Instance_generator Item set voxel texture ID

[SonomSoft]

Is it possible to have the items from the instance_generator change voxel texture ID on spawn?

For example if i have a tree can i have the tree item change the value of the texture ID of nearby vowels? To create dirt patches from the grass voxels.

[Zylann]

Is it possible to have the items from the instance_generator change voxel texture ID on spawn?

Not by themselves. Closest would be to spawn a scene, and have a script on it that modifies voxels nearby.

For example if i have a tree can i have the tree item change the value of the texture ID of nearby vowels? To create dirt patches from the grass voxels.

Instance generation happens quite late in the terrain generation process, so doing that is particularly sketchy.

• I'm not sure if there is a guarantee for voxels to be available at the time the instance spawns/loads (might be most of the time, but there might be edge cases; mainly because I havent designed it to do stuff like that)
• You would have to differenciate between the instance being spawned for the first time, or loaded. Because in either case, if you put that stuff in a script with _ready, you will end up modifying terrain every time.
• Modifying terrain like that will blow up your save file (if you care about that) with many small edits everywhere your instances spawn
• Instances spawn when the terrain is meshed, but if you change voxels at that time, it will... trigger remeshing. So you will slow down terrain meshing everywhere instances spawn.

Making the instancer work at an earlier stage such that modifying voxels like this becomes possible ON TOP of the voxel generator is a big can of worms that I have no plan to get into at the moment.

A much easier approach could be to have a decal below your trees to project a different texture on the ground when nearby?
On the other hand if it's a whole forest, another approach would be to go the other way around, generate a patch of different texture ID and then spawn on top of it.