Creating your first model with VoxEdit
It’s easier than you think!
Dear creator… Welcome! Since you’ve decided to check out what VoxEdit is all about, let me give you a hand getting started with our awesome voxel editor, VoxEdit.
In this guide, you will learn how to create your first voxel model within VoxEdit. Don’t worry! There aren’t many steps, and as soon as you learn a few basic tools, you’ll be able to create tons of cool models.
Step 1: Create a new model file
When you open VoxEdit, you will be greeted with the welcome screen shown above. In order to start creating a new model, click the “Modeler” option.
The software will ask you to name your creation and to save it to any location you desire before you continue. For now, let’s name it “MyFirstSword” and press the Save button.
Once you save the file, you’ll be greeted with the editor mode of VoxEdit. Here, you’ll find many useful tools for creating voxel models — but first, let’s set the size we want for our creation.
Step 2: Set up your modeling space
In order to create a model that will fit inside one cube (whose dimensions are 32 voxels wide, 32 voxels tall and 32 voxels deep), we must first change all the values of the model volume to 32.
Once you do, you should now see that the gridlines of the editing space change like the image shown above. Now, everything you create in there will fit inside 1 cube in the game world.
Step 3: Creating the basic shape of your model
First and foremost, let’s create the base of our sword. Select the 2 tools from above. The upper one lets you add voxels, and the lower one lets you do so in a volume. Tools usually work in pairs like this.
With those two tools selected, let’s click and drag on the bottom of the grid to create the base of the sword. When creating new models, think how they can be made so they will be the easiest to make. In this case, creating a base first will let us avoid having to eliminate several voxels later.
With the same two tools, extend the area all the way to the upper limit of the canvas. We now have the basic shaft of the sword.
Before we continue with the crossguard of the sword, I highly recommend you enable the “Voxel View” mode by clicking on the button shown above. This will allow you to see all the individual voxels in your model and have further precision control when working on it.
Now that we can see all the voxels clearly, let’s add the crossguard 6 voxels above the bottom of the model. Extend 4 voxels at each side of the model, and now we have created a crossguard.
Congratulations! We now have finished the basic shape of our sword!
Step 4: Eliminating extra voxels
We currently have the most basic shape of our sword, but if we wanted to make it more stylized, we should sculpt it a little. For this, we have a new combination of tools. This time it’s the “Erase” (top arrow) and the “Individual” (bottom arrow) tools.
When you use this combination, the single voxel that you clicked will disappear, as shown inside the red circle.
Now, all we have to do is remove all the excess voxels we have on the model, which leaves us with a much nicer shape for the sword, which now has a handle, a pommel, a crossguard, the main blade, and a tip.
Now our model looks much more like a sword than before, and its shape is much more detailed.
Step 5: Coloring the sword
We might have a sword-looking shape for the model, but to be honest, no sword ever has been completely purple. So let’s start painting it.
First, select the two tools shown in the picture above. The upper one is the “Paint” tool which lets you paint voxels. The lower one, as we already know, lets you manipulate voxels individually. This combination will let you paint voxels one by one.
In order to select a new color, we have to click on any of the colors shown on the right panel of the screen called Palette. I will paint a voxel from the pommel, and I want it to be golden, so I will select an appropriate color.
As you can see in the image above when I click on a voxel, it now paints it to the color I have currently selected on my color palette.
Voxel by voxel let’s paint all the pommel and crossguard with this golden color. For the hilt, I’ll change to a leathery-looking color and continue painting.
Now, we could paint the whole sword blade pixel by pixel, but it would be easier to paint a whole area of the model at once.
For that, let’s select the “Paint” and “Volume ” tools. This way, we can select an area that covers the whole blade, and paint it all instantly.
I will also add a little more detail by painting the fuller of the blade with a lighter tone of the same color.
Step 6: Final settings
We now have our model with its final shape and fully painted, but as you can probably see, there is a lot of extra space we didn’t use and the “Voxel View” doesn’t let us clearly observe our model.
To fix this, we’ll click the button shown on the left, the “Crop” tool, to remove any extra space and only see our model.
And last but not least, in order to remove the voxel edges and fully appreciate our model, we have to click the button shown on the right, which enables the “Without Edges View” mode.
Congratulations! You now have finished your first model inside VoxEdit.
But don’t forget to save your progress!
With a simple click of the Save button shown above, all the progress you made in your model will be saved.
What do you think about VoxEdit? Do you have any feedback? You can leave us a comment down below, and we invite you to check out our website for more info about VoxEdit!
We also invite you to join our Discord Channel to keep up with the latest news about VoxEditor.
