The following diagram illustrates a typical workflow for a Voxel Farm application and which products are needed for each stage

Voxel Farm Workflow

Frequently Asked Questions

The Binary SDK is the bare minimum required to make a standalone application, like a game or an architectural visualization app. Here the Voxel Farm middleware is pre-built into Visual Studio 2015 C++ binary libraries, which can be used from the standalone application project. These precompiled libraries are Windows only. You will be able to extend and modify the behavior of the provided components using the APIs defined in the SDK, however, you won't be able to modify the behavior of the core components in ways not supported by the API. You will not be able to inspect how these core components work and understand the low level aspects of the Voxel Farm middleware.

The Source Code SDK offers partial source code. While it comprises exactly the same middleware components as the Binary SDK, the key difference is that the C++ source code for the libraries is included. This allows to compile the SDK for other platforms than Windows: MacOS, Linux, iOS and Android. Also, if you choose to bypass the provided APIs you can modify the code in any way you desire.

The Full Source Code option puts you in control of the technology. At this point you won't be dependant on precompiled, preset Voxel Farm tools and services. Full Source Code comprises not only the runtime middleware in the SDK, but the whole toolchain, from the tools used to produce bundles for Unity and Unreal Engine, procedural generation seeds, voxel instances, Prefab/LSystem compilation, to the entire Voxel Studio application with its advanced set of voxel edition tools. If interested in deploying server side systems, this option includes server-side middleware and database components used in cloud support and online collaboration tools. This option also includes streaming to lightweight WebGL clients, Point Cloud Voxelization, Volume Difference computation and visualization. You get the option to license select components and the license agreement can be drafted to suit your needs.

Voxel Studio, Voxel Farm INDIE, and Voxel Farm PRO are individual licenses. This means every person using the product in your organization must have a valid license. The Voxel Farm TRIPLE-A license, however, is organization-wide. Once your organization owns a TRIPLE-A license, all members will have the right to use the product.

The Voxel Studio tool allows creating procedural and voxel content. At any time, you may choose to export a scene as an FBX model. This FBX can be loaded into any application that supports them, including Unity, UE4, 3ds max and Maya. FBX models, however, are static. Voxel Farm allows having adaptive scenes, where more detail is loaded or computed on-the-fly based on the camera position. In that sense, a single Voxel Studio project contains almost infinite possible scenes. Unity, UE4, Maya, etc. do no offer a file standard that can do something like that. To be able to position the camera anywhere you want and have the scene resolution adapt to that, you will need the Voxel Farm runtime running in these applications (Unity plugin, 3ds max plugin, etc.) The Voxel Farm runtime is included only in INDIE and PRO licenses. For that reason, if you are looking to have dynamic content on these third-party applications, you will need INDIE or PRO.

Yes, it is possible to upgrade your license. Any one-time license fee you may have paid so far will be deducted from the new license fee. You can upgrade from this link.

Voxel Farm's plugin uses a non-managed DLL. For that reason, the out-of-the-box plugin runs only on Windows OS. The PRO license includes source code, so it is possible to rebuild the plugin for other platforms that support application extensions in the form of DLLs like MacOS and Linux. Android and iOS are not supported at the moment.

Yes, both engines can be combined since Voxel Farm is natively written in C++. We included an example project of how this can be done. We have just released a UE4 plugin to make starting new projects simpler and quicker.

- Windows OS (7, 8 or 10)
- Intel i5 CPU or better
- Dedicated Nvidia or AMD/ATI GPU (Integrated Intel graphics will not work)
- 600MB hard drive space.

One common problem is that some systems have dual graphics processors: one dedicated GPU (Nvidia or AMD) and also integrated Intel graphics. The OS allows you to choose which one will run an application. Voxel Studio will not render on integrated Intel cards due to their incomplete feature set, so in that case, you need to make sure you are using the dedicated GPU in your system for Voxel Studio.

That largely depends on your application design. Aspects like voxel size, camera speed and information density in your content will determine your minimum requirements.

Voxel Farm can handle any form of volumetric content. You will have the ability to code any custom object you want. We also include some default generator objects for ver large flat terrains. We do not have a planet component at the moment, this logic you would need to add by yourself. Once voxels for your object are generated the engine pipeline takes over and allows you and the players of your game modify/destroy the world in real time. The engine will also perform the voxel to mesh conversion and other tasks involved in rendering.

It is possible to create terrains with Voxel Farm that span for hundreds of thousands kilometers. Voxel Farm uses double floating point precision. While rendering in Unity which is only single float precision you will need to update a reference frame every once in a while.

You can setup your scene to it is amenable for an isometric or closely-isometric view. You can configure how many levels of detail will be included in your scene, also, how large the highest resolution LOD area will be. You can have generation restricted to the potentially visible set if you have good control of your camera. Depending on your game mechanics you may also gain some advantage from how deep the terrain generation goes. If your units are allowed to dig only a few hundred meters deep this could be exploited.