
Voxels vs. Polygons - four
http://40westdesigns.com/blog/?p=371
======
drakaal
Voxels make sense in some types of 3D printing. But for almost none of the
reasons the Author described.

The author makes a case that every 3D print manufacture has known since the
day they started. Each "squirt" of print media is a volumetric dot. A Voxel.

The problem is that each brand printer has a different sized "dot". So the
Voxels from one format might not directly correspond to your object. Sure some
printers could print at a lower resolution [larger dot / voxel], but rendering
a pattern from a smaller voxel to a larger is VERY difficult. Errors result in
pieces that don't connect, or detail being removed.

Polygons work like the "How many tennis balls on the bus" and create a
container for the media, but also allow for non spherical output. You can
build a column or an arch from a steady stream of media. You can't do this
with voxels.

Voxels would work better if we were in Zero Gs as well because Printers can't
actually make round dots, they are always deformed by gravity and contact.

------
drawkbox
Voxels have long been a goal in 3d gaming/graphic but no major need since it
changes things quite heavily in how assets are designed (pipeline changes).
But for 3d printing, it makes total sense and might be something that pushes
voxel use over tessellation and other tricks.

------
gosub
Does anybody know if there is an extension of run-length encoding to
volumetric 3d data?

~~~
milliams
In PolyVox (<http://www.volumesoffun.com/polyvox-about/>) we provide RLE as
one of the options for compressing volumes. In future versions we will also
have deflate-type compression as an option. RLE is very good for 'Minecraft-
style' volumes where there are few voxel values and large contiguous areas.
For the mandelbulb (and medical scan output) it will be less effective since
the raw data is smoothly varying

