Introduction

What's New in Voxel Play 4

3D Terrain Graph

A visual, node-based editor for volumetric terrain generation. 21 nodes including noise generators, math operators, blending, terrain shapers, cave carvers and biome assignment. Water placement at any height, driven entirely by the graph. Multi-core parallelized evaluation with ~5x speedup and column caching with up to ~10x gains for 2D-heavy graphs.

Smooth Terrain & Smooth Voxels

Optional Surface Nets meshing renders terrain as smooth, rounded surfaces instead of hard cubes, driven by the 3D Terrain Graph density field. Per-voxel control lets you mix smooth ground with blocky structures. See Smooth Terrain.

Full PBR Pipeline

Model shader with complete surface map support (metallic, occlusion, height, smoothness). Includes an editor utility for packing separate PBR textures into a single surface map, plus runtime packing via API.

Colored Microvoxels

Microvoxels now support custom palettes enabling detailed decorations that blend into the chunk mesh. Per-quad material routing with primary and secondary texture profiles (Slabs, TopCap layouts).

OBJ Export

Export any ModelDefinition or VoxelDefinition (including microvoxels) to OBJ format with full texture support. Use the Export button in the ModelDefinition inspector or the API:

// Export a ModelDefinition
string path = VoxelPlayOBJExporter.ExportModelToOBJ(modelDef, outputFolder);

// Export a single VoxelDefinition with microvoxels
string path = VoxelPlayOBJExporter.ExportVoxelToOBJ(voxelDef, outputFolder);

Generates .obj + .mtl + PNG textures at original resolution. Compatible with Blender, RapidIcon and other external tools.

Biome System Upgrades

BiomeZone temperature ranges for 3-axis biome selection. Per-biome shore/beach voxel definitions for finer control over coastlines and transitions.

Texture Anti-Tiling

Stochastic sampling breaks up the visible grid repetition of voxel albedo textures on large opaque surfaces, with an optional far-detail crossfade that restores low-frequency variation in the distance. A per-voxel opt-out preserves baked gradients. See Texture Anti-Tiling.

Other Improvements

• Configurable point lights: max bright point lights adjustable from 8 to 128 (default 32)
• ModelPlace: new skipEmptyVoxels parameter to place models inside water without creating air pockets
• MicroVoxels.GenerateThumbnail() for runtime and editor preview rendering
• Per-voxel item drops, configurable pickup radius and cross-voxel width variation (Voxel Behavior & Gameplay)
• New Demo 8: Floating Islands

Demo Scenes

Voxel Play 4 ships with eight demo scenes under Assets/Voxel Play/Demos. Run them to get a feel for the engine:

• Demo 1 - World: the main sandbox, a full procedural world with terrain, sky, water, inventory and first-person voxel interaction.
• Demo 2 - Colorizer: building and painting with colored voxels.
• Demo 3 - Simple Flat Terrain: a minimal flat-terrain setup, a good starting point for custom projects.
• Demo 4 - Third Person: a third-person character controller on a voxel world.
• Demo 5 - HQ Forest: a high-quality scene with dense vegetation and detail.
• Demo 6 - Create Voxel GameObject: creating standalone voxel-based GameObjects at runtime.
• Demo 7 - Smooth Terrain: smooth (surface nets) terrain driven by the 3D Terrain Graph; replicates the Demo 1 Earth terrain.
• Demo 8 - Floating Islands: 3D Terrain Graph with floating islands, smooth terrain and underground ceiling vegetation.

Getting Started

Voxel Play 4 shares most core concepts with Voxel Play 3. If you are new to Voxel Play, start with the Voxel Play 3 documentation to learn the fundamentals (world setup, voxel definitions, controllers, scripting). Then return here for VP4-specific features.

Requirements