Bonsai
A voxel game engine under development for ~10 years. The world and objects in it are represented as SDF (density) fields, and the world generator and editor operate almost entirely on the GPU via a fused three-stage 'ubershader' pipeline: a user-configurable GLSL 'shaping' shader, a fused stage that convolves normals, runs a user-configurable 'decoration' function, and interprets SDF edits compiled from a graph into bytecode, and a final stage that packs occupancy, color, and normal into 32 bits. GPU results are passed back to the CPU for entity/structure spawning callbacks, then chunks are meshed with a fast binary algorithm and uploaded, retaining 16 bits per surface voxel and scaling to world sizes greater than 1B voxels cubed. The engine aims to give users both easy-to-use tools and granular control over the final output, while remaining fast.
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Bonsai
A voxel game engine under development for ~10 years. The world and objects in it are represented as SDF (density) fields, and the world generator and editor operate almost entirely on the GPU via a fused three-stage 'ubershader' pipeline: a user-configurable GLSL 'shaping' shader, a fused stage that convolves normals, runs a user-configurable 'decoration' function, and interprets SDF edits compiled from a graph into bytecode, and a final stage that packs occupancy, color, and normal into 32 bits. GPU results are passed back to the CPU for entity/structure spawning callbacks, then chunks are meshed with a fast binary algorithm and uploaded, retaining 16 bits per surface voxel and scaling to world sizes greater than 1B voxels cubed. The engine aims to give users both easy-to-use tools and granular control over the final output, while remaining fast.
Posted by @jesse__ · Original comment ↗
“I've been working on a voxel game engine called Bonsai for ~10 years.”
Bonsai
A voxel game engine developed over ~10 years and written entirely from scratch, including memory allocators, font rasterizer, collision detection, and the simulation loop, with the C runtime as its only external dependency. Worlds and most things in them are represented as collections of SDFs (density fields), and a world edit is defined by SDF parameters that are rasterized into the voxel grid by a GPU shader, supporting smooth unions with rounded contours. It centers on an editor and is nearing completion of a major rewrite, with plans to build games on top of it in closed-source repos.
Posted by @jesse__ · Original comment ↗
“I've been working on a voxel game engine called Bonsai for ~10 years. Probably the most interesting thing about it at the moment is the editor. The world, and most things in it, are represented as collections of SDFs.”