Voxel rendering in 3D Studio Max

Posted on 29. Jun, 2009 by Jerzy Drozda Jr in Blog

Recently I got involved in a movie project – doing some post production, visual effects, and compositing. One part of the assigment is to create a “in game” world, that will look very modern and high quality, but kind of old school at the same time. And then it struck me: Voxels!

Definition (source: wiki)
A voxel (a blend of the words volumetric and pixel) is a volume element, representing a value on a regular grid in three dimensional space. This is analogous to a pixel, which represents 2D image data. Voxels are frequently used in the visualization and analysis of medical and scientific data. Some volumetric displays use voxels to describe their resolution. For example, a display might be able to show 512×512×512 voxels.

It looks pretty simple at first, but then you realize that what you want to do is to animate your characters (or whatever) in a “normal” way, and then have it rendered out as voxels… and that’s where it gets complicated. I’ve tested out several solutions: script and renderers, but found nothing that satisfied me, so I started to develop my own script. Here are some of the first results that I got.
Voxel rendering in 3D Studio Max The script converts any given mesh to a voxel based object. The shape of the voxel can also be defined as a mesh. For performance reasons there is an option to minimize processing time by building the voxel model while ignoring backfacing vertices.

After I’m finished with the script there will probably be a tutorial on FineCG.com.

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23 Responses to “Voxel rendering in 3D Studio Max”

David_97

30. Jun, 2009

Very cool tip! I love the effect.
-David

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illd

30. Jun, 2009

Maltaannon, you are really a never stopping script-writing-machine in every aplication ;) The voxels look like those good Lego´s

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Ricky

01. Jul, 2009

amazing… I’ve always been wondering how to do that….
Did I tell you how much I love your website now? :)

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Abduselam Omer

02. Jul, 2009

u r freakin awesome man!!! greetings from Eritrea!!!

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Melkoret

02. Jul, 2009

Freaking sick dude!

I look forward to any movie that uses those kind of graphics! very unique!

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- Jerzy Drozda Jr
  
  03. Jul, 2009
  
  Well… it’s going to be quite a lot of time till the movie is released, but when it’s ready I’m sure to post a link. It’s still in preproduction stage.
  
  Reply to this comment
Vinnie

03. Jul, 2009

I am always amazed with your tutorials and things you are creating! Is there no end to your talents?

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Rafael Guerra

06. Jul, 2009

Total Genius…The Stephen Hawking of Motion Graphics.

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Kai

07. Jul, 2009

looks like a lego set.
cool.

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harry

19. Jul, 2009

eagerly awaiting for your ‘voxel’ script! btw, what a fantastic Reel you’ve got ! kudos!

Reply to this comment
- Jerzy Drozda Jr
  
  19. Jul, 2009
  
  Thanks for the kind words. :) The reel is not “final” yet, but I thought it’s good enough. As for the script it will be a while till it’s released. There are still some problems to solve, and the movie needs to be released before I can release the script. Be patient however – the script is coming.
  
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Nenad

22. Jul, 2009

How did you do this?
Amazing.

Cant wait to grab my hands on this :)

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xpez

11. Aug, 2009

I was thinking about this for C4d…

Mograph allows you to use chroma and luminance values to displace polygons.. but it doesnt take long before the whole thing becomes geometry heavy and slow…

If you made a renderer for c4d I would certainly buy it !!!

I will be buying the AE UV plug-in very soon..

great work!

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- Bernardo Vaz
  
  19. Jul, 2010
  
  There is a free voxel plug in for c4d made by Robert Leger out there. I have never used it, but it seems to be cool.
  
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Tuto

25. Aug, 2009

I really like this effect, it looks like a toy !

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Oliver Nürnberger

01. Sep, 2009

Great Stuff! But here you found real voxel volume rendering with Mental Ray:

http://forum.german-mentalray-wiki.info/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2310511

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polypixel

06. Sep, 2009

Holy crap! That is just what I was after for a project,
thanks a lot!

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Гамлет

01. Jan, 2010

Ну вы подеритесь еще, тоже мне спорщики :)

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Hendrik

09. May, 2010

Any updates on this, It would be nice to have some script snippets or a working script to learn from.

Hendrik

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David W.

19. Jul, 2010

Awesome, you’re making a Lego movie! :P That looks really cool Jerzy, I need to get into 3D work. Can’t wait to find out what the movie is. :)

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