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Voxel Playground Revamped With New Features

1y
#1
Voxel Playground, the companion app to Voxel Paint that you can use to stage and test your .vpp creations, has been moved to a new domain (https://playground.voxelpaint.online/) and revamped with a new interface overhaul and new features, with several more features to come in the not-too-distant future! Let's take a look at what is new with Voxel Playground.


The most obvious change is the URL move off of Ape Web Apps and on to the new voxelpaint.online domain, which will soon be hosting the core Voxel Paint app as well. I think that long term this change will be better for both products, and it more accurately highlights how they are a part of the same overall package.

Voxel Playground is now completely installable as a PWA, and doing so will allow the app to become a file handler for the new Voxel Playground Project (*.vpg) file type. Since there is now a file type and file association, that obviously points to the next feature of the app, which is that you can now save and load your projects.

Importing content is now super easy in Voxel Playground. You can either click on the (+) icon on the left sidebar, or you can simply drag/drop your voxel files right into the Voxel Playground window. Voxel Playground supports .vpp, .vox and image files.

The next new feature to Voxel Playground is scenes. The Scenes button is to the right of the File menu icon on the top toolbar. A project can now contain multiple scenes that all share from the same asset pool. You can rename, delete and even clone scenes. This makes it easier to create a larger project full of scenes that share the same general theme.

The last new feature is the new Video Recorder! In addition to the regular camera tool that was already included with Voxel Playground, you can now record a video of your scene and export it to your filesystem. This is a cool feature to play with right now, but it will be even cooler in the future.

Coming Soon

I mentioned that there is more to come in the future for Voxel Playground. As you may know, My Colony 2 will be coming to Steam later this year, and one of the requirements for Steam distribution is to have one or more promo videos for your game. I have a cool idea for a My Colony 2 trailer that begins with a small cinematic scene before showing off some gameplay footage, and Voxel Playground is the tool that I am building up in order to be able to make that video.

To that end, the next updates are going to add some key features that will be necessary to make cool voxel based short films. First, you need to be able to edit the terrain, both color/texture and elevation, so Voxel Playground will be getting a proper terrain editor. Next, there needs to be some basic scripting tools for animating your voxel objects. You also need to be able to edit/manipulate objects after they have been placed in a scene. Also, Voxel Playground should play all of the effects that you can add to Voxel Models in Voxel Paint (such as the smoke effect, etc).

So that is what is new and what is coming soon to Voxel Playground. It has been bumped up a bit on the priority list so that I can get that promo video made for MC2 in time for steam, but with the changes coming due to that, it should be a really need tool for creating neat little independent voxel based videos. So check it out, let me know what you thing, give suggestions if you have anything you want to see added, and stay tuned for more!

https://playground.voxelpaint.online/

#voxelplayground
Owner of Ape Apps, LLC
1y
#2
If possible, could Voxel Playground have a way to connect to MC2 and render all the objects in the loaded chunks of a save file? I think it would go a long way towards making something like a trailer.
A bit unrelated, but a while back, @Luker124 had an idea for "doorblocks" as a visual effect in MC2.
I think it could be implemented in the form of an abstract key-value storage for voxels, which would be read by the game engine and rendered accordingly.
I'm looking forward to what comes next for Voxel Playground / Paint!
Check out Spamlandian Broadcasting Service (formerly STV) at this site!
1y
#3
I could probably add a way to import a scene from an MC2 save.

As for the doorblock thing, I do not exactly understand the concept, but if you or @Luker124 want to give a better explanation of that it is and how it would work, I can look into it!
Owner of Ape Apps, LLC
1y
#4
@bastecklein I believe doorblocks were meant to be specific voxels within a model that colonists would pathfind to and from in order to make it look like they were going in and out of buildings. The original thread was at https://www.ape-apps.com/viewpage.php?p=40744
Check out Spamlandian Broadcasting Service (formerly STV) at this site!
Welcome
Ape Apps, LLC is an independent software development company founded in 2010 by Brandon Stecklein. Over the years, Ape Apps has published over 400 apps and games across various platforms. You can get in touch with Brandon on Twitter or by leaving a post on his wall @bastecklein
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