Voxelization question

[colorlabs]

Hi, I know it's common for unbiased renderers like Octane to "voxelize" the scene. I presume this creates a big 3d grid, with each cell containing the material that exists at that point. Is this correct?

If so, my next question is - if the scene is being voxelized - doesn't this remove some of the limits of polygons? For example, couldn't bump maps & displacement maps become one in the same - displacing geometry at the voxel level instead of the polygon level? So you could have a 2-polygon plane with a rich mountainous landscape extruding from it - without subdividing the plane at all.

Just wondering! Forgive me if I misunderstand voxels!

[radiance]

Hi,

We use a custom voxelisation algorithm that we cannot disperse any information about. I hope you understand.

non-precomputed displacement or heightmaps are cretainly possible, but difficult to implement on a GPU for a 'raytracer' (not for a scanline or zbuffer like a directx game)

we're exploring these features and they will come one day when we're done with the basics.

Yours,
Terrence