Its like 'Who Killed the Eletric Car?' only its 'Who Killed Organic Looking 3d?'

I been having a sort of 'off' period in my developements, and when this happens I look to researching other engines and methods of producing the visuals to a game. Something that despite what some say, can make or break a game.

Now realism is overrated in games and overstated at its worst, now most of these links(except for the last) look pretty dated but do hold the potential for creating some retro awesomeness.

For those who do not know of Voxels, its essentialy creating the 3d world out of 3d pixel cubes. The benefits of this is that all objects and the world itself are infinitaly deformable. Another benefit is that the past systems that once hindered this technology(with lack of video card support) is gradually fading as we have beefier systems that can handle the software rendering load that voxels demand.

The nice thing is that there are tools out there to morph your polys to voxels as well. From what I've found its only 3ds files. Importing the model will also import its texture map, and since the very model will now be made of 'pixels', the texture image is basicly 'burned' onto the surface, creating less visual deformities. There is a sprite to voxel out there, but I don't think it has the ability to export anything, or save for that matter.

Do I plan on using it? Well I'll need to brush up on my much neglected C knowlodge, although GM has help keep it somewhat fresh. I've been debating the possibilities, espicially for mobil tecnology as I've found that someone also made a voxel game for the Nintendo DS.

If anything though, just checking out the last link you can see that voxel technology has a future to eventually replace polygons entirely, its just that no one in the industry wants to touch it…or they just use it for heightmaps. This I found is rare, but becoming more common in some recent games.

Another nice plus is that the majority of voxel engines are open source, so if you have the skill you can probably use it to make something rather cool. Simply check out Voxelstein 3d, a sort of reinvention of the old Wolfenstein 3d. Just so you won't get stuck in the begining, recall I mentioned how enviroments are fully destructable, then you'll figure out how to escape the first 'room'.

Voxlap

Voxelstien 3d

DS Voxel

CUDA Voxel Engine

And thats all I have for you.