DIY: How to make voxels with SLAB6 and Strip2Voxel and more

[Mxrtxn]

It is time to have a thread on how to make this voxels from sprites.

You could do it voxel by voxel (which is extremely time consuming if the sprite is big) or you could use a strip of images each representing a layer of the voxel.

So lets begin, first you gotta make a strip of the sprite (by copy and paste on paint or other program like gimp or photoshop) ideally it should fit in a perfect square if not make sure to put it in a square so the height and the long in terms of pixels are the same for each sprite.

Here´s an example:




Ignore the white part the height and lenght of each sprite is the same. The green and red vertical lines were put on purpose to separate one sprite square from the next one.

As you can see the last square is already modified, this will be last layer of this grass voxel. When each square sprite is finished the pink color and the red and green lines will be painted as black so they don´t appear when converting the sprites stripe to its voxel form.


(THREAD IN PROGRESS STAY TUNED FOR MORE)

[Mxrtxn]

How to make a voxel from a strip of images:


For some reason I cannot run strip2voxel on my computer anymore (UPDATE: I FORGOT TO SAVE THE IMAGE AS BMP!!!).

By the way here´s how a strip of images of a determined sprite would look when it is ready to be processed by strip2voxel:



Thanks to Robman and Maren for the sprite.

I made a strip of 30 x 30 voxel squares teh white background as seen on paint was replaced with black.

Ok I made a series of screenshot explaining the entire process of making this voxels for Shadow Warrior:




Now this is how it looks like in the actual game (SWP):




Mxrtxn

[Robman]

*Moved to the Build Help Forum. (hope you don't mind)

Martin the Voxel Master! Looks great!

[Corvin]

Nice voxel lock.

[High Treason]

I always struggled with this. Thread now bookmarked for future reference.

[Mxrtxn]

Making Voxels (Voxel by Voxel Method)


Ok lets say we didn´t make a strip of images and just enter the stripe directly with strip2voxel and we opened with SLAB6.

we would find with something like this:





How do we make the round shapes?

How can I achieve a round effect (after al voxel are cubes) ?


We first gotta count the quantity of voxels on each line, then we go to paint (1 voxel = 1 pixel):



In paint this is how our 15x15 pixel square with a circle inside would look like:




Ok so lets remember 1 pixel on paint equals one voxel on SLAB6, see the example below





We proceed to the same thing with the rest of the voxels in the line, using the paint circle file as our guide (see image below):




Now we are finsh with that line of pixels from the sprite the next one below the one of 15 pixels/voxels has 17 pixels/voxels, we do the exact thing:

- make a square in paint, this time one of 17x17 pixels.

- make a circle inside of it, make a pink line in the middle and we use that as a guide

Here´s the result:




(Thread in progress stay tuned)

[Lebowski]

Hi, nice work there.

How do match the scales?

I've done an office chair and a wooden dummy just to check how the scene looks when everything is 3D (probably how the makers intended) but you see that the scale is not the same like in the "2D" sprites...

I've counted the pixels in the wooden dummy (I don't have the original picture, so just from the 3D scene aproximately) and when I modeled it it was one man size.

Would be interesting to know what world unit size a voxel has.

I couldn't use them in a game and check the look (in scene) so far, because I don't know the name of the sprites.
I'm using jfBuild( linux version of Build engine) and I don't know how to get the sprite names.

I've added a picture on the work flow for the chair(all with slab6).

For the "head" of the chair I've created a 14x9 Block and cut the "empty spaces" out and corrected some pixels later.

Attachments:

[Lebowski]

The chair is made with slab6 (was really tedious).
The wooden dummy is made in magica voxel.

The you can draw circles and extrude them.

You have to activate the "brush" tab (or press c) and then go to Fill (F under the brush tab) to fill the rows upward.
You can create Blocks and take away the pixels which makes some work easier.

After that I exported the model to "slab6 vox"[under "export" at the right bottom] and loaded it with slab6 and "baked" the shading into it.

Attachments:

[Lebowski]

The lock looks amazing. Can you download it somewhere?

[Edit] Ah yeah, right here are the models if someone likes to use them and improve on them ;-)

Attachments:

ochair2.kvx (17.22 KB)

wooden2.kvx (22.4 KB)

[Mxrtxn]

Feb 9, 2016 7:33:02 GMT -5 Lebowski said:

Hi, nice work there.

How do match the scales?

I've done an office chair and a wooden dummy just to check how the scene looks when everything is 3D (probably how the makers intended) but you see that the scale is not the same like in the "2D" sprites...

I've counted the pixels in the wooden dummy (I don't have the original picture, so just from the 3D scene aproximately) and when I modeled it it was one man size.

Would be interesting to know what world unit size a voxel has.

I couldn't use them in a game and check the look (in scene) so far, because I don't know the name of the sprites.
I'm using jfBuild( linux version of Build engine) and I don't know how to get the sprite names.

I've added a picture on the work flow for the chair(all with slab6).

For the "head" of the chair I've created a 14x9 Block and cut the "empty spaces" out and corrected some pixels later.

I always used the original sprite as a reference. You can extract them from the game using the "kextract" program.

The chair looks cool I made also one (not painted yet)

As most of the objects in the game were 2d sprites I use the equivalence of 1 pixel = 1 voxel.

[Mxrtxn]

Feb 9, 2016 7:45:27 GMT -5 Lebowski said:

The chair is made with slab6 (was really tedious).
The wooden dummy is made in magica voxel.

The you can draw circles and extrude them.

You have to activate the "brush" tab (or press c) and then go to Fill (F under the brush tab) to fill the rows upward.
You can create Blocks and take away the pixels which makes some work easier.

After that I exported the model to "slab6 vox"[under "export" at the right bottom] and loaded it with slab6 and "baked" the shading into it.

Magica voxel? Looks Great! First time I heard of that program (will check it out in the future)

[Mxrtxn]

Feb 9, 2016 7:47:55 GMT -5 Lebowski said:

The lock looks amazing. Can you download it somewhere?

[Edit] Ah yeah, right here are the models if someone likes to use them and improve on them ;-)

Dude, perhaps you didn´t notice but we have an "Unofficial Shadow Warrior Voxel Pack" I rescued several voxels from addons and made several more.

Check it out, it is continously updating (download link in the first page):

swforum05.proboards.com/thread/45/shadow-warrior-voxel-pack

Will check your work, looks great


Thanks

Martin

[Robman]

Another Voxel maker, haha.. what are the odds? Should collaborate on the pack together.

I don't use Kextract to extract textures, although you can..

I use M210's Bafed v1.14 (build art file editor) it requires java be installed on your computer but boy is it ever a nice program for working with textures.

Welcome to the forum, Lebowski.

(thus concludes my 300th post )

[Lebowski]

Feb 9, 2016 8:56:17 GMT -5 Mxrtxn said:

Feb 9, 2016 7:47:55 GMT -5 Lebowski said:

The lock looks amazing. Can you download it somewhere?

[Edit] Ah yeah, right here are the models if someone likes to use them and improve on them ;-)

Dude, perhaps you didn´t notice but we have an "Unofficial Shadow Warrior Voxel Pack" I rescued several voxels from addons and made several more.

Check it out, it is continously updating (download link in the first page):

swforum05.proboards.com/thread/45/shadow-warrior-voxel-pack

Will check your work, looks great


Thanks

Martin

That's awesome!
Checked it out... This lock is SO DOPE...

[Lebowski]

Feb 9, 2016 19:19:11 GMT -5 Robman said:

Another Voxel maker, haha.. what are the odds? Should collaborate on the pack together.

I don't use Kextract to extract textures, although you can..

I use M210's Bafed v1.14 (build art file editor) it requires java be installed on your computer but boy is it ever a nice program for working with textures.

Welcome to the forum, Lebowski.

(thus concludes my 300th post )

Thanks!

I used grpviewer, but java sounds even better, I will check that out.

[Lebowski]

Here is a nice magica voxel tutorial on zdoom on how to import a flat png and extrude it so it becomes a 3d block.

Not like strip2voxel, but maybe a little bit more intuitive for very simple Objects.

forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=45680

[Mxrtxn]

Feb 9, 2016 19:19:11 GMT -5 Robman said:

Another Voxel maker, haha.. what are the odds? Should collaborate on the pack together.

I don't use Kextract to extract textures, although you can..

I use M210's Bafed v1.14 (build art file editor) it requires java be installed on your computer but boy is it ever a nice program for working with textures.

Welcome to the forum, Lebowski.

(thus concludes my 300th post )

Congratulatiosn for the 300th post.

Speaking of posting. Are you still banned on steam??

Thinking of making a Deadly Kiss thread over there just to see their reactions...

[Robman]

Feb 10, 2016 21:31:24 GMT -5 Mxrtxn said:

Congratulatiosn for the 300th post.

Speaking of posting. Are you still banned on steam??

Thinking of making a Deadly Kiss thread over there just to see their reactions...

Thanks

- Yeah still banned, got banned for telling people that Hendricks has Deadly Kiss and to ask him about it.
Hendricks didn't like that and Lunick is the mod there so, banned I guess, pretty lame.

[Lebowski]

Importing PNGs to Magica Voxel:

(0) First you need to load the palette. The palette needs to be a png file with all colors in one row. I will attach the palette so you don't need to do the work.

(1) Go to the bottom right and click on the "..."-Button. It's the import button. Then chose you png and open it. (You can drag the PNG as well)

You will see a flat model of your png model.

(2) SW sprites have that violet color as transparency... You can go on the voxel editing tab on the left and click on "Flat"/"F" (button F). Then click on erase. You can erase the violet pixels just like with the flood fill in paint.

(3) Go then on the edit tab (right) under the "scale" button and type (y [dimension]) to scale the image on the y-axis with "dimension" units.
You picture is now a painted block.

(4) From there on I opened paint and made a plan of the side view...

(5) You have multiple ways to go about it... (Since you have the colors and the most viable method is to "cut away" the unnecessary voxels)

You can model the model perfectly and use the "Block" erase tool (according to your plan)
or you can begin to "shave" the parts away, sculpting the model like michaelangelo style :-D

Attachments:

[Lebowski]

Sry for my bad english. It's 4 o'clock in Germany and I'm not a native speaker :-D

Here is the palette file and the paint plan I did

Attachments:

[Lebowski]

This is the progress of the scare crow so far

[Robman]

This is making me want to try this!

[Mxrtxn]

Feb 11, 2016 22:11:27 GMT -5 Lebowski said:

This is the progress of the scare crow so far

Looks beautiful!

Feel free to post your progress on the Voxel pack thread or the DIY how to make voxels thread... (I will add them to the pack and credit you)

I recomend you to use tinypic for posting picutures it is easier to look at them after posting on the threads.

Maybe I will try magica voxel after all.

[Mxrtxn]

Feb 11, 2016 22:50:32 GMT -5 Robman said:

This is making me want to try this!

Go for it!

Seems far more advanced than SLAB6

[Ninjakitty]

Is there a way to copy and paste a voxel into another voxel?

[Mxrtxn]

Jul 30, 2016 20:31:08 GMT -5 Ninjakitty said:

Is there a way to copy and paste a voxel into another voxel?

Not that I am aware of. Maybe Kada may know more about that.

[Ninjakitty]

Jul 30, 2016 21:03:17 GMT -5 Mxrtxn said:

Jul 30, 2016 20:31:08 GMT -5 Ninjakitty said:

Is there a way to copy and paste a voxel into another voxel?

Not that I am aware of. Maybe Kada may know more about that.

Is there a way to turn a voxel into a strip of images?

[Mxrtxn]

Jul 30, 2016 21:19:48 GMT -5 Ninjakitty said:

Jul 30, 2016 21:03:17 GMT -5 Mxrtxn said:

Not that I am aware of. Maybe Kada may know more about that.

Is there a way to turn a voxel into a strip of images?

I think there isn´t. What do you want to do in particular?

[Ninjakitty]

Well, I have a voxel of some caltrops and I want them to be side by side with the middle one a little farther back than the others.
3 caltrops: (but it doesn't have the middle one moved back)
Caltrops1.kvx (6.42 KB)
1 caltrop:
Caltropd.kvx (2.57 KB)

(I also have them in .VOX format just in case that would be helpful)

[Ninjakitty]

I would like it to look a little more like the sprite version, but for now this is my caltrop voxel.
Caltrops2.kvx (6.47 KB)

To put it into the game, paste it into the main folder/directory. Then copy and paste this into the last line of SWVOXFIL.TXT
"2219 152 caltrops2.kvx"

If it doesn't work, then replace 152 with the next available number that hasn't been used in the TXT file
(Of course, you probably already knew how to do all of that )

It looks good in-game, but it might be a little easier to spot than it's sprite version.