Thanks for checking out Cubiquity :-)
tharealjohn wrote:
1. What support is there for a "large" volume sizes? It seems there is no fixed limit to the size, but in my evaluation so far, 256^3 seems to be about as large as I can go. This is not large enough for even a single level of terrain for what I have in mind. Something closer to 1024x256x1024 would be getting closer. I tried this, but it takes way too long to load to be viable. I noticed that PolyVox has a "LargeVolume", will Cubiquity be receiving that any time soon? I don't really need "infinite" terrain, but something larger that could be more immersive would be wonderful.
1a. To that note, is there any paging of volume chunks/loading/unloading etc?
Indeed, I'll admit that the size of the volumes is a little limited at the moment. I think load times can be improved be generating the volume offline and writing it to a .vdb file, as this saves you needing to go across the C#->native interface millions of times when loading the volume. We should probably add an example of how to do this.
The there is the memory usage - it's a little high but I believe that mostly a result of the vertex data rather than the volume data. We will implement the usual tricks like pooling etc as well as slimming down the size of the vertices. Paging of the volume data is indeed implemented though it isn't tested much a the aforementioned issues are the current bottleneck.
So if larger volumes are what you want then you might want to hold off a bit. I've not no real doubts that we can make a lot of improvements here though so keep an eye on it.
tharealjohn wrote:
2. The procedural ColoredCubesVolume mentioned in one of the early status videos is now gone in favor of a procedural TerrainVolume example. Is there any place I can find the procedural example for ColoredCubesVolume?
No, but it seems several people want it back! The maze example shows how you can generate a colored cubes volume through code so that's a good place to start. See my comment here:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/184599 ... ost1606047tharealjohn wrote:
3. Can smooth shading be done on the ColoredCubesVolume? I found info in another thread for reason why this is not done, do to terrain deconstruction not being optimal, etc. I don't plan on incorporating a lot of destruction, so is this doable? Can the shader be changed? It seems ColoredCubesVolumes (by name) is meant to have this dithering, so that leads me to #4.
So by smooth shading you mean turning the dithering off? Another popular request :-) You would have to edit the shader line here:
Code:
float noise = positionBasedNoise(float4(IN.volumePos.xyz, 0.1));
You can just change '0.1' to zero - obviously we should expose this parameter via a slider. You can indeed swap the whole material but in the case of colored cubes I don't think you will want to (there are not many ways to render these) but I think changing the whole material will be useful in the terrain volume case.
tharealjohn wrote:
4. Can a custom volume type be created when I might want some custom behavior, for example the things mentioned in #3?
You can't create your own volume class, but perhaps you don't need to given the answer to question 3?
tharealjohn wrote:
5. Can the Voxel size be changed? I have not looked too hard at this, but I am assuming it is a 1x1x1 unit in Unity. Can this be scaled to 0.5x0.5x0.5 units?
Yes, you can just scale the volume like any other Unity GameObject (but setting the transform component). You can do this in code or through the editor gizmos.
tharealjohn wrote:
6. To really make a game with this, I need larger sizes and more customization with the Volumes. Whats the roadmap for Cubiquity in relation to this?
Nothing that you ask has really surprised me, and I think you'll see a lot of the improvements you want in the coming months. The volume size is the biggest issue for you here. I can't say for sure how large it will go but I'm confident we'll see some significant improvements.
