What it does
An LED sculpture is a lot of pixels in space, each pointing somewhere. voxeled keeps that as the map — position and emission normal for every LED, in millimetres — plus the wiring, in one small layout file, and builds everything else on top: a 3D viewer, a simulator that renders each LED as an emitter (viewing angle, dark backsides, the steel blocking light), spatial patterns that move through the piece in real units, a builder for placing fixtures by dragging, and real output over Art-Net, DDP, sACN and my own dan-mx. Other tools — a console, xLights, TouchDesigner, a web page — can drive it at the same time, merged per pixel by priority.
Live demo: runs entirely in your browser. Press S for the simulator, E to drag the columns around, P to see the layout that made it. Getting started walks through using it for your own LEDs — drop in a panel, a strip, a CAD model or a Blender export; nothing is uploaded, your files stay in the browser.
Why it exists
Every LED piece I've built ended up with its own one-off three.js visualizer and its own hand-rolled mapping script, and none of the existing tools fit: the sequencers think in 2D buffers draped on shapes, the art engines keep points with no orientation, the pro media servers are closed and priced per universe, and none of them let another tool perform through them. The thing that was missing is unglamorous: an open house system that owns the map and the patch and gets out of the way.
How it works
- The layout is the source of truth. Fixtures (a rolled panel, a rope along a path, a CAD model with the chips modelled, a baked export) placed as instances; arrays and rings from one line; structures — the sculpture's own CAD — drawn around the LEDs and used as occluders.
- Normals are first-class. They come from the geometry (a parametrization, the chip's thin axis, a rope's radial direction), so the simulator can show what a strip looks like from behind, and patterns like a lantern carried through the room can light only the sides that face it.
- One frame, everywhere. The hub renders once and fans the identical bytes to the browser and to the wire, so the preview is what the LEDs do.
- No server needed to author. The whole pipeline is plain modules; the hosted page runs the hub in the browser and keeps projects in IndexedDB. The Node hub is only needed for UDP.
- Inputs merge. Art-Net, sACN, DDP, TCP and WebSocket sources at once, per-pixel priority / HTP / LTP, timeouts and failover to the internal show — the real-controller wiring (which universe is which string, strips wired from both ends) is data in the layout.
Status
Authoring works end to end and is documented; the Möbius LED Heart, the Thread spiral sculpture (7,200 LEDs on twelve ropes derived from the steel) and a floor of rolled-panel columns are the pieces it's been built against. Ahead: the camera automapper, chip timing simulation, GDTF/MVR, and hosting a piece's public face — QR interaction and collaborative patterns — on the same page.