Voxelize

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

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 volume, so we can fill its inside with points.

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

def voxelize(geometry: Geometry, resolution: float = 0.2):
    volume = mesh_to_volume(mesh=geometry, interior_band_width=resolution).volume
    return volume

Next, we need to create points to instance each voxel cube on. Use distribute_points_in_volume with the mode set to Grid to create a uniform distribution of points. Its spacing is a vector, so we pass resolution for each axis.

def voxelize(geometry: Geometry, resolution: float = 0.2):
    volume = mesh_to_volume(mesh=geometry, interior_band_width=resolution).volume
    points = distribute_points_in_volume( # Uniform grid distribution
        volume=volume,
        mode="Grid",
        spacing=(resolution, resolution, resolution),
    ).points
    return points

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):
    ...
    voxel = cube(size=(resolution, resolution, resolution)).mesh
    return instance_on_points(points=points, instance=voxel).instances # Cube instancing

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

Final Script

from geometry_script import *

@tree("Voxelize")
def voxelize(geometry: Geometry, resolution: float = 0.2):
    volume = mesh_to_volume(mesh=geometry, interior_band_width=resolution).volume
    points = distribute_points_in_volume(
        volume=volume,
        mode="Grid",
        spacing=(resolution, resolution, resolution),
    ).points
    voxel = cube(size=(resolution, resolution, resolution)).mesh
    return instance_on_points(points=points, instance=voxel).instances

Geometry Script