Mineways 10.03 is out. You likely will want this one only if you're using USD or are using JG-RTX, LunaHD, or Smoolistic. The JG-RTX textures are in better shape - one or two things were a bit funky with them. Other little fixes. See https://github.com/erich666/Mineways/releases/tag/v10.03
A shot from Omniverse of a simple test scene. I love that the illumination is computed immediately.
... quickly followed by Mineways 10.04: Fix roughness and MDL emission for USD export. I noticed that constant roughness values were not getting exported for MDL shaders (though were for UsdPreviewSurface shaders), and that the emissions were way too high, due to my confusion about how the firefly filter in Omniverse is used. Official release notes here.
With constant roughness now working for all USD shaders, even vanilla Minecraft looks good in Omniverse Create:
Yet another minor release, 10.05, but with some useful fixes and additions: https://github.com/erich666/Mineways/releases/tag/v10.05
For people using modded worlds, there's now a new scripting command that lets you choose what block you want used when an unknown block is encountered in Mineways. Instead of turning these into air, you can now choose some other block as a substitute.
Mineways 10.06 is out. Due to popular demand, I (finally) changed the default OBJ texture export option for rendering to give separate textures instead of three giant mosaic textures. Other fixes and improvements, including a crash bug when exporting 1.12 or older worlds. See the whole list here.
In celebration of someone else actually submitting a pull request for a fix to lanterns, here's a test shot in (the free) Omniverse Create app using the high-quality Iray renderer and the JG-RTX resource pack.
Mineways 10.07 is out. Added tooltips to the export dialog, fixed some obscure export option interaction bugs, and improved the docs a bit, including an old-school image map. See the release notes here.
I haven't yet figured out how to add tooltips to menu items. If anyone knows how to do this in WinAPI, let me know!
Mineways 10.08 is out. This version's important, fixing some subtle property bugs on a bunch of block types, e.g., lightning rods being shown as powered when they're not.
Mineways 10.10 is out. New feature: mesh simplification. Also fixes to how blocks connect with walls and a bunch of other minor cleanups. All changes listed here.
Here's an example showing the simplified meshes generated. Yes, they look long and thin, but it's a fairly optimal way to minimize the total number of rectangles in the scene. This export has less than half the triangles that the unsimplified scene has.
Mineways 10.13 is up. The main addition is that the status window (the small text window in the lower left) now tells you what's going on during export. Not thrilling, but it gives you an idea of what's happening and what takes awhile. Also USD fixes and documentation rewrites for Blender. See this page for the full list.
Mineways 10.14 is up. Billboards (like flowers, grass, etc.) are now represented by one quadrilateral instead of two. This eliminates z-fighting problems and reduces model size. USD format export is much more compressed, sharing vertices. Other minor improvements. See whole list here.
Mineways 10.15 is out, with just a small change: Billboard objects can now be exported as single-polygon or doubled-polygon for OBJ (USD has sidedness built in as an attribute). By default, just a single polygon is output per face, "Double all billboard faces" is unchecked. Most digital content creation apps I tested are fine with single polygons for cutouts such as saplings, flowers, etc. However, Unity (for one; there may be others) needs two polygons output back-to-back in order to display properly, as it (evidently) performs backface culling on these. Checking the box will double these. This option is available for all file formats except USD, which has its own flag for sidedness. (Thanks to I C Y for this information.)
Mineways 11.01 is out. Fixes to USD lights output (read the notes for important warnings, if you're using these), camera output suppression, piglin head fix, and other minor cleanups and additions.
A shot with the Doku Light texture pack applied to the debug test world:
Mineways 11.03 is out. The big new feature is that modded blocks can now be translated to standard blocks on a per-block-type basis. Error handling's also improved for scripting. I added some tweaks to USD export to make models easier to insert into programs. See the release notes.
Here's a train station from this world with various modded blocks translated to standard ones. First view is the previous default "everything is bedrock" translation, second is "let's change some of those blocks to something reasonable".
Mineways 11.04 is out. The new feature, for people using scripts, is that you can choose a biome to use for export. Also, bugfixes and new JG-RTX textures. Full list here.
As a test, I exported some cherry blossom areas with a swamp biome:
Mineways 10.03 is out. You likely will want this one only if you're using USD or are using JG-RTX, LunaHD, or Smoolistic. The JG-RTX textures are in better shape - one or two things were a bit funky with them. Other little fixes. See https://github.com/erich666/Mineways/releases/tag/v10.03
A shot from Omniverse of a simple test scene. I love that the illumination is computed immediately.
... quickly followed by Mineways 10.04: Fix roughness and MDL emission for USD export. I noticed that constant roughness values were not getting exported for MDL shaders (though were for UsdPreviewSurface shaders), and that the emissions were way too high, due to my confusion about how the firefly filter in Omniverse is used. Official release notes here.
With constant roughness now working for all USD shaders, even vanilla Minecraft looks good in Omniverse Create:
Yet another minor release, 10.05, but with some useful fixes and additions: https://github.com/erich666/Mineways/releases/tag/v10.05
For people using modded worlds, there's now a new scripting command that lets you choose what block you want used when an unknown block is encountered in Mineways. Instead of turning these into air, you can now choose some other block as a substitute.
Eye candy, a shot of a Venice build from PlanetMinecraft:
Mineways 10.06 is out. Due to popular demand, I (finally) changed the default OBJ texture export option for rendering to give separate textures instead of three giant mosaic textures. Other fixes and improvements, including a crash bug when exporting 1.12 or older worlds. See the whole list here.
In celebration of someone else actually submitting a pull request for a fix to lanterns, here's a test shot in (the free) Omniverse Create app using the high-quality Iray renderer and the JG-RTX resource pack.
Mineways 10.07 is out. Added tooltips to the export dialog, fixed some obscure export option interaction bugs, and improved the docs a bit, including an old-school image map. See the release notes here.
I haven't yet figured out how to add tooltips to menu items. If anyone knows how to do this in WinAPI, let me know!
Screenshot showing a tooltip:
Mineways 10.08 is out. This version's important, fixing some subtle property bugs on a bunch of block types, e.g., lightning rods being shown as powered when they're not.
From the imperial testing grounds, in Blender:
Mineways 10.09 is out. Two serious bugs fixed: deepslate blocks and blackstone double-slab export. Details here: https://github.com/erich666/Mineways/releases/tag/v10.09
A pic of testing the deepslate blocks in Blender, which now are fine and not weirdly semi-transparent:
Mineways 10.10 is out. New feature: mesh simplification. Also fixes to how blocks connect with walls and a bunch of other minor cleanups. All changes listed here.
Here's an example showing the simplified meshes generated. Yes, they look long and thin, but it's a fairly optimal way to minimize the total number of rectangles in the scene. This export has less than half the triangles that the unsimplified scene has.
... followed quickly by Mineways 10.11, which now simplifies still water and lava tops.
Foo, another update, as a user found that OBJ export with no materials set did nothing. Fixed.
Mineways 10.13 is up. The main addition is that the status window (the small text window in the lower left) now tells you what's going on during export. Not thrilling, but it gives you an idea of what's happening and what takes awhile. Also USD fixes and documentation rewrites for Blender. See this page for the full list.
Typical status line update:
Mineways 10.14 is up. Billboards (like flowers, grass, etc.) are now represented by one quadrilateral instead of two. This eliminates z-fighting problems and reduces model size. USD format export is much more compressed, sharing vertices. Other minor improvements. See whole list here.
A shot from Blender 3.5, using Cycles:
Mineways 10.15 is out, with just a small change: Billboard objects can now be exported as single-polygon or doubled-polygon for OBJ (USD has sidedness built in as an attribute). By default, just a single polygon is output per face, "Double all billboard faces" is unchecked. Most digital content creation apps I tested are fine with single polygons for cutouts such as saplings, flowers, etc. However, Unity (for one; there may be others) needs two polygons output back-to-back in order to display properly, as it (evidently) performs backface culling on these. Checking the box will double these. This option is available for all file formats except USD, which has its own flag for sidedness. (Thanks to I C Y for this information.)
Just wanted to say a thank you for the program. I have been using it to create stereoscopic 3D renders in blender that look absolutely fantastic.
Oh, that's cool & fun! I should give this a try.
Mineways 11.00 is out, updated to include the 68 new blocks added in Minecraft 1.20, plus lots of little fixes. Full list of changes here.
Here's a screenshot using LunaHD (the only texture set included in Mineways that's been updated to 1.20 so far) of my test world.
Mineways 11.01 is out. Fixes to USD lights output (read the notes for important warnings, if you're using these), camera output suppression, piglin head fix, and other minor cleanups and additions.
A shot with the Doku Light texture pack applied to the debug test world:
Mineways 11.02 is out. It fixes some subtle texture face orientations problems, better Doku textures, and other little fixes.
The imperial testing grounds for orientation textures, using G3D for display:
Mineways 11.03 is out. The big new feature is that modded blocks can now be translated to standard blocks on a per-block-type basis. Error handling's also improved for scripting. I added some tweaks to USD export to make models easier to insert into programs. See the release notes.
Here's a train station from this world with various modded blocks translated to standard ones. First view is the previous default "everything is bedrock" translation, second is "let's change some of those blocks to something reasonable".
Mineways 11.04 is out. The new feature, for people using scripts, is that you can choose a biome to use for export. Also, bugfixes and new JG-RTX textures. Full list here.
As a test, I exported some cherry blossom areas with a swamp biome: