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One more minor version, v0.12 improves the ramps (they were weirdly sloppy on all side, not like in game), and makes altars emit light. This is useful for indoor rendering, and for seeing the windows from the outside too. Altars have some candles in their icons, so I thought they were a good candidate for this purpose.

And renders of my own fortress, Ikûl Tikis, a large Ziggurat dedicated to a god of death and deformity. It was built by vampires cursed by this god, which is quite cool.

Since it looks like the steam DF version is close to be released for linux, time for a new update that formally add linux support. v0.11 also fixes some issues with grassy ramps, and make the random blocks reproducible between exports, this can be used to create timelapses without the random part moving all around at each frame.

As far as packaging goes, I kept thing simple with a .tar containing the executable to ensure that it have the executable bit already set.

Well well, good news I found out I had an ubuntu 22.04 laying around that I forgot about, and it looks like it works out of the box. At the moment, it's just a matter of:

wget https://github.com/plule/vox-uristi/releases/download/v0.10.2/vox-uristi-v0.10.2-experimental chmod +x vox-uristi-v0.10.2-experimental ./vox-uristi-v0.10.2-experimental

For DF itself and MagicaVoxel, they run fine in wine, so it's actually possible to fully use it on Linux already.

I'll make a proper version, fixing the auto-update and packaging it in a .tar to set the executable bit instead of having to run chmod. This way, users will just have to extract and double-click in the best case scenario. Regarding the whole appimage/snap/flatpak packaging, it's quite out of my knowledge. Since it's a single file that just works, so I'll just ship it as-is and call it a day. I can't realistically test it on an array of Linux distrib, so users encountering issues will likely have to build from source.

In other news, I'm adding some renders that I'm super happy to have created. These are from Northbridge, a fortress by the youtuber Kruggsmash. Krugg is the very reason I play Dwarf Fortress I'm putting them as spoiler, watch the videos first!

Looks amazing!  Any possibility of a Linux port?

Sure thing. I don't have a linux installation at hand for a local test, so I just triggered a build and hoped for the best, can you try it out and let me know how it goes?

https://github.com/plule/vox-uristi/releases/download/v0.10.2/vox-uristi-v0.10.2-experimental

I'm pretty sure there will at least be complication around dependencies, but hopefully that can help some.

edit: fixed file path

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Vox Uristi is a tool that exports fortresses into a 3D voxels format (.vox). Once exported, rendering software such as MagicaVoxel will make detailed 3D renders out of it. It require DFHack to be installed, and it's mostly tested with the Steam version, though previous versions should work too. You can see the process on this video from Blind: Export process

It is a work in progress, but the export is already fairly complete. It includes the terrain, buildings (with a bit of their content), trees taking in account the season, spatters on the ground, flows (waves, mist, fire, miasma). It lacks stuff like item state (opened/closed bridges) and rails. As much as possible, everything is sourced from Dwarf Fortress raws instead of being an "artistic choice" (colors, metallic, glass and gems, ...). Make sure to save before running an export, I've seen possible crash triggered by the export process.

Compared to other tools such as Stonesense or Armok Vision, keep in mind that Vox Uristi is only able to produce still images as opposed to a real time visualization. Each picture took quite some time of careful preparation, lighting setup, camera and materials adjustments, and then the rendering itself. This process however benefit from a fully featured renderer, which is cool.

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Here are some renders made in MagicaVoxel from the files exported by Vox Uristi:

Fort Chantbell by PHLP_Neo, a medieval castle with some twists



Winebolted, a fortress inspired by LOTR Argonath, built by Nutwick (shared in Blind discord)



Heavenfall, tower of a necromancer queen, by Horrigant (shared in Blind discord)



I hope you like it, please share your thoughts and renders