Voxel PCG Graphs
How Voxel Graphs can be called directly from PCG.
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How Voxel Graphs can be called directly from PCG.
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To make it easier to synchronize workflows between terrain generation and PCG, Voxel PCG Graphs (VPGs) exist. These are a type of Voxel Graph which can be called directly from a PCG graph using the Call Voxel PCG Graph node. Depending on the usecase, VPGs may also help improve foliage generation performance.
VPGs have one Input, and potentially multiple Outputs, which are of the Point Set type. On the PCG-side, these are seen as standard point collections, and both hold the same data. Attributes can be read and set by name - some attributes have default get/set nodes to make things easier.
Parameters can be created and customized as usual. They're shown in the details panel of the Call Voxel PCG Graph node, so their values can be changed per call. It's not currently possible to set VPG parameters using a pin from PCG. To pass in dynamic data, use PCG's standard point attributes.
Aside from workflow convenience, you may want to move (parts of) your PCG graph to VPCG instead. If a PCG graph contains lots of nodes that each do small operations, there may well be performance gains in moving it to a VPCG, as the overhead per-node is lower in Voxel Graphs than in PCG.
If you do use VPCGs, it's important to consider that while the operations in the graph are usually cheaper, initially calling a VPCG has overhead. This overhead is based on the amount of points being passed into it. This means that it's usually a good idea to put as much logic as possible into one big VPCG, rather than having multiple less-complex VPCG calls in a row. Calling multiple less-complex graphs would incur that initial call overhead multiple times.
Large VPCGs can be hard to maintain. Voxel Graph Function Libraries can be used to deal with this.
Create re-usable logic blocks in your function libraries to keep things easy to maintain as you build out more complex VPCGs.
