Voxelize

This tutorial walks you through creating a script that turns any mesh into voxels.

This tutorial requires Blender 3.4+ for the Distribute Points In Volume node.

Setting Up

Create a base mesh. I'll be using a Monkey primitive.

Next, create a new script. Setting up an external editor is recommended.

Import Geometry Script, and create a basic tree builder function. We'll add a geometry argument and annotate it with the Geometry type to receive our base mesh (in this case, a monkey).

from geometry_script import *

@tree("Voxelize")
def voxelize(geometry: Geometry):
    return geometry

Run the script to create the tree, then add a Geometry Nodes modifier to your mesh and select the Voxelize node group.

Arguments

Add a new argument resolution: Float. Give it a default value of 0.2. This value will be used throughout the script to configure spacing and voxel density.

def voxelize(geometry: Geometry, resolution: Float = 0.2):
    ...

Mesh to Volume

We want to convert the mesh to a hollow volume, so only the outside of the mesh has voxel instances. This will improve the performance of our script.

Use the mesh_to_volume function on the base mesh to convert it to a volume.

def voxelize(geometry: Geometry, resolution: Float = 0.2):
    return geometry.mesh_to_volume( # Hollow mesh volume
        interior_band_width=resolution,
        fill_volume=False
    )

Volume to Points

Next, we need to create points to instance each voxel cube on. Use distribute_points_in_volume with the mode set to DENSITY_GRID to create a uniform distribution of points.

def voxelize(geometry: Geometry, resolution: Float = 0.2):
    return geometry.mesh_to_volume(
        interior_band_width=resolution,
        fill_volume=False
    ).distribute_points_in_volume( # Uniform grid distribution
        mode=DistributePointsInVolume.Mode.DENSITY_GRID,
        spacing=resolution
    )

Instance Cubes

Finally, use instance_on_points with a cube of size resolution to instance a cube on each point created from our mesh.

def voxelize(geometry: Geometry, resolution: Float = 0.2):
    return geometry.mesh_to_volume(
        interior_band_width=resolution,
        fill_volume=False
    ).distribute_points_in_volume(
        mode=DistributePointsInVolume.Mode.DENSITY_GRID,
        spacing=resolution
    ).instance_on_points( # Cube instancing
        instance=cube(size=resolution)
    )

You can lower the resolution to get smaller, more detailed voxels, or raise it to get larger voxels.

Final Script

# NOTE: This example requires Blender 3.4+

from geometry_script import *

@tree("Voxelize")
def voxelize(geometry: Geometry, resolution: Float = 0.2):
    return geometry.mesh_to_volume(
        interior_band_width=resolution,
        fill_volume=False
    ).distribute_points_in_volume(
        mode=DistributePointsInVolume.Mode.DENSITY_GRID,
        spacing=resolution
    ).instance_on_points(
        instance=cube(size=resolution)
    )

Generated Node Tree