---
title: "Voxel Editor"
package: "@phaser-ae/voxel-edit-3d"
tier: Free
version: 3.0.0-3
released: 2026-10-14
updated: 2026-10-19
description: "Point at a block and change it, with debounced raycast targeting, held-button cadence, multi-hit mining by hardness and a guard against placing a block inside yourself."
url: https://phaser.io/packs/voxel-edit-3d
site: Phaser - https://phaser.io
---

# Voxel Editor

Point at a block and change it. The targeting, the cadence, the mining progress and the guards a block-building game
needs, with none of the effects, so a break means whatever your game says it means.

## What it does

Each frame you call `update(dt, input)` with a ray, usually from the eye along the camera, and whether the break and
place buttons are held. The editor casts the ray into the voxel world within `reach`, commits a target, and returns it
with the empty cell a place would fill, whether that place is refused, and anything hit, broken or placed this frame.
The same events reach `onHit`, `onBreak` and `onPlace`.

Four rules make it feel right. The target is debounced: a new target must hold for a few frames before it commits, so
the outline does not flip between two cells at a seam where one pixel of aim decides. The cadence timer persists across
a change of target: breaking a block reveals the one behind it, and resetting the timer then would let a held button
break one block per frame and dig straight down; only the per-block progress resets. Hardness says how many hits a
block takes, one by default for creative mining, and anything more makes `onHit` report a rising progress for a crack
overlay. And `forbid` marks cells a place must not fill, usually the player's own body, with `blocked` reported so a
placement ghost can turn red.

It draws nothing and plays nothing. Debris, dropped items, sounds and scores are your game's, written in the
callbacks. `cubeOutline` gives the twelve edges of a unit cube as polylines, for drawing the target outline and the
placement ghost.

## Features

- **Debounced targeting** — `debounce` frames before a new target commits, 3 by default, 0 for instant.
- **Held-button cadence** — `breakRate` and `placeRate` seconds between actions, 0.15 and 0.2 by default.
- **Hardness** — hits needed per block id, with progress from 0 to 1 on every hit.
- **An anti-embed guard** — `forbid` refuses places into cells such as the player's body, and reports `blocked`.
- **Hotbar-ready** — `block` sets what a place drops and `reach` the ray's length in blocks, 8 by default, both live.
- **Events, not effects** — `onHit`, `onBreak` and `onPlace`, and the same in what `update` returns.
- **An outline shape** — `cubeOutline` for the target outline and the ghost.

## Good for

- **Block-building sandbox games** in the style of Minecraft, in creative or survival play.
- **Survival mining**, where harder blocks take several hits and report their progress for a crack overlay.
- **Creative build modes** with instant breaking and a hotbar of blocks.
- **Digging and voxel puzzle games** where the player carves a way through a block world.

## Make it yours

The options are `reach`, `block`, `breakRate`, `placeRate` and `debounce`, and `block`, `reach`, `hardness` and
`forbid` can be changed while the game runs. Two different uses: a creative mode with every block breaking in one hit,
a long reach and a quick place rate for building; and a survival mode with a hardness function that makes soft blocks
one hit and stone several, debris and a dropped item spawned in `onBreak`, and a crack overlay drawn from each hit's
`progress`.

## A quick look

Debris on every break, a guard round the player, and one frame of editing:

```ts
game.voxelEdit.onBreak(e => spawnDebris(e.x, e.y, e.z, e.id));
game.voxelEdit.forbid((x, y, z) => insidePlayer(x, y, z));
const r = game.voxelEdit.update(dt, { origin: eye, dir: mc.forward(), mining: mc.mining, placing: mc.placing });
if (r.target) moveOutlineTo(r.target);
```

## Works with

- `voxels-3d` — the block world it edits, which it needs.
- `rig-minecraft` — the first-person block-game controls that say when break and place are held.
- `vector-3d` — wireframe lines to draw the target outline and the placement ghost.
- `particles-3d` — debris when a block breaks.

## Good to know

- It owns no visuals: the outline and the ghost are yours to draw, and the editor only says where they go.
- One ray, one target: there is no area edit, fill or undo; build those on the voxel world's own block setter.
- It finds the voxel world through the registry and does nothing until one is composed.

---

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