This document is not exhaustive, but tries to contain the important points.
I'm fascinated by pixel art and voxel art and I was going towards that aesthetic with smaller cubes, greater resolution than Minecraft and uniform PBR materials. But, over time, I started to move towards a more abstract aesthetic.
It is about working with a simple model for geometry editing; a superset of voxel cubes which allows 45 degrees angles. In 2D, to achieve that while still having squares, we can cut each square on its diagonals to get a more fundamental primitive: the triangle. I generalized that idea in 3D by cutting each face of the cube the same way and joining those triangles with the center of the cube, giving 24 identical tetrahedra which form one square pyramid per face of the cube. The new volumetric primitive is that specific tetrahedron shape which gives the ability to build geometry with 90 and 45 degrees angles.
The goal is to have the least amount of details as possible, but contrasted by high details at specific places.
Regarding the aesthetic, the simple geometry in conjunction with uniform PBR materials is fascinating and allows me to experiment with polyhedral/polygonal objects, mega-structures, colors and lighting.
Regarding performances, the goal is to use specific rendering techniques that I consider as having the best ratio of beauty to cost. I want to use the specialized vector graphics primitives of the GPU: triangles/polygons. Building a lot of things with only cubes feels overly complicated, e.g. it would result in less geometry to directly use a slope when needed. Less geometry is more efficient and, in this case, better for the aesthetic I'm aiming for.
Regarding the editing process, the preserved volumetric aspect is intuitive and by seeking to be abstract it leads to a greater ability to produce models and the ability to store them as sources in a repository. It is still possible to create high resolution voxel art with the Voxygon model, but it is not the goal.
Although this model is very limited compared to general purpose 3D rendering (triangles, textures, etc.), the field of possibilities is still immeasurable and the editing process is not that trivial, especially in 3D. I want to explore what can be created with these constraints. (An interesting consequence of that model is the ability to have a different material for each face of a voxel cube.)