MagicaCSG -- NEW Free 3D Modeler From MagicaVoxel Creator

MagicaCSG is a here, a new CSG or Constructive Solid Geometry based 3d modelling tool from the creator of MagicaVoxel. It uses SDF or Signed Distance Fields, which you can think of as organic shells around 3D primitives, to create compound objects. Essentially its an organic 3D boolean modeling app.

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[MaursGamedev]

Both magica voxel and csg works well under wine on my machime

[Reavenk]

Some good introduction stuff to SDF's technicals are Valve's paper on sharp decal textures, and Iquilezles's article page.

[DonChups]

¡Uooo, it's exactly (and I mean EXACTLY) the Dreams modeler, but for PC! ¡Finally!
This way of modelling is so different to traditional vertices and polys, but once you get to understand it, it's great. Not a technical person, but it's amazing how this system can handle hundreds of boolean operations with no sttutering. And the way this system handles the ¿fusion? ¿soft blend? don't know the term, of hard shapes gives beautiful results with minimum effort.

The layers are, most probably, a way of separating different sculptures. Like, say, a head and a hat.

And ephtracy deserves some kind of Really You're Great Thanks A Lot award.

[dominionscave]

I have dabbled with Signed Distance Functions (SDFs) myself and it looks like this guy is doing something I was thinking of, only much better. Good to see and I hope this project will be open sourced.

The reason that there is no exporting of generated shapes to a mesh to import the into something like blender is that SDFs only exist as a mathematical model that a SDF rendering engine will display, and do not have anything like vertices or points to define the image seen on screen. SDFs are also highly computational involved, and as such, are rendered purely using a GPU with a fragment shader being the prime source of where and/or the code exists to render the end image being displayed.

The best idea I have come up with to generate a SDFs as some kind of mesh model is to generate and save the resultant SDF shapes as a point cloud, and from that point cloud generate a mesh. But this will then require the SDF rendering to be CPU based and not GPU, thus making any generation slow, and for any high resolution, the saved files would be very large.

[excitedbox]

That is awesome. This reminds me of how simple 3d modeling used to be back in the day. I can see this becoming the go-to tool for novice modelers who just need to make simple shapes. I hope he adds some measurement features to allow for making simple cad models for cnc and 3d printing.

[bigbodge]

Obviously without export options or documentation its not of much use right now, but theres a really solid base here and I think will certainly become a mainstay of 3d modelling tools when its had some time to mature, just like MagicaVoxel.

[judgegroovyman]

2:32 fun trivia Signed Distance Fields are also a big part of Unity’s TextMeshPro rendering process

[jojo-lprd]

ephtracy gets a 10 out of 10 for tool democratization - really exciting to see this new project! Going to do another donation to him. Like many others, I can't wait for export features / support for the 'mcsg' file format in other tools (like magicavoxel and its .vox file format).
note - I could not see the models until I switched the gpu used for the application to my nvidia card.

[GoldenBeholden]

This sounds like a really great tool when coupled with some sculpting software.

[ItsGeppy]

Spilled my drink cause of the atomic bomb. Keep up the good work!

[noeperard]

This has tremendous potential ! the four features that would make it use every day :
- full linux support.
- export to dae/obj
- basic rigging ( not mandatory but would be cool)
- CAD-like features like 2D plan, synchronisation of strokes and patterns.

especially that last one would make it the best tool to model weapons, vehicules, etc...

[zozoartstudio]

So exciting! I just uploaded som videos of me Magicavoxel and was wondering if we’d ever get an update. Boom, found your vid. Stoked.

[MichaelRichardson-bwxh]

I just fired it up in Wine 5.0 on Ubuntu 20.04 with an i5-8259U using Iris 655 graphics and was able to make a quick space ship, render it, save it. It is running wonderfully at 1080p and I already love this editor!

Can't wait to actually export a model.

[kenmorris]

Mike, thanks kindly for bring this app to my attention. Kind of reminds me of Groboto3D which is no longer available. Hoping your Maple Leafs win game 7 against the Bruins tonight. Cheers from Nova Scotia.

[ludeknovotny]

This is cool. I was looking for SDF modeler for some time. So I'm glad it's finally here and even from a talended MV developer.

[BrainSlugs]

Nice! An SDF modeler? That's freaking awesome. -- Lack of export makes sense for 0.0.0, I don't know any standard file formats that support SDF models (obj definitely can't without compiling it into triangles first; but SDF compilers do exist).

[waffleocalypse]

Ohhh snap. This is exactly what I’ve been looking for.

[mven]

wish it was open source, I'd love to contribute an obj exporter and expanding on the rendering side, hopefully eventually having a hierarchical SDF query acceleration structure like what Dreams is based on.

[wqddmwj]

whoa i recognize that ghost in shell robot (Tachikoma) in a beat, thanks for the heads up!

[Scio_]

To whom it may concern, much like MagicaVoxels, MagicaCSG also runs fine under Wine/Proton, even in a ten year old machine with a GTS650.