Author | Lightnews

Daniel Schroeder @dan5sch.bsky.social · 3d

I've been doing more research and thinking about this recently -- the merits of porting this into an engine vs. building out the engine features I'd need for a game myself. I'm increasingly favoring the path of doing a custom engine, for a range of reasons, but the jury's still out

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Daniel Schroeder @dan5sch.bsky.social · Aug 19

Ok, this is relatable

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Daniel Schroeder @dan5sch.bsky.social · Aug 19

Currently, all the light sources in my small-voxel renderer are dynamic (though without inter-object shadows). I didn't demo this in the new YouTube video, but somebody asked about it in the comments, so here's a quick example.

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Daniel Schroeder @dan5sch.bsky.social · Aug 18

Thanks! Though needless to say, I'm making some very particular tradeoffs to get there, compared to a general-purpose modern renderer...

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Daniel Schroeder @dan5sch.bsky.social · Aug 18

Thanks! And yeah, shadows are something I'll be thinking about in the future. I mention this briefly in the blog post in the thread

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Daniel Schroeder @dan5sch.bsky.social · Aug 18

Thank you!

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Daniel Schroeder @dan5sch.bsky.social · Aug 18

For more information on what I've been up to and where I plan to go with this project from here, or to get in touch, see this blog post: blog.danielschroeder.me/blog/voxel-r...

Voxel Renderer — Handling Objects and Animated Characters

Introduction Somehow, it's been over a year since I wrote the first two posts introducing my small-voxel renderer, inspired by the look of classic 90's 3D games. These posts and the video received mor...

blog.danielschroeder.me

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Daniel Schroeder @dan5sch.bsky.social · Aug 18

I've made a new trailer-style video to show where the project stands today. Make sure to watch to the end... www.youtube.com/watch?v=bN9n...

Leveling up my small-voxel renderer

YouTube video by Daniel Schroeder

www.youtube.com

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Daniel Schroeder @dan5sch.bsky.social · Aug 18

To add those elements, I now support voxelizing detailed triangle meshes, producing voxel meshes that match the aesthetic of the environment geometry. The voxelizer tolerates off-the-shelf assets and produces good results across foliage, characters, and hard-surface meshes.

Top: three voxel meshes depicting different kinds of geometry you'd find in a game. Bottom: the triangle-mesh geometry I voxelized to create these meshes, visualized using surface normals to highlight geometric detailing.

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Daniel Schroeder @dan5sch.bsky.social · Aug 18

In last year's work, I modeled the environment as low-poly geometry and used textures with displacement maps to apply fine voxel detailing. This workflow is efficient for structures and terrain, but it can't handle things like foliage, small props, or animated characters.

Left: low-poly textured geometry. Right: the same geometry with small voxel detailing applied using displacement.

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Daniel Schroeder @dan5sch.bsky.social · Aug 18

Here's an update on my small-voxel renderer, inspired by the look of games like Doom and Quake. The work I shared last year focused on handling simpler environment geometry. Since then, I've greatly expanded the scope of what I can depict in this art style. More info in thread.

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Daniel Schroeder @dan5sch.bsky.social · Aug 18

The pain is real. I had a mouse that developed this a few days before a deadline when I didn't have time to go buy a replacement. Much annoyance ensued

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Daniel Schroeder @dan5sch.bsky.social · Aug 1

He, to be very clear, meaning me

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Daniel Schroeder @dan5sch.bsky.social · Aug 1

Having no gameplay beyond being able to walk around? Nothing wrong with that, he says, self-servingly

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Daniel Schroeder @dan5sch.bsky.social · Jul 24

Left feels practical, right has more personality IMO. Right feels like the posture of someone who feels threatened

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Daniel Schroeder @dan5sch.bsky.social · Jun 26

I ran into this too recently, though not as a user. I was researching the APIs and their differences, and discovered that the early bug reports on the "gpuweb" spec repo are a great resource for discovering these differences.

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Daniel Schroeder @dan5sch.bsky.social · May 23

I experimented with the same trick recently. Very useful when you're lighting an area with non-shadow-casting lights and don't want to use a huge number of them. Being able to configure *per light* what fraction of the light is ambient is also useful

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Daniel Schroeder @dan5sch.bsky.social · Apr 12

Only took a quick look so far, but the interactive demos are very cool!

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Daniel Schroeder @dan5sch.bsky.social · Mar 30

When I'm looking for info about how older engines solved problems, I try to find old modding community websites that are still active. There's usually somebody who has compiled this kind of information, or links to it

Daniel Schroeder @dan5sch.bsky.social · Mar 26

Getting there...

Daniel Schroeder @dan5sch.bsky.social · Mar 26

I took care of that days ago but my suitcase is still half packed. Results inconclusive.

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Daniel Schroeder @dan5sch.bsky.social · Mar 25

OK, now this is super intriguing. Will have to look into your plugin...

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Daniel Schroeder @dan5sch.bsky.social · Mar 25

Yikes. Thankfully I haven't met many people who talk this way. That said, I bet a lot of us have made the mistake of getting carried away and talking for too long about something we're working on that we care about. I sure have

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Daniel Schroeder @dan5sch.bsky.social · Mar 25

Heck, I didn't even get sick and I feel destroyed. It's a draining week!

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Daniel Schroeder @dan5sch.bsky.social · Mar 22

That's a wrap for GDC 2025! Thank you to everyone who met with me this week -- I got to have a lot of interesting conversations this year

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