Conversion methods from voxels to elements

[Sphax]

Cubik Studio has 3 methods to convert voxels to elements, each one has there own uses, pros and cons:


1) 1 element per voxel / cubes => This method creates one cube per voxel (3D pixel).

Pros:
- Each color generates one texture in Material Manager (textures list). It's very handy to use if you want to create a model from a Schematic or NBT file and want to apply real textures instead of each color.

Cons:
- The result generally contains many elements and so many polygons.

Tip: If your goal is to export to OBJ, you might want one unique texture for your model instead of several ones. You can do so by compiling all textures to one unique texture atlas by clicking in Textures list > ... > Create atlas, keep textures


2) 1 element per color / palette => This method creates one element per color in a cubic zone.

Pros:
- The generated (unique) texture is very tiny and so the model uses few RAM.

Cons:
- That can generate many elements if the model has many different colors (especially if noise is used).


3) 1 element per surface / atlas => This method creates one element per cubic surface.

Pros:
- This is generally the method with fewest elements and so few polygons.

Cons:
- Can create many elements if the model has very few flat surfaces.
- Can create a unique huge texture depending on model resolution and complexity and so be heavy in RAM, or could crash the game for some users (if their graphic card can't handle 2048x or bigger textures).

Note that this method generates an atlas. If there are lots of elements or if your elements are tiny, you might see glitches around borders. You can avoid that in advanced preferences by enabling padding. This will generate a bigger atlas and could take longer to proceed.




Tip1: After conversion, always be sure to click the Optimize button. Many faces and potentially elements could be removed. That's very important to try getting as few polygons as possible. After optimization, you can also try to remove some by hand.

Tip2: After optimization (automatic or by hand), you can try to (re)generate the texture atlas with the Textures list (Material Manager) > ... > Create atlas, keep textures. If many element faces have been removes, the atlas might be smaller.