title: Smoothing out blocks
body: <p>So I'm looking to get some general information here, but I'm not sure where to start.  I'm thinking of exploring real-time terrain deformation (by which I mean hardcore deformation like digging holes and caves and tunnels, not just heightmap), and my idea was to make a 3D array of points representing cubes which can be solid or not, and can be removed or added.  I'm not looking for perfect curvature in terrain or high precision deformation.  But I want to write the engine such that the cubes (which are just points, really, not actual polygons) are smoothed out into something resembling a mesh (not a highly detailed mesh).  The intent is that the limited deformability of the terrain would both simplify the algorithms necessary and hopefully reduce the processor power required.</p>
  
  <p>Basically, I want to make something like Minecraft but with the visual illusion that the world isn't made of cubes, but rather of a mesh.  I'm just interested in seeing if it can be done, and making a bare-bones demo of it.  But I have no idea where to start, and what the current state of deformable terrain is amongst programmers.  I've found a few articles on things like voxels and volumetric rendering, but I'd rather hear some input from live programmers.  What do you think?</p>