When we first tried it, we quickly found out that voxel models could be produced much faster than traditional meshes. Rafal, our team’s artist, was able to create all the characters, architecture and props for our initial level in a matter of hours. In another prototype we were able to build a whole city in less than a week.

The beautiful thing about voxels is that you can just open an editor and start creating. At its heart, it’s no different from playing with Lego or building a house in Minecraft – and millions of people already do that.

UE4

Unreal has been our engine of choice for years now. In our opinion it’s the most advanced engine out there, full of features that make your life as a developer much easier. Additionally, full source code access means that our programmers can modify and extend the engine to tailor it to our specific needs.

To help us create voxel-based games, we added custom voxel model support to the engine. This allows us to import .vox files from MagicaVoxel, adjust colors in the editor and even add effects like glow or reflections. Additionally, we have the possibility to remove any parts of the model in runtime, allowing us to simulate damage and large-scale destruction (to be used in future projects).

As mentioned above, the only external tool we use is MagicaVoxel – a free voxel model editor. We recommend everyone to try it, it’s very easy to use.

Peculiarities of Working with Voxels

There are a couple things we’ve learned so far by using voxels: