 3D games. God, this is beautiful.

For someone who has done zero 3D graphics in a couple of decades, why do displacement maps exist? At first blush they don&#x27;t appear to be more computationally efficient than more complex geometry.

Looks amazing. My dream outcome would be something like warlords battlecry 3 in a voxel style.<p>How the hell do people get into graphics programming or voxels? Seems very difficult as a dirty ol webdev

This looks awesome. The demo video was compelling, even though the invisible light sources kept throwing me off. Place some &quot;torches&quot;!

I got textures I worked on for a temporarily paused project that I was working on just as a hobby trying to put the game Strife in UE5. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;navjack&#x2F;strife-rtx-pbr-textures">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;navjack&#x2F;strife-rtx-pbr-textures</a> I handmade a ton of height maps or displacement maps for the textures and they might work really good with this.

This is inspiring. Makes me want to try to duplicate the results using old-fashioned bump mapping.

Looks nice, but without shadows it&#x27;s missing an important (and often very complex) feature.

This would be absolutely perfect for a Riven remake.

Does anyone else remember Sauerbraten? Gives me similar vibes. Should see if it will still run on a modern system.

Could you use the algo to render a photo as a carved face or profile? Like a netpbm filter to sculpt from image

On an actual voxel engine, look up Outcast.<p>Also, Duke Nukem Forever 2013 with Eduke32 had some voxel models I think.

This is really cool, but with all homemade voxel engines I have to ask the same thing. Where is the game?

Sorry if I am dumb but...I was wondering if this in practice would theoretically be able to convert or render directly old games and graphics (provided the starting point is compatible) in such a &quot;remastered&quot; way.<p>In any case I am at the third read and I think I understood enough to say &quot;wow, looks and feels great. Would play TES Arena like that.&quot;

This would look incredible in VR.

is there a game engine using this? would be wild

Impressive.

hugely impressive.