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[binvox] 3D mesh voxelizer |
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binvox thinvox viewvox
Introduction
binvox is a straight-forward program that reads a 3D model file, rasterizes it into a binary 3D voxel grid, and writes the resulting voxel file.
Features
- input formats:
- nearly 100% VRML 2.0 support
- will parse Wavefront OBJ, Geomview OFF, Autocad DXF,
PLY and STL, if they contain polygons only
(Unigrafix UG, VTK, XGL, PovRay POV, BREP, and JOT support temporarily disabled, let me know if you really need this)
- output formats:
- runs fast if you have a current graphics card
- rasterizes to a cube grid of up to 1024x1024x1024 (if you have enough memory...)
Download
version 0.37, added 11 Dec 2008The source code of binvox and thinvox is available for download: binvox-0.37.tar.gz. The source compiles under Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. Let me know if you run into compilation problems. The source code is released under the GNU General Public License. Note that the open source version of binvox only reads the OBJ and PLY 3D file formats (more formats to follow).
As of version 0.35 the PLY reading code from the PLY tools was modified slightly to be able to handle Unix/Windows differences.
New in version 0.37: the -bb parameter, which allows you to force a specific bounding box for the mesh.
New in the Linux version: the -pb parameter, which makes binvox render to an offscreen buffer instead of to an onscreen window (if available). This increases the maximum dimension of the voxel grid from 1024 to 4096, depending of course on how much memory your system has (the memory use is dominated by the voxel grid, 1 byte per voxel).
The executables have all been updated to version 0.37, and support all formats listed above (in the 'Features' section):
- Linux executable (325K)
compiled under Fedora 8, let me know if it doesn't work for you - Mac OS X 10.5 executable (322K)
compiled under Leopard, OS X 10.5, using the Xcode tools - Windows executable (296K)
compiled under Windows 2000, using the MinGW compiler system. You also need to have GLUT installed (or at least have glut32.dll somewhere in your PATH). This executable also runs under Linux using Wine.
(the binaries have been compressed using the UPX executable compressor)(they are self-decompressing)
Usage
Run binvox without parameters for a usage summary.
Credit
If you use binvox for your (published) work, please add a reference to me, to this site (as a link, you could use http://www.google.com/search?q=binvox), and to the paper by F. Nooruddin and G. Turk (see next paragraph). Unfortunately I've already seen one recent scientific paper using my software without proper credit. I'd love to hear what you use binvox for as well.
References
binvox uses the parity count method and (a slight variation of) the ray stabbing method described by Fakir Nooruddin and Greg Turk in Simplification and Repair of Polygonal Models Using Volumetric Techniques, GVU technical report 99-37 (later published in IEEE Trans. on Visualization and Computer Graphics, vol. 9, nr. 2, April 2003, pages 191-205). To speed up the parity counting, a hardware z-buffer "slicing" method is used, based on an idea originally by Emil Praun.
Other references:
- Volumetric Model Repair for Virtual Reality Applications, by Andreas Kolb and Lars John, Eurographics 2001. They describe an implementation of Nooruddin and Turk's method, and convert the resulting voxel models back to 3D meshes.
- A Fast Depth-Buffer-Based Voxelization Algorithm, by Evaggelia-Aggeliki Karabassi, Georgios Papaioannou and Theoharis Theoharis, Journal of Graphics Tools, vol. 4, nr. 4, 1999. Simple z-buffer based carving (as also supported in binvox), and a surface voxelization method.
- Hardware Accelerated Voxelization, by Shiaofen Fang and Hongsheng Chen, Computers and Graphics, vol. 24, nr. 3, pages 433-442, June 2000.
- Complete Polygonal Scene Voxelization, by D. Haumont and N. Warzèe, Journal of Graphics Tools, vol. 7, nr. 3, pages 27-41, 2002.
- vxt, by Milos Sramek, is a tool for anti-aliased voxelization. The page also has links to his publications on the subject.
- Single-pass GPU solid voxelization for real-time applications, by Elmar Eisemann and Xavier Décoret. They present a very fast method for voxelizing watertight models.
Feedback
Please send me e-mail (to patrick.n.min at gmail dot com) with your questions/comments/suggestions/bug reports. I'm also interested to hear about what you use binvox for.Note that because of differences in hardware and software (drivers, the OpenGL implementation on your OS, etc.) the resulting voxel model will probably differ slightly from one setup to another.