Still not feeling 100%, so I continued to play around with MagicaVoxel and Blender. I also started to use another free program called VoxelShop because the meshes exported by MagicaVoxel aren't optimized at all and the triangle count is too high for my tastes. VoxelShop isn't perfect, but it's free, so that's all that matters, right?
My first creation tonight was a classic Headstone with RIP on it. I spent some time decorating it to make it look more like weathered marble, but that was wasted time when it came to VoxelShop and it's terrible UV and texture output :(
This is the headstone brought directly into Blender without passing it through VoxelShop first. Notice how it still has the proper texture, I could NOT get that to work with VoxelShop! VoxelShop gives me overlapping UVs and writes a texture that is so small, the little color blocks are just a faint blur :(
This is after I had converted the headstone in VoxelShop to a much more optimized mesh (around a 90% reduction). I also uploaded it to my grid of choice to see it in all it's pixely glory! For those familiar with prims, the original model straight from MagicaVoxel was 10 prims; this optimized one came in at only 1! Yay! The only problem is that I am unable to reproduce the original coloring I had done in MagicaVoxel, but I'm tired and do like the cleaner look of just the ambient occlusion baked in Blender ;)
My next object was a simple cross gravestone. I didn't bother this time with any special coloring, though maybe some time later I will try to figure out a way to get it to translate from VoxelShop...
Here I have the cross in Blender after I have baked on the ambient occlusion. There's something about simple ambient occlusion I find very appealing. I think it's the clean soft look...
And here it is in world! I shall have a nice little graveyard soon I think, what should I make next?
That's it for today, thank you for reading about my modeling adventures!