So how are voxel games rendered, anyways?

How do Voxel Games like Minecraft render all those blocks, anyways? In this three part video series, we'll be covering Voxel Game Meshing! We'll travel from the basic theory all the way to advanced rendering tricks in Vulkan, which let you get the most out of your GPU. This time, we'll go over how Voxel Environments are chunked into distinct regions, and the many optimizations that can be applied to them. Specifically, we'll go over the distinction between meshes, quads, polygons, and vertices, backface culling, greedy meshing, and chunk level-of-detail.

I'm really passionate about the topic of meshing in Voxel Games. I've been working on my own Voxel Game Engine for over 5 years, and I've spent a lot of time (a lot more time than I should) micro-optimizing my mesh generation and rendering. This video serves as an introduction to the topics at play, and I'll be releasing two follow-ups that go much deeper into the specifics of high performance dynamic mesh rendering in Vulkan. Be sure to stay tuned if you're interested in that sort of thing.

Since 2018, I've been singularly focused on making this project (the game, not this one video lol). I've been mostly focusing on the engine side of things so far as I've been building out functionality before gameplay, but I'm hoping to soon be able to begin discussing the game's design. Admittedly, it's difficult to get people invested in a project that they know nothing about, but I hope you'll stick around to see what I create. More info on that soon(ish) 💖

My Socials:

Come chat with me and other cool game-dev types on Discord! We don't bite, I promise :)

Discord: https://aurail.us/discord
Patreon:   / aurailus  
Twitch:   / aurailus  
Tumblr: https://tumblr.com/zephagame

Video Chapters

00:00 - Introduction
00:53 - Voxel Meshing Fundamentals
03:14 - Backface Culling
04:57 - Greedy Meshing
06:28 - Level of Detail
09:04 - Speaking ̸t̷h̸e̵ ̷G̵P̶U̸'̵s̸ ̵ ̵̤̝͌L̵͉̙̝͋͋a̴̯͕̝͛͒ń̷̦̚ḡ̵̖͚͝u̷̡̕͜ͅa̶͙̗̪͆͋g̴̥̜̉̏e̸̳̓͗
09:17 - Hey, I disappeared for 8 months
11:02 - Let's Chat + Credits

Music Used

Special World 8 (Crown) - Super Mario 3D Land
Title Screen - Super Mario Maker
Summer in Kagome Arrangement of Lacunosa Town Theme - Pokémon Black & White
Ending Theme - Pokémon Trading Card Game

Videos and Resources

   • When Optimisations Work, But for the Wrong...  
   • Greedy Meshing Voxels Fast - Optimism in D...  
https://0fps.net/2012/06/30/meshing-i...
https://vkguide.dev/

#voxel #gamedev #coding