Voxel Height Grid Builder

What it is for

Voxel Height Grid Builder converts a small rectangular table into a three-dimensional model made of colored cubes. It is useful for stepped terrain, diagrammatic landscapes, block-built platforms and experiments with spatial data. Each number controls one vertical column, making the model reproducible from a compact input.

The generated project opens in Renderloom Voxel Desk, where individual cells and palette colors can be edited. The tool also produces a transparent isometric SVG and an OBJ/MTL surface mesh for applications that accept those files.

Worked example

Choose the small stepped hill example and run the tool. Its five rows rise from zero at the corners to four in the middle. The summary reads "40 occupied voxels have 98 exposed faces", in a 5 × 5 × 4 volume with two used palette colors. A value of zero leaves that column empty. A value of four creates four cells, stacked from the ground up.

The top voxel of every nonempty column uses the top color; the remaining cells use the base color. Enter six-digit hexadecimal colors to change the two palette entries. Download the project and open it in Voxel Desk to add details beyond the height-grid representation.

The ZIP contains an OBJ, a companion MTL and a single-model VOX 150 file. Keep the files together so an OBJ importer can resolve its palette materials.

How to read the result

The report counts occupied voxels and exposed faces. A face is exposed when its neighboring grid position contains no voxel. Faces between adjacent occupied cells are omitted from the exported surface, including faces between cells of different colors.

X follows the values across a row, Y follows the rows, and Z points up. The SVG is a fixed orthographic isometric illustration with simple face shading. It is a useful overview rather than a simulation of scene lights or surface reflections.

Tips and common mistakes

Use one to 64 equal-width rows and columns, with whole-number heights from zero to 64. Separate values with commas, semicolons or spaces, and use a new line for each row. The total cannot exceed 32,768 occupied cells.

The columns are solid. A grid cannot describe overhangs, tunnels or hidden cavities; create those by editing the project in Voxel Desk. Empty height grids produce an empty model with a valid one-cell vertical extent.

A download link can be used when a large project does not fit in an app link. Preserve the editable project if you may want to change individual voxels later; the surface mesh is an export, not the editing format.

FAQ

Does the tool interpolate the heights?

No. Every input value is an exact integer column height. There is no smoothing or resampling.

Does the mesh contain internal faces?

No. Only faces adjacent to empty space are exported. Different colors on touching voxels do not create an internal face.

Can I use this through an API?

Yes. The tool is available as renderloom-voxel-height-grid through the JSON API and renderloom_voxel_height_grid through MCP. The response includes the project, counts and downloadable artifacts.