Avoyd FAQ

The LOD cubes show in real time. Increase the Graphics Quality setting to see fewer of them. (Note that this lowers the performance.) Depending on your machine, you may not be able to remove them completely. See the Graphics settings documentation for further information.

The LOD cubes disappear when you render the scene.

Explanation: the large shapes are the LOD system simplifying the voxel model in real time to keep the framerate high. It groups together voxels that are far away.

Use Render in the Voxel Editor. Render documentation

In the Tools > Edit Tool, tick Sticky.

This ensures you can only place voxels adjacent to other voxels. This style of editing is similar to building in Minecraft. It works best with single voxels.

Use the Denoiser or do more accumulations.

To use the denoiser:

1. Ensure you're running the latest version of Avoyd.
2. Ensure you've downloaded and installed the OIDN denoiser. See the Denoise documentation.
   If you're running:
   • Avoyd 0.16.0 or under: use OIDN v1.4.3.
   • Avoyd 0.17+: use OIDN v2.0.1.
3. Do a preview or raytrace the scene first.

There are several ways to make a scene brighter:

• Increase the intensity of the sun by increasing the Light Intensity Multiplier in Tools > Light and Atmosphere. (This also makes the real-time rendering of the world brighter.)
• After you render, increase the Exposure.
• Export your renders to High Dynamic Range .hdr or OpenEXR .exr and fix the brightness/contrast in an image editing tool like GIMP or Darktable.

Make the atmosphere colour darker:

• Decrease the value of the Rayleigh Colour and the Mie Colour in Tools > Light and Atmosphere.
• You can also reduce the atmosphere Amount.

Increase the value of the atmosphere half length. See the effect this has in the rendering video at 3min 02s.

1. Open Tools > Light and Atmosphere.
2. Increase the half length by doing either of the following options:
   • Select Extremely Clear in the Presets drop-down Atmosphere.
   • Increase the value of the atmosphere Half Length manually.

Explanation: when you increase the distance between the camera and the world you'll notice that the scenery takes on a slight blue hue. It is visible on large Minecraft maps. This is because there is an atmosphere and the default is, like in the real world, slightly blue.

Increase the Render setting Max Ray Depth.

If Avoyd stops working or shuts down, follow those steps:

1. Download the latest version of Avoyd. Install and restart Avoyd.
If the crash still occurs:
2. Update to the latest graphics card drivers and restart Avoyd.
If the crash still occurs:
3. Delete the files imgui.ini and user.cfg (you will lose your configuration, if you need to preserve these make copies) from the directory ..\Users\<username>\Documents\Avoyd and restart Avoyd.
If the crash still occurs:
4. Email the file AvoydLog.txt (in ..\Users\<username>\Documents\Avoyd) to support@enkisoftware.com with the steps you followed to reach the crash. We'll get back to you as soon as possible.

You can save power by doing any of the following:

• Open Settings > Graphics and tick Power Save Mode.
• Open Settings > Graphics and tick VSync.
• Open Settings > System and decrease the Max Logical Processors.

You can go further at the expense of graphics quality:

• Open Settings > Graphics and lower the Graphics Quality.
• Open Settings > Graphics and lower the resolutions Fullscreen Resolution and Windowed Resolution.

From the most to the least effective method to reduce .avwr file sizes:

1. Make simpler worlds.

   Avoid unnecessary details and reduce complexity where you can. Examples of approaches you can follow are:

   • If you have volumes that won't be dug through, you can set them to be filled with a single material and amount.
   • Use fewer materials: use a reduced palette.
   • Lock the voxels Amount to 255 by ticking Full Voxels in the Edit Tool. This will prevent Avoyd from morphing voxels to smooth surfaces - every voxel will show as a cube - but it will reduce the complexity of the information stored.

   Explanation: the .avwr format is compressed. Volumes that are homogeneous, meaning filled with the same material with the same properties, are compressed. Volumes filled with a lot of information: different materials, holes, complex shapes, noise, cannot compress as well. This leads to larger file sizes.

2. Defragment the Octree.

   Use Edit > Defragment the Octree.

   Note that Avoyd automatically defragments the Octree during saving if there have been sufficient changes to the world and Auto Defragment on Save is on (under Settings > System).

   Explanation: defragmenting the Octree groups similar volumes together and deduplicates regions which have the same data (a form of compression). This helps to improve performance, reduce memory consumption and reduce the size of the .avwr file.

3. Remove unused Materials.

   Use Edit > Remove Unused Materials.

   The size reduction depends on how many materials you have and the length of their names. It typically is of the order of tens of kB, hence more noticeable on small files.

To reduce your .vox file size you need to use fewer voxels.

Use the option Remove Hidden Voxels when you export to .vox if your voxel scene or model can be hollow (you're not using it in a destruction game for example).

Explanation: the size of a .vox file is directly proportional to the number of voxels in it. In other words, the more voxels, the larger the file.

You can't change it at the moment (as of Avoyd 0.16.0). All images are saved to ..\Users\<username>\Documents\Avoyd\Screenshots by default.

You're likely seeing a standard warning about programs which have not been downloaded by millions of people. The Avoyd executables are virus checked and signed with our company Enkisoftware Limited's digital certificate. The certificates are delivered by an independent provider: Sectigo.

What you can do to check the file you downloaded is safe to open or execute:

1. Always download files to your Windows PC User Downloads folder.
2. Always Scan downloaded files with Windows Defender before opening them:
   1. Right click on the file to open the context menu.
   2. If you're on Windows 11 select Show more options.
   3. Select Scan with Microsoft Defender.
3. Check the Avoyd certificate:
   1. Right click on the Avoyd installer executable file, for example: Avoyd_0.17.0.768_demo_setup.exe.
   2. Select Properties.
   3. Select Digital Signatures.
   4. Check you see this information:

      Name of signer:	Digest algorithm	Timestamp
      Enkisoftware Limited	sha1	17 July 2023 17:20:11 (*)
      Enkisoftware Limited	sha256	17 July 2023 17:20:15 (*)

      (* Example date. This is the date the executable is signed. It is the same as the executable created date.)
   5. Select one of the lines.
   6. Select Details.
   7. Select View Certificate.
   8. Check you see this information:

      Issued to:	Enkisoftware Limited
      Issued by:	Sectigo Public Code Signing CA R36
      Valid from	22/03/2023  to  22/03/2026 (**)

      (** Dates change when the certificate is renewed.)
   9. Optional: select Issuer Statement for more information from the Sectigo website

PLATFORM: PC Windows

CONTROLS: Mouse and Keyboard

MINIMUM:

• Operating System: 64-bit Windows 7 or above
• Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.6 GHz or equivalent CPU with at least two cores
• Memory: 2 GB RAM
• Graphics: Intel HD6000, Nvidia GTX 660, AMD HD 7800 or equivalent. Uses OpenGL 3.2. Future versions may require Vulkan support.
• Storage: 30 MB available space for installation but saved voxel models can require significant storage space, up to several GB.

In increasing level of detail, you'll find:

1. What's new in Avoyd Full and Beta, what's not included in the Demo.
2. An overview in the Features list.
3. More information in the Documentation.
4. Full details and history in the Changelog.

We may add these features in the future. Some of them have possible alternatives.

• Layers
Alternative: use cut and paste to break down your world into distinct volumes.
• Multiple models
  Alternative: make each model in a separate world. Export them separately to .vox or .obj. Assemble them in a third party tool like MagicaVoxel or Blender.
  Note that when you import a .vox file that contains several models, Avoyd merges them into one world. When you export the world to .vox, Avoyd creates new model boundaries.
• Animation
  Alternative: export each part of your voxel model to mesh .obj and animate them in Blender, or export them to .vox to animate in a third party tool that can do it.
• Import Minecraft custom data packs (resources packs) automatically
  Alternative: after importing your Minecraft file, modify the materials properties to match your custom textures as closely as possible. Use Save Template > Materials to save the Materials Template, and specify the template the next time you import Minecraft.
• Import Minecraft Bedrock
• Import Minecraft schematics
• Import Minecraft textures and block models
  You'll find more information in the documentation about how Avoyd represents Minecraft blocks and block models with voxels and how to modify them, and Avoyd's Minecraft import limitations.
  Alternative for rendering: use Chunky.
• Export to Minecraft
  Alternative: export to mesh .obj or .vox and use a third party converter tool than can export to a Minecraft format.
• Multiple languages
  Avoyd is only available in English as the functionality and the user interface are in flux.
  Avoyd n'est pas disponible en français mais le tutoriel d'introduction et une partie de la documentation de l'éditeur de voxels sont disponibles en ligne.
• Custom keys
  Controls and keyboard shortcuts are currently hardcoded.

Avoyd and MagicaVoxel are both voxel editors capable of editing .vox files and doing renders. They have some differences listed below (not exhaustive):

• Some things you can do in Avoyd that you can't do in MagicaVoxel:
  • World size up to 26k voxels a side.
  • No limit on the number of voxels other than memory.
  • 64k materials (vs. 255 in .vox).
  • Compressed .avwr voxel files, ~10 times smaller than .vox for large files.
  • Import Minecraft maps .mca and .nbt schematics.
  • Export to .hdr and .exr with image sizes up to 16k a side.
  • Export to mesh .obj with all metallic, transparent and emissive materials, with presets and instructions for loading into Blender, Unreal, Godot and Unity.
  • Export to .vox with unlimited size and automatic material count reduction.
  • Merge multiple .vox models easily, with the option to hull (hollow out) the result.
  • Repair some corrupted .vox files.
• Some things you can do in MagicaVoxel that you can't do in Avoyd:
  • Multiple models.
  • Animation.
  • Layers.
  • Extrude.
  • Rotation.
  • Shaders.
  • Voxelise textureless .obj.
  • HDR image based lighting.
  • Mac OS support.

Avoyd is only available on Windows. We do not plan to port Avoyd to Mac OS, Linux nor consoles for the foreseeable future.

The reasons for this decision are many: the underlying technology for Avoyd is multiplatform and we have tested making a Mac and Linux build. We also maintain several open source multiplatform libraries so have a good idea of how much effort is required to release cross platform software. The overheads of maintaining a port of a complex graphics application are high, especially as feature development is ongoing. It's relatively easy to break a build on one platform/hardware combo in a way a simple smoke test won't detect. Additionally we don't have a Mac which can run Avoyd (we use a old Mac to maintain the Mac versions of our open source libraries), and we don't think we'd make back the cost of buying one if we made a Mac version. We know the primary feature set we want for the Avoyd Voxel Editor and Game, and once these come together we'll reassess. If sales pick up before then we also might reassess. Finally, we're always happy to hear your thoughts on this.

Start with the tutorial and follow with the user documentation.
Tutoriel et documentation en français.

If you have further questions on how to use Avoyd, visit our support forum or contact us.

The game supports both single-player and cooperative multiplayer (pve).

We're pondering whether to include pvp team multiplayer. Currently we think we won't in the early versions of the game.

You can already play on your own without an internet connection, and with friends over a LAN.

Once internet network support is enabled you'll be able to play online.