voxel (may called brick, cube) is the next representation of the virtual worlds, in films, animation, and or games.

I have been keen on voxels since last year. This time there is a sudden chance, pushing me again think deeply about that, and recall something that I would like to collect here. I believe you will love voxels if you see Minecraft and The Lego Movie.

tools for edit and texture pack:

LEGO Digital Designer; qubicle; MagicaVoxel; Voxel Builder

open source voxelisation:

PolyVox

SVO and rendering: Efficient Sparse Voxel Octrees

Voxel-Based Global Illumination

GigaVoxels: A Voxel-Based Rendering Pipeline For Efficient Exploration Of Large And Detailed Scenes

There is another very interesting paper I have read. It is about how to insert joints between voxels, so then can (dis)assemble Lego like body. Boxelization: Folding 3D Objects into Boxes

For R&D, then it is neccesary to know Constructive Solid Geometry, and surfcing by maching cube or Dual Contouring. Multi-body/rigid dynamics by physics engine Bullet or ODE for instance. Personally, Z-order may be a promising data structure for organizing voxels and to enable bitwise operators.