Creating Voxel maps

This guide will teach you how to set up and create voxel maps either with voxel hands or SE Toolbox

Introduction

What the guide about

In this guide I will show you how to create voxel maps and add them to your planets,

If your new to modding sbc files in general I recommend going though my other guide on making sbc mods first https://github.com/THDigi/SE-ModScript-Examples/wiki/Quick-Intro-to-Space-Engineers-Modding

What are voxel maps

Voxel maps are stored voxel data that can be used to spawn in things like boulders on planets or asteroids in spaces

Setting up the mod folder

Creating the mod folders

To begin with goto "AppData\Roaming\SpaceEngineers\Mods" and create a new folder here and call it what ever your mod name is then in that folder create two new folders one called "Data" and another called "VoxelMaps" .

Getting the SBC files for all voxel maps

goto "SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\SpaceEngineers\Content\Data" and copy the "VoxelMapStorages.sbc" and paste that into your mods "Data" folder.

Setting up a Build world

In the game create a new game goto custom game and select empty world and call it what ever.

Then goto advanced settings annd be sure to set your asteroid amount to none and voxel hands are enabled then click ok and start


Now you can decide the method in which you make the voxels either by using voxel hands or using models and SE toolbox

Creating with Voxel Hands

Advanced Profiling

to make life easier creating voxel maps for planets i would recommend seting up SE advanced profiling which you can see how to get acesse here https://spaceengineers.wiki.gg/wiki/Scripting/Profiling_the_Game since this give us a way to see which orientation and where to start building from on the voxel map

Spawning in a empty voxel map

Once you loaded into your build world press Shift+f10 and select empty voxel map and set the voxel size to how big you want it to be for this example i'll be setting it to 128m and then once you select the size just click to place it in the world now to be able to see it better this is where Advanced profiling comes in handy press alt+f12 then tick Debug draw and select "VRage" and then "Asteroids" and hold alt and select "Draw voxelmap AABB"
Then you can unselect "Asteroids" and press "esc" to return to the game and see a white box with an axis in the middle this is your voxel map.

Now fly up to the axis in the middle of the box this is where it will spawn on planets and the green axis is facing up so if you want to make a voxel that goes on planets and faces towards to sky you want to use this as your now.

Now that you understand that you can go into your G meny and select your voxel hands you can press K to change stuff like shape and [, ] to change materials and now you just start placing down voxels to make what you want

for example i made a werid thing to come out of the planet

once done make sure to save your world and then goto "AppData\Roaming\SpaceEngineers\Saves" goto your build world folder and in there your find a ProcAsteroid ".vx2" this will be your voxel map next copy that and past it into your mod VoxelMaps folder and you can rename it to what ever you want it to be.

Creating with models and SE Toolbox

you need a obj object of what you want can make this in any moding softwear like blender once you have that you want to download and run SE toolbox which you can get from here "https://github.com/mmusu3/SEToolbox/releases" once loaded click file open and select your build world
Now go to import "3D model for Asteroid" and then open you .obj now in SE toolbox the direction that faces up on planets is the Z axis which the blue one and not the green one like it is in SE so ussaly if im importing from blender i have to roll it -90 to be facing the right direction up once done hit create and then goto file and hit save.

Now load up that world in SE to see if the model there as you want it and if every thing okay goto "AppData\Roaming\SpaceEngineers\Saves" goto your build world folder and in there your find the ".vx2" that be named the same as your model this will be your voxel map next copy that and past it into your mod VoxelMaps folder and you can rename it to what ever you want it to be.

Creating your VoxelMapStorages.sbc entries

Open your VoxelMapStorages.sbc with a softwear like notpad++ or visual studios your going to want to delte all but one the entry's so your left with just left with one and then your going to want to change the SubtypeId to be somthing unique that no other mod will use and then change the StorageFile to be the location of the .vx2 file for that voxel map and so you should have something that looks like this.

Then if you have multiple entry you just want to copy from "<Voxelmapstorage> to "</Voxelmapstorage>" and then past that below the other entry and then give that another unique SubtypeId and change the StorageFile location to the next model so you have somthing like this
Then just save that sbc and your done in that file.

Adding them to your planets

Disclaimer

This part the guide expects you to know how todo set up the basics of planet modding and so only be focusing on doing changes in EnvironmentItems.

EnvironmentItems

Under EnvironmentItems in the item under "<Items> you going to want to put

<Item TypeId="MyObjectBuilder_VoxelMapStorageDefinition" GroupId="Toolbox Example" ModifierId="ExampleVoxelChange" Density="0.002" />

GroupId = The subtypeid you set in the VoxelmapStorages.sbc
ModifierId = this is the Subtype of your VoxelMaterialChanges.sbc
Density = is how often the voxel map to spawn on the planet

VoxelMaterialChanges.sbc

This is if you want to change a material on your voxelmap for example if you want it to change from stone to snow in a different area or you want to have multiple different ores but don't want to make multiple voxel maps.

Subtype = something unique i ussaly call it somthing simular to where this change will take place
chance = the chance of this change happening
Change = from is what ever that material is in the voxel map is and then To is what you want that to be

Example Mod

Here below is an example mod that i made while doing this guide so if you are stuck anywhere hopefully this can help once subscribed goto SteamLibrary\steamapps\workshop\content\2975903309

Modlink: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2975903309