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MagicaVoxel – A free voxel art editor and interactive path tracing renderer (ephtracy.github.io)
334 points by selvan 10 months ago | hide | past | favorite | 48 comments



I've never used it, but (from what I've seen) is a great tool for modeling Voxels.

Shameless plug: The format (and the tool) has been used with great success in Veloren, an Open Source Voxel MMORPG written in rust (https://www.veloren.net/). The artist team has made great assets for the game and landscapes for the release parties.

Your should check out the project, it is really cool.

(Disclaimer: I'm part of the mod team.)


I had played Veloren a long time ago, so I just tried it again.

My items were still there (nice!) but I was not dealing anywhere near as much damage as I expected. Maybe there was power creep? And more concerning, all NPCs attacked me on sight, shouting "murderer", and I have no idea why. I tried asking in chat, which was surprisingly international, but got no answers. The manual doesn't explain any aspect of the game world either.

I guess that's the danger of MMORPGs in constant development. It's hard to integrate existing characters and guides with new behavior.

Also, I'm thoroughly impressed with the new UI and reflection rendering. It's coming along really nicely.


if you have x number of pieces of cultist gear on then townspeople will assume you are a cultist, which seems reasonable.


Oohh! Thanks a lot, I would never have guessed it's due to my armor. All my equipment comes from aggressive groups, so I don't find that immediately obvious.


I played a few hours a few years ago, and it felt reminiscent of Cube World during its beta phase. It sparked my interest in giving the editor a try.


Related. Others?

3D modeling for any skill level – MagicaVoxel - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34687026 - Feb 2023 (1 comment)

MagicaVoxel: A free voxel art editor and path tracing renderer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18721555 - Dec 2018 (64 comments)

MagicaVoxel – a free lightweight voxel art editor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18036946 - Sept 2018 (1 comment)

MagicaVoxel - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14932554 - Aug 2017 (3 comments)

MagicaVoxel – a free 8-bit voxel editor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10953918 - Jan 2016 (43 comments)


Gave this a try just now, lots of fun. Made some absurd brutalist architecture in 5 minutes!

Reminds me of the fun and ease of using Sketchup back in the day.


Thus is a great tool, although not FOSS. But I've seen great things made with this, as it is used for Veloren (www.veloren.net), an Open Source (and open assets) voxel MMORPG written in rust. The community has created amazing things for release parties and assets with this. You should check out the project.

(Disclaimer: I'm part of the mod team.)


I use his other software magicaCSG, I'm a 3d artist and it's probably the simplest 3D program I've ever used but it's super fun to play around in.

So fun in fact that I joined his patreon to get access to earlier releases!


MagicaVoxel is a great way to get started with 3D printing. Many years ago I visited a friend’s classroom (can’t remember if it was 1st or 2nd grade) & the students created models that I printed with an Ultimaker. Sculpting with voxels is much simpler than other CAD tools.


If memory serves me right, Mari uses it for her art.

https://www.instagram.com/madmaraca


Yep, came here to post it too: https://twitter.com/MadMaraca/media?lang=en


MagicaVoxel is fun and fantastic. The UX takes some getting used to.

Note that he's been working on MagicaCSG [1] distant field editor and path tracing renderer in the recent years and although it's PC only, it's very interesting.

Follow him on t/x as he's quite active there [2].

[1] https://ephtracy.github.io/index.html?page=magicacsg

[2] https://twitter.com/ephtracy


I think I recognize it from somewhere... ah yes, from these videos, you can actually see someone doing the things from scratch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMLA9LRI7Gs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXJXt-KCouQ


This is a beautiful sample image: https://ephtracy.github.io/image/sample6.jpg


this gets used a lot for veloren


I came to post this as well. All of the models for characters and animals and buildings are created in this. They call it "pre-alpha", but its very playable and *very* beautiful.

https://www.veloren.net


OMG! How come I never heard of that! Here goes my whole weekend :D


Too bad it doesn't support Linux.


Last time I tried it out, it ran perfectly well on linux under Mono


It works great with wine too.


The change log suggests that there is a MacOS build somewhere, but I can't see it - can someone hit me with a cluestick?


Go into the previous versions link (or the Releases on Github). Not all builds have macos but some do.


If you’re on iOS and/or MacOS, Voxel Max is a great Metal-native alternative, actively developed and with a helpful Discord community. Also has path-traced rendering. No official affiliation (although I was at one time quite active in the community).

MagicaVoxel is great - arguably the standard - but Apple Silicon support was lacking last I checked, and there’s no iOS / iPadOS version. Noodling with the Pencil on a 10” iPad screen on the couch can’t be beat, imo. Much more accessible for the kids as well.



Appears that M1/M2 support isn't there yet. Shame, I really enjoyed MagicaVoxel when I was on my intel mac.


why does Voxel art look more attractive than (less than AAA) 3d games I used to play? Can studios use those tricks to graphics that are subjectively more pleasing than realistic games but are easier on their budgets and gpus of end users?


> path tracing renderer

Good lighting looks good. The difference between ray/path tracing and traditional rendering is huge.


And this is pure ray tracing without any of the tricks required for real-time ray tracing. You’ll never get something looking quite as good in a game.


Will low poly with good lighting look better than high poly with bad lighting?


Aaa game art has a certain soullessness to it usually


Would it be possible at some point to have voxels the size of a pixel? And would it benefit for example path tracing, physics and other things?


A pixel is a 2D unit, usually a screen; a voxel is a cube in 3D.

If you place a 3D voxel model into a 3D world, and just back the camera away from it … at some point, its voxels will be approximately a pixel when rasterized?


>Would it be possible at some point to have voxels the size of a pixel? And would it benefit for example path tracing, physics and other things?

The answers are yes and maybe. There are people who are working in that direction. See this, for example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ptH79R53c0


So you want to achieve a rasterizer looks, but with poor performance and/or huge memory requirements. I don't think we are anywhere close doing that real time yet. Nonetheless a game in which taking a bucket of water would actually take that bucket of water would be incredibly cool.


It would greatly benefit realism.

Performance would not benefit obviously, if suddenly you don't have to calculate 10000 cubes anymore, but 10000 × 1000.


Is there a limit on canvas size, can it do large landscapes like some people do in Minecraft?


Messy license


Seems quite lenient to me?

This is just fully freeware. It's not OSS and not even "source available".


It's interesting to see how many people have forked the project repository for something that's just freeware and not open source. I wonder if there was a release of the source code in the past that I might have missed?


It's a modelling tool. Pretty sure there are plenty of users (e.g. artists) who don't care at all about source availability.

And, this is why I say the license is lenient: most freeware creative tools will also try to lay their hands on what you make using them. (e.g., edu versions of modelling/CAD software will also impose restrictions on the files you make using them, meanwhile this doesn't even require attribution let alone restrictions on commercial use of the output)


What makes you think so many people care about the license?


I'm more interested in why people are forking the project's page when there's no app soure code. Maybe I'm missing it... do you see the source to the wonderful app?


Seems it is just proprietary with $0 price tag? Why messy?


How so? Seems like a fairly simple license.


This was my worry as soon as I saw "free" and figured they likely didn't mean free as in freedom.


It is nice to have something other than Minecraft for voxel editing.


magicavoxel is a pretty cool tool. i use it to make 3d art for fun and make models that i import to blender for video game dev




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