Voxel Shape Generator
Use this tool to make spheres for Minecraft and the like. Idea originally stolen from Neil Fraser, but more recently inspired by friendly competition with my friend Jesse, whose Circle Generator seems a little two dimensional.
Update (2/8/2015) Attempting to make this a little more bad-ass. See here
Update (3/14/2013) GUI makeover- I'm attempting to speed everything up by only rendering tables when you're ready for them. I also added isometric modeling (with culling this time) in canvas that should let you preview the shape.
Update (3/12/2013) You can now draw your own shape with Bezier curves! Adding SVG rendering methods for speed, although it's not as easy to read as tables. I'll try to make that work a bit better.
Update (9/30/2012) The script has been updated to generate cones and domes. If you have any suggestions, add them to the comments.
thank you so much! UR AWESOME <3
When altering thickness in the new editor, it is applied differently to the top and bottom, than to the sides. That said, the main tool was extremely useful, thanks!
Yeah- it currently generates a rotation around the center axis. which means the side is going to be the same width no matter what. I'm going to try to add surface normals to determine the size of the wall. That should fix that issue.
Is there a way to have the tool generate a spreadsheet or "map" showing the row and column of the blocks that have something in them? I currently am just taking the picture and manually creating a spreadsheet with lists of where blocks go.
for example layer 1 of my dome has blocks at row 1 columns 68-98 so for my spreadsheet line 1 reads 68-98. then the filled blocks for line 2 etc.
I think I'm going to abandon the idea of one off formats / downloadables. However! I'm working on an update (see my link in the update text above)- If I built in a decent javascript api, you could write your own userscripts for stuff like that. Would you be interested?
The Bézier curve GUI used to configure the bezier curves isn't supported by mobile plz fix
hey it would be awesome if you added a row of numbers to the top and bottom and sides to help you know how many blocks long or wide somthing is
hey um i come across some kind of glitch or somthing where everything in the flat map is streched out height wise. so one block is four times as tall as it is wide is there any fix or is this a glitch
I see the same issue. It appears to occur only with sufficiently large objects. For instance, a diameter 13 sphere does not have this issues, but a diameter 319 sphere does.
The distortion appears to begin around diameter 50 and above. If I could make a recommendation, it would be to force the height to always match the width, or force the height and width to static values. Right now, it appears the width is scaling down, and the height is remaining fixed.
Wow! I didn't realize how easy it is to make such complex models :3 Thank u creator!
Im having a little trouble understanding the different colors on the tables (light blue, blue and grey) Anyone care to explain? Maybe I should get some sleep :3
Grey - There were blocks here on the layer below Blue - There are blocks here on this layer Dark blue - There will be blocks here on the layer above :)
Actually, dark blue is, 'Place a block on top of the one below.'
I totally agree! It's so confusing!
This is brilliant. It even works properly on my low end Nokia Lumia. Will now be able to make some pretty builds instead of square or rectangle shaped builds. Thanks.
Is there a way to make the cone become more steeper angle curve at the top then the bottom. You know, make it near vertical at top and more horizontal at the bottom, like a wizard's hat.
also would be nice to add into this tool the different shapes that Landmark can pull off.
Play around with the bezier curve tool rotated along the z axis. You should be able to get that from this.
Man, everybody wants eggs for some reason. Is this an Illuminati thing?
Anyways, why don't hollow domes have a ceiling? I'm just kinda going off on a limb for my underwater bio-dome ceiling.
The incredible..... craftable egg lol
Found a bug. If you uncheck preview, then turn it back on, it won't display anything.
I think we should be able to reshape the domes and cones as well...
Disregard lol. I wanted to say thanks for making this it's helped me out a lot and I absolutely love it. I also think an egg shape generator would be awesome
Never mind i found a way to make the egg useing your dome gen. and your sphere gen. it works like a charm. I simply did a 30x30x30 sphere up until level 16 then did a 30x30x30 dome on top.
Is it possible to make an hour glass shape with the x y z axis curve?? im trying to make cooling towers for a nuclear complex I am constructing. i tried using a cone with 61w61d25h. At 25 I started to go straight up 5 blocks, then taper back out, it just didnt seem to have a good flow to it and had a non symetrical look. any ideas?
i am trying to make a circle and it keeps showing up as an oval in the pattern, the 3D image is fine
It's only showing up as an oval because the "blocks" in the diagram are rectangles. If you build it, it should still be a circle.
i love this tool and the circle one but i need one that does a semi circle and a an oval, that also has a halved part
Or you could just, you know, make half a sphere.
Could you add a function that will number the blocks on the edge for making larger shapes a bit easier.
I have been making things as big a 300 blocks in diameter and getting even one block misplaced can ruin the entire thing, forcing me to remake it if I cant find the error.
Open sourced (if already, link)?
Hey, maybe that's a complicated feature, but I'd love to see a "Thickness" option for hollow shapes, I'm using this program to design fortresses in Dwarf Fortress, but I have to manually add some wiggle room for my dwarves.
That's a pretty cool idea. Should be pretty simple!
There seems the be a error in the representation of the layers.
when I picked a cone shape and resized it to 28x40x28 Then the 3th layer doesnt match the previous layer.
It's not supposed to match the previous layer. Because the radius cannot be described by an integer when using a continuous scale, the slight variations will make different results for different layers. You get a more jagged, but more accurate shape this way.
You know, this hasnt been updated for a year. You can stop posting ideas for new functions i think
Nah, keep sending them! I haven't had a lot of time to do anything on this, but I'm still here!
Can you make an option for turning the rectangles into squares? makes it awkward to count or see the mid-point of a quarter, or maybe instead you can make the blocks that are in the middle of the circumference within a quadrant?
I think it may be an idea to allow us to mark blocks on the grid as a certain colour, this means we could mark which parts of the layer we have built and would stop any confusion e.g clicking on one of the blocks would turn it green, meaning I would know I'd placed those blocks.
You could just build it a layer at a time displaying the layers using the layer build buttons in the top right corner.
Hi! I love this tool. Using it for EQN:Landmark right now. I only see one way to really improve this.
Right now its hard to read the layering. If you could make it so the previous layer is like yellow, the new layer is blue, and the overlapping layer was green I think it would be much easier to to use.
Thank you so much for making something like this. Love it.
best tool for builders! and if i may say so, you are simply called a genius (dont know if spelling is correct, i dont speak english :d)
How difficult would it be to write a feature into the coding to allow a download of an image of your shape layer by layer if you can't complete it in one sitting?
You can click "Permalink" to get a URL to come back to, The image download is not something I have planned, but with the permalink URL, you should be able to bookmark it, or share it with people on the same project!
I'm having the problem that all the squares are squished, I dont know if thats on purpose or not but it would make counting allot easier, also it would be a great help if the perimiter on the dome was only one block wide it would also be alot easier to use. Overall a great help and im usimg this to make my 250x125x250 dome for my minecraft hunger games on xbox
The problem with only a 1 block perimeter is that it it would leave gaps between that layer and the layer above it. As far as the squished squares go, I think that's a firefox thing. I would try this in chrome.
This is great man.
This is an absolute saviour. My giant egg is no longer an impossibility! Amazing, thank you.
Hahaha, that's awesome.
This is awesome. Thanks for making it.
I'm having trouble with the hollow dome. First, shouldn't a dome just be a half sphere? If I do a sphere 20x20x20, the last 10 layers should match a dome 20x10x20 (WxHxD), but it doesn't.
Also, when making a hollow dome where the W and D doesn't match the H (such as 20x10x20 WxHxD), the top of the dome is open.
Hope that makes sense.
Im having the same issue.
It would be VERY userful if you could save the shape as a MC schemathic, maybe also an option to choose which block you want it to be made of.
I think I've had enough people bugging me about this. I guess I'll just have to do it :\
For the record, this sort of thing is not really yet possible in Javascript. Looks like I'm gonna have to use flash. Be patient.
Thank you! and I'm sorry for bugging you it wasn't my intention at all.
I agree, getting a Schematic file would be the end all for building, absolutely amazing. I love this generator and the ease with which it is used. Bravo.
I love it. If I may suggest:
When displaying the separate levels if we had an option to select 1/4 of the object (1 quadrant) then the zoomed in display would be make large objects easier to see. Also an option to just see the outside ring. (e. 1 pixel wide) it would make building/counting easier (at least for me.)
I agree that would help a lot
I have been trying to generate very large hollow spheres/domes (200+ diameter) but it crashes my browser, is there a way for me to do this without crashing my browser? Perhaps a non-browser based version?
Nevermind, i used a different browser and it worked, very good tool my friend.
It would be most advantageous if, when using large numbers, the squares didn't turn into rectangles. It makes it far more difficult to construct large shapes when i can't quite tell what the shape looks like from this diagram.
I found that zooming in on my browser tends to help with this problem, but it is still a bit difficult. Hope that helps :)
First, thank you for this great program I have been looking for a 3d shape generator for a long time.
Also, I would like to make a tutorial video of it for my YouTube. If you don't want me to make it and give the link out (all credit to you of course) please let me know.
Thanks again!
Very nice, i will now be using this instead of neil frasers one.
It would be nice to see two dimensional shapes, which should be easier than the 3-d ones, It could be one of the options like the Hollow/Solid, for example it would have circles and two dimensional cones and domes (triangle/semi-circle like shapes).
I've had thoughts of doing something that would plot various regular polygons, where you could have control over the number of edges, and a rotation, and maybe add a bit of a curve to each edge if desired. That being said- this is strictly a 3d tool. There are some pretty good circle generators out there already.
Dude, so nice.
I'm amazed to see you add Bezier curves. Thanks so much for this great site.
it freezes when you use large numbers for the generator it would be nice if you could fix i:)
I have the same problem I don't if its my computer or if its the website I have i7 8gb of ram
the size of sphere I was making was 175x175x175
Yeah, it's got a lot to do- it's making your browser display 5,359,375 new elements, so it's going to slow it down. I think I'm going to make an option for it to render in canvas instead,
** It should be much faster now **
Would it be possible to display the blocks from one tier lower in such a way as to help make large structures more manageable? I had an idea of how that may work out.
The first tier would be displayed in the same way you currently have it, but the second tier would start to look different. Think of each displayed non-empty block as a transparency.
If a block is empty and the block below it is empty, then the block is white.
If the block is empty, but the block below is non-empty, then the block is displayed as a very light grey
If the block is non-empty, but the block below is empty, then the block is displayed as normal grey
If the block is non-empty and the block below is non-empty, then the block is displayed as a dark grey.
Yes please, eggs! :D And err... spiral staircases. Im really in need of a spiral staircase generator for Minecraft. I was going to make a tower with the circel generator, and the dome generator and cone generator, with a staircase going along the walls upwards. But it didnt work cause im really bad at spiral staircases. Do you think its possible to make such a generator?
Hey I have another idea could you maybe add a cone with a rounded top. That might help me make some cool designs. Thanks for this great program. It's the best I've seen.
I second this :)
It would be useful if you could make one that did the shape for say an egg
Good idea... I'll try to figure that one out...
Would be really nice if you could have curves on a curve. For instance a circle on a diagonal slant going around a bend....if that didnt make sense Ill probably respond with a clearer answer
this would be a great app though i would honestly buy the app for 5 bucks