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GLBVoxels In Gaming, Science And Art
0Article by Yuri Ilyin
Voxels, the volumetric counterpart to pixels, used to be cutting-edge technology in game development, until GPU acceleration arrived. However, in recent years they have seen a certain degree of resurgence, and for a reason.
Comanche, Command & Conquer, Outcast, Crysis, Roblox, No Man's Sky, Minecraft, Roblox, Cloudpunk - what do these games have in common, one may ask. Developed by different studios and spanning totally different genres, they nevertheless share one distinct trait: the use of so-called voxels.
A voxel is essentially a 3D pixel, and the very word is derived from 'pixel'. Pixel is a portmanteau of 'picture element', with 'x' added for easier and nicer pronunciation.
A voxel is, in turn, a 'volumetric picture element'. However, it should be pointed out that a voxel is not identical to a polygon vertex. In fact, it is something entirely different.
A voxel is a representation of a value on a three-dimensional regular grid. It is an image of a three-dimensional space region limited by given sizes, which has its own nodal point coordinates in an accepted coordinate system, its own form, its own state parameter indicating its belonging to some modeled object, and its own properties of the modeled region.
Reference: Minecraft Legends
At a practical level, voxels are great at representing regularly sampled spaces that are non-homogeneously filled, as opposed to vertices-edges-polygons, which efficiently represent surface structures that are empty or homogeneously filled inside.
This is exactly what gave voxels their appeal in the eyes of early 1990s game developers. NovaLogic in particular utilized voxel-based engines for a significant part of its games, including the Comanche and Delta Force series.
Comanche was the first-ever combat flight sim that utilized voxels for rendering the ground surface, enabling a far more intricate and detailed landscape than those in then-contemporary games that used polygon-based surface visualization, while retaining purely software rendering. In 1992, hardware graphics acceleration was yet to become a thing in the mass market.
Reference: Comanche: Maximum Overkill (NovaLogic, 1992)
Landscaping, however, wasn't the only application in gaming. Westwood's cult game 'Blade Runner' (based on the eponymous movie) utilized voxels to render characters and artifacts. This, by the way, was among the reasons why its 2022 re-release proved problematic.
Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun, Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, and Command & Conquer: Yuri's Revenge utilized voxels to render most vehicles.
Even classic 3D first-person shooters Shadow Warrior and Blood, while based on the 2.5D Build engine, utilize voxels as an option for items and some scenery.
Way more recently, fan-made versions of Doom and Doom II enable rendering monsters and artifacts as voxel-based 3D objects.
But those are the old games. Voxels, however, don't go away as new technology and new gaming titles arrive. Roblox and Minecraft are entirely voxel-based, though their graphics are extremely stylized. At the more realistic side sit No Man's Sky (released in 2016, updated continuously) and Space Engineers (2019).
No Man's Sky utilizes voxels for rendering deformable terrain, whereas in Space Engineers, voxels are the essential substance for all environments, including artificial structures.
Beyond 2000
By the end of the 1990s, specialized hardware, the GPU, took computer graphics to a different level. The capabilities of accelerated 3D graphics made voxels, if not outright obsolete, far less convenient for developers. A GPU enables offloading graphics routines from the CPU, leaving space for physics, gameplay, and artificial intelligence. Both performance and artistic considerations were therefore not in voxels' favor.
It took Minecraft to bring them back into focus. The somewhat surprising cult following it attained led to a resurgence of voxel use in gaming.
And not only in gaming, actually.
Outside of Gaming
Voxels have a wide use in science and medicine. Computed tomography scans, MRI, and ultrasound are often represented in voxels for obvious reasons. There is even a special algorithm developed in the 1980s and 1990s called Marching Cubes. It is used for extracting a polygonal mesh of an isosurface from a three-dimensional discrete scalar field. The algorithm divides the input volume into a discrete set of cubes.
"By assuming linear reconstruction filtering, each cube, which contains a piece of a given isosurface, can easily be identified because the sample values at the cube vertices must span the target isosurface value. For each cube containing a section of the isosurface, a triangular mesh that approximates the behavior of the trilinear interpolant in the interior cube is generated," Wikipedia reads.
The resolution may be extremely high, within the micrometer range per voxel, which is exactly what is needed.
Voxels are also used in geology, urban planning, and anywhere there is a need to measure the volumetric environment.
In non-gaming 3D graphics, voxels have quite a few applications, from purely technical to purely aesthetic.
For example, modern 3D suites have voxel-based capabilities for combining geometry. Essentially, it involves converting any models from polygons to voxels, merging voxelized objects seamlessly, and then converting the results back into a standard polygon-based mesh.
Maya 2026 has a Volume mode for that:
Blender has similar tools in the form of Remesh modifier:
Requires caution, though, as when the resolution gets too high, RAM consumption can get out of hand.
Voxels also present a very elegant alternative to 'real' physics simulation. Maya Bitfrost offers one, and there is a paid add-on for Blender called FLIP Fluids, relatively costly but universally acclaimed for a good reason.
Then, just as with pixel art, there is a strong streak of voxel artists. Some are truly outstanding. One may spend hours simply studying the detail in the renders made by Mari 'MadMaraca', an Istanbul, Turkey-based voxel artist who already has serious global recognition.
Some of her works have been featured in many major exhibitions and on public billboards in the largest cities worldwide. At times, they look more like realistic renders.
Pro et Contra
Perhaps the primary issue with voxels is the amount of storage they require compared to polygon-based graphics. It is an intrinsic problem that simply exists. Unless some miraculous data compression technique emerges, it is not going to be solved.
For now, hybrid approaches are the way to go unless stylized voxel graphics are the goal per se.
Another issue is that graphics acceleration hardware is optimized for dealing with polygons, not voxels. This results in exuberant and exorbitant requirements for working with highly detailed voxel scenes.
So for now, hybrid techniques are the best and well-tested way to go, and for more insights into voxel workflows and 3D graphics tips, subscribe to the RenderHub blog.
