Are there plans to make voxel models of the enemies?

[RiseAgain]

The in-game props are made with voxels. I wonder if there are plans to make voxel models of the enemies as well.

[Nexxtic]

From an older thread:

Unfortunately, this is extremely unrealistic for Selaco.

Voxel creation is incredibly labor intensive. The only reason it worked for Doom was because enemies only have like 4 animations. This took Cheello over a year to make, and that's with a limited set of sprites.

Our enemies have like 50 animations at 3x the resolution and are way smoother, making it impossible to voxelize without the whole thing looking jarring.

Also performance. Every voxel is it's own model.

It would mean having hundreds if not thousands of models that need to be constantly swapped out in real-time

So even if you, somehow, get 300 artist to work on this, the technical aspect is still disastrous

Do remember that every voxel frame is essentially remade from the ground up. It's why it takes so long lol. There is no rigging system

[H1ND3R4NCE]

Good lord the sheer amount of work that would be. Those voxels that are already in the game were painstakingly handcrafted and they were just static objects. All the lighting and stuff had to be painted in.

Then, there's the sheer amount of animations and ALTERNATE animations for like, just one enemy type. There's idk how many different enemy types in the game already! Every single frame of every single animation would have to built from the ground up and modelled using voxel software, then textured, then have lighting painted over it.

I'm going to say, God I wish that was feasible, and I'm with you I'd love to see it too, but... I don't think it's in the works anytime soon, if ever.

Game looks really good with just sprites though.

[mangaas]

Any chance of getting Prodeus-levels of sprite work? Are the sprites based off of 3D models that you capture, and make into sprites?

[Vivia (shi/hir) ☣]

this just makes me think about how much I want the world to have a mesh-to-voxel rendering pipeline. Square voxels, not cubes. I really wish Voxel Doom allowed flat voxels in hardware mode... ;v;

That said, I can't help wonder where the line would be between that and ... well... Dead Cells' rendering...

[spineduke]

Originally posted by Nexxtic:

From an older thread:

Unfortunately, this is extremely unrealistic for Selaco.

Voxel creation is incredibly labor intensive. The only reason it worked for Doom was because enemies only have like 4 animations. This took Cheello over a year to make, and that's with a limited set of sprites.

Our enemies have like 50 animations at 3x the resolution and are way smoother, making it impossible to voxelize without the whole thing looking jarring.

Also performance. Every voxel is it's own model.

It would mean having hundreds if not thousands of models that need to be constantly swapped out in real-time

So even if you, somehow, get 300 artist to work on this, the technical aspect is still disastrous

Do remember that every voxel frame is essentially remade from the ground up. It's why it takes so long lol. There is no rigging system

What about making voxel corpses only? They stay as sprites until they're downed. No animation involved. Would also make the enemies that are pinned to walls look better. Its just a suggestion cause I found the rotating sprite corpses a bit disorienting compared to how visually on point everything else is. Ultimately I get that its a stylistic choice but exploring options here.

[CarThief]

I wonder... Couldn't they just make voxel-esque models, but instead of being Voxels, they're actual models, that just happen to look like Voxels? Wasn't that standard practice if one wants to make "Voxels" in ZDoom mods, with actual Voxels (which I recall are also supported directly) being considered ineffecient and outdated due to that?

Well... I dunno. Maybe drawing a model "Voxel style" is still labor-intensive, and that's the issue they had with it? Dunno how well voxel soldiers would look anyway.
The "2.5D" aesthetic (sprites in 3D worlds made with lines) worked just fine before for me anyway (like in any Build-Engine/oldschool/Doom-esque FPS, GTA2 and earlier, etc).

Guess it's easier to do sprites for technical reasons, too. From translating (recolouring) pixels or adding to/removing them, to code-based translations (IE make a enemy red-coloured), and just being very modding-friendly.

[Wicked]

If not voxels, 3D models sure would be better for this game (as I know gzdoom supports models). I love the details but the 2D sprites are sure a negative compared to the rest of the game.

[Ribonizer]

Eh, 2D billboards are fine in almost every case. I admit for corpses or flying unit I wish the game would keep them facing the camera thought. That's a Z-doom option but it's not available here.