Introduction

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Voxel Play 4 · Start Here

Voxel Play 4 is the next generation of the Voxel Play voxel engine for Unity. It builds on everything in Voxel Play 3 and adds powerful new systems for terrain generation, material authoring and model export.

Early Access

Voxel Play 4 is currently in early access. Features are stable but the API may still evolve. Not recommended for production use yet. Existing Voxel Play 3 documentation applies to shared features - this section covers VP4-specific additions only.

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.

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.

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
  • New Demo 8: Floating Islands

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

RequirementDetails
Unity version2022.3 LTS or later
Render pipelineUniversal Render Pipeline (URP)
PlatformsWindows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, WebGL, VR
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