The first of several Magica Voxel updates is live! I'm excited to announce that the groundwork is laid for supporting interoperability with Magica Voxel .vox files. You can process individual files or entire folders containing magica .vox files, and ATE will pump out versions of the .vox files from top-down for the height, color and normal map channels. This opens up a number of possibilities to use Magica Voxel in creative ways.
You should see "Magica Voxelizer" as a new option in the main Workspace menu!
- You can use Magica Voxel to create 3D parallax (normal mapped) texture patterns. These patterns can then be brought directly into your games, or assembled using the Atlas Tile Editor into useful sprite atlases (rinse repeat)
- You can use Magica Voxel to create sprites by drawing them from the top-down, opening up another way to create 2D art.
Upcoming improvements to this new set of features:
- Take orthographic pictures of vox files for use as isometric tiles, automatically from multiple angles!
- Auto-"bake" 3D orthographic (isometric) sprite effects up to 360 times per voxel for smooth 3-dimensionality. This feature is known as "3d sprites" in GameMaker and other pixel art engines.
- Take pictures of Magica Voxel artwork from multiple angles automatically.
- Convert Voxels to baked Wavefront .obj files, complete with vertex color data, for use in other 3D engines like Unity and Unreal.
- Convert to an ATE-specific format, allowing you to fully rig objects in a special format, that can easily be added to 3D game engines, and then bake out those multi-voxel models complete with advanced character rigs. This special format will allow a variety of additional features, allowing your voxel to take on new shapes not possible with standard Magica Voxel files!
- This ATE-specific format will also allow special baking for 2.5D effects using the "3D png" format. More information forthcoming on this awesome effect!
Once this feature reaches a density of usefulness, I'll create a video tutorial outlining not only the features, but how to use Magica Voxel.
If you've never used Magica Voxel before, you can find out more about this great free project here:
https://ephtracy.github.io/
Please note, an earlier, but good version of Magica Voxel has been added to the Utilities folder.
I also wanted to mention that we've added a Console window to help illustrate the great complexity that is under the hood in ATE: Atlas Tile Editor. During long operations, the console window will show you exactly what ATE is doing!
Please take a moment to respond if this feature is useful to you.
