Um how do i fix the fences and the torches and stairs...the torches have a big black box and the fences are just blocks of wood
well when i rendered it the torches had a white box...
Right, a limitation of Mineways is that it exports only solid blocks and billboards for rendering, no "true geometry". The main reason is that Mineways is mostly for 3D printing. When 3d printing, thin and tiny features like fences and torches would snap off. They're also difficult to merge properly with meshes for printing (you need to make a "watertight" mesh with no gaps).
For true geometry export, try mc2obj for now. My hope is that jmc2obj will be The One for export, once they add textures, since mc2obj's interface is not much fun. Here's where to go for what exporters are out there.
OK, I decided, after messing about and not loving any of the solutions, to at least fix vines for rendering export - thanks for the prod, xxxzzzmark.
Minor fix for rendering, only: vines are all turned into billboards. Vines are still a little funky for printing, that hasn't changed.
Screenie:
In other news, most definitely check out Ben Rothman's albums. He's printing out parts of Northwestern University, where he's a student. Here's one of my favorites:
I don't think I'll make such a major change, to be honest - my focus really is 3d printing, and I'm hoping jmc2obj will be the best solution for rendering export someday. Perhaps while waiting for them to catch up you could give Riptide a try (it's free) and see how that goes?
Eric
Hey I don't know why I didn't realize this before... the free version of Riptide hasn't been updated in like forever and it doesn't work with the newer versions of cinema 4d. Thanks though.
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Hey I don't know why I didn't realize this before... the free version of Riptide hasn't been updated in like forever and it doesn't work with the newer versions of cinema 4d. Thanks though.
Oh, thanks! I don't have C4D so never could try it out. Pity it's out of date.
Oh, thanks! I don't have C4D so never could try it out. Pity it's out of date.
Yeah but the paid version is updated... There is a 30 day trial for it but after that trial your either going to have to buy it or find a different way.
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Yeah but the paid version is updated... There is a 30 day trial for it but after that trial your either going to have to buy it or find a different way.
30 day free trial? Well, then, what are you waiting for? I hope you give it a try and let us know.
In other news, I just found there's now another 3D printing exporter for Minecraft worlds! FigurePrints: check it out here. The user interface for selecting a chunk is weak ("just type your coordinates in here"), but on the other hand what it does is simply grabs the area near where the player is located. Preview is in 3D, which is great, and performance is very snappy. A very cool thing is that it works in multiplayer! That's something I don't know how to do. There's also a nice feature I'll steal: just select the texture pack you want, vs. having to dig out the terrain.png file. It also does half-blocks and stairs! Maybe I should try to tackle those headache blocks...
Downsides include not being able to control the export in various ways (the biggest being scale - I have no clue how large each block is), and of course your output is purely for buying, you can't get the mesh (which is fine if you just want to print the model). There are also some minor texturing errors. But, this software can all but improve over time - if it gets people trying out 3D printing, great!
i am using mineways version 2.05
it is working very well, but when i export as a .obj file for rendering, the glass and torches arent giving me transparency. water's transparency is fine, it's just glass and torches.
i am using maya 2012 for rendering as i am making an animation.
any help on this transparency issue or the textures blurring would be helpful.
i am pretty sure the blurring has something to do with maya filtering the image texture, but im not sure.
i am using mineways version 2.05
it is working very well, but when i export as a .obj file for rendering, the glass and torches arent giving me transparency. water's transparency is fine, it's just glass and torches.
i am using maya 2012 for rendering as i am making an animation.
any help on this transparency issue or the textures blurring would be helpful.
i am pretty sure the blurring has something to do with maya filtering the image texture, but im not sure.
Right, there's something that you'll need to do with the textures and how they're applied. Despite my working at Autodesk, I don't know how to use Maya. The basic idea is that you want the alpha channel (the grayscale texture Mineways exports) to be used for cutout transparency - wherever this texture is black, the object should not be visible: 0 is fully transparent, 1 is opaque.
I know that Blender and Cinema4D have similar issues. The Mineways Blender tutorial talks about this for Blender, see step #9; I'm hoping there's some similar you can do in Maya. There's more about the Blender cutout problem here, showing images. Googling on "cutout texture", I found this thread - give it a look, maybe it'll help. If you do figure anything out, please do let me know so I can put it on the Mineways page. I did notice on Youtube, but it didn't look like (with my quick skim-through) he discusses cutout transparency.
or if you want eric, i can make a full tutorial in maya for the mineways page
Excellent, and I'll have to remember to point people at mc2obj in the future. I'd love a full tutorial for the Mineways page, please - just email me what you write up.
BTW, by coincidence I tested 76% positive for MC addiction, too.
I now have some video tutorials up on youtube. One to get from minecraft to a .obj, and one from .obj to maya with transparencies and clear images.
here is the link to the playlist: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL19DDBAB5C26254AD
I now have some video tutorials up on youtube. One to get from minecraft to a .obj, and one from .obj to maya with transparencies and clear images.
here is the link to the playlist: http://www.youtube.c...9DDBAB5C26254AD
Nice! It's funny, I found this video independently today by searching YouTube and said to myself, "hey, there was that guy on the forum who wanted to know just this, I'll go let him know" - oh, it's the same person.
Great tutorial, by the way, it answers the major questions I get asked: transparency, and how to set "nearest" texture filtering. I've added a link to it from my documentation page.
Utter awesomeness: Ben Rothman's 3D print of much of Northwestern University's campus. Gallery here, comments & upvote it here on reddit. Edit: slashdotted.
Version 2.06 is out, the gist is: nothing major. Friendlier testing for automatically setting the lower level height, better Cinema 4D import (I hope), Ponoko 3d print service support, some minor fixes, Week24 beta support.
Improvements: The lower depth is now autoadjusted for every new selection, and autoadjustment can be turned off. VRML rendering output is now grouped by material, for a bit more Cinema 4D support. VRML now exports to solid color and single color formats, for Ponoko support - many thanks to Ariock for and Ponoko for their help. VRML files now write out squares instead of triangles, reducing ZIP file size by about 20%. VRML files are now generated by default again, for previewing (generating just the ZIP is good for utter newbies, but a pain for everyone else). Various format bug fixes, including making rich color and floating object debugging mode work again. Unknown block ID check added, to future-proof Mineways and warn users of unknown block types. Week24 beta block additions are unofficially supported, though I'm ignoring the cocoa plant, and block of emerald is semi-supported (it conflicts with the old chest lid texture location - grrr).
Images for the day (from the Flickr pool, where there are a few new things - post more!):
Version 2.07 is out, it's a minor bug fix: the huge brown and red mushrooms were not texturing properly on the stems and undersides. Fixed.
In somewhat-related news, the fantastic Eihort map viewer has been updated to Anvil. Read about it here, download it here. It works on PC/Mac/Linux. It's now open source, and I've been adding a few block types to it myself. This is my favorite Minecraft tool of them all: zoom around the realistic map in 3D, view areas huge distances away, play with the day/night cycle, and many other features. Here's a screenshot of Vokselia, a few thousand meters into the distance:
One Eihort tip: hold down a shift key while moving to rocket around, control key to crawl.
New features: individual block export and block test world added. Bugfixes: fixed export of redstone torches and repeaters, made vinesalways properly cover the underside of blocks, and made the bedtexturing slightly better.
Individual blocks: For rendering, you may want to have every block in the scene be a separate object. In this way you could have a character mine blocks, a creeper or TNT explode them, etc. By checking this box, every block is a separate object and so can be deleted, created, animated, etc., as you desire. This considerably increases file size, so use it only if you need it. If you run into memory/performance problems and have some small area you want to modify, export just that volume using this option, then export the rest of the scene with it off. You can use careful trimming, a color scheme, or simply removing the blocks using Minecraft itself, to avoid exporting the same blocks twice. You may want to turn off "Center Model" so that each export uses the same coordinates. Note that this option affects VRML export for printing, though is usually A Bad Idea, as the model is formed of individual blocks. (thanks to Ryan Miller for the idea of individual block export.)
If you want to export any particular block, use File | Open and select the "[Block Test World]" - this is an internally-generated "world" of blocks, with each block type listed from west to east in block ID order, and with variants shown from north to south. To select a single block, find it, select it, then hit "[" to move the bottom level up by one, so selecting only the block itself and not the surrounding grass.
Here's a view of a tiny piece of [Block Test World] exported to OBJ and viewed with G3D:
In other news, Eihort now has animation keyframing so that you can set up tours through your world. This feature's evolving, an example of the initial release is here:
My next step with Mineways: probably nothing immediately. I'm hoping to add OBJ export to Eihort (now that it's open source), as it has better data for rendering.
I just added a lot of features to Mineways. The big one: fences, slabs, stairs, and a bunch of other objects are now exported as real geometry (not just simplified into being blocks). I have been aiming Mineways at 3D printing, and unfortunately Shapeways does not do a good job of merging these sorts of geometric objects into a single mesh. So I had been holding off on adding such objects. Then I discovered a new 3D printing firm, Sculpteo. They cost a bit more, but have an excellent website and server-side functions, including correct merging of geometry. Very inspirational, so I added a bunch of geometric objects (and will add more as I find the time and energy). Really, I still think you should use jmc2obj for export for rendering, though Mineways does seem to be easier for Cinema 4D users (reattaching the textures is trivial vs. jmc2obj).
Anyway, here's the official release notes: Many new blocks have been added for rendering and for printing. These blocks are exported by default for rendering, and can be exported for 3D printing, by using the “Export lesser blocks” option. This feature is experimental (fences and fence gates are highly likely to break off, for example), and works with Sculpteo but not Shapeways. See more details here. Flowers, mushrooms, tall grass, dead bush, saplings, and stems now are visible on the map and print as flattened decals (if you don't like this, disable using a color scheme).
You can export again instantly with the same options and filename by using Control-X (or the File menu item). This is useful when adjusting bounds, viewing, adjusting, viewing. File path is now retained for normal file export, also making adjusting easier. Material output has been simplified for OBJ, to improve import into Blender (though water now looks more boring in G3D - sorry; and just uncomment "illum" in the .mtl file). Absolute and relative OBJ have changed position on the file type selector, and 3D print firm names added when exporting for 3D printing. Changed default terrain.png to support all new Minecraft 1.3 blocks (note Emerald Block is shifted). Numerous fixes to [Block Test World] and block IDs added. Memory use has been considerably reduced, half or less of previous typical use.
Here's the list of blocks which now have correct geometry: slabs, stairs, fences and gates, farmland, signs, doors (but not for 3D print - too thin), pressure plates, buttons, snow, trapdoors, end portal frames, cocoa plants, and cake.
The Mac version will be available sometime after Sunday night.
Right, a limitation of Mineways is that it exports only solid blocks and billboards for rendering, no "true geometry". The main reason is that Mineways is mostly for 3D printing. When 3d printing, thin and tiny features like fences and torches would snap off. They're also difficult to merge properly with meshes for printing (you need to make a "watertight" mesh with no gaps).
For true geometry export, try mc2obj for now. My hope is that jmc2obj will be The One for export, once they add textures, since mc2obj's interface is not much fun. Here's where to go for what exporters are out there.
Eric
Minor fix for rendering, only: vines are all turned into billboards. Vines are still a little funky for printing, that hasn't changed.
Screenie:
In other news, most definitely check out Ben Rothman's albums. He's printing out parts of Northwestern University, where he's a student. Here's one of my favorites:
Hey I don't know why I didn't realize this before... the free version of Riptide hasn't been updated in like forever and it doesn't work with the newer versions of cinema 4d. Thanks though.
Oh, thanks! I don't have C4D so never could try it out. Pity it's out of date.
Yeah but the paid version is updated... There is a 30 day trial for it but after that trial your either going to have to buy it or find a different way.
30 day free trial? Well, then, what are you waiting for? I hope you give it a try and let us know.
In other news, I just found there's now another 3D printing exporter for Minecraft worlds! FigurePrints: check it out here. The user interface for selecting a chunk is weak ("just type your coordinates in here"), but on the other hand what it does is simply grabs the area near where the player is located. Preview is in 3D, which is great, and performance is very snappy. A very cool thing is that it works in multiplayer! That's something I don't know how to do. There's also a nice feature I'll steal: just select the texture pack you want, vs. having to dig out the terrain.png file. It also does half-blocks and stairs! Maybe I should try to tackle those headache blocks...
Downsides include not being able to control the export in various ways (the biggest being scale - I have no clue how large each block is), and of course your output is purely for buying, you can't get the mesh (which is fine if you just want to print the model). There are also some minor texturing errors. But, this software can all but improve over time - if it gets people trying out 3D printing, great!
it is working very well, but when i export as a .obj file for rendering, the glass and torches arent giving me transparency. water's transparency is fine, it's just glass and torches.
this is what i am talking about:
http://i.imgur.com/KyZ0Z.jpg
i am using maya 2012 for rendering as i am making an animation.
any help on this transparency issue or the textures blurring would be helpful.
i am pretty sure the blurring has something to do with maya filtering the image texture, but im not sure.
please and thank you
Right, there's something that you'll need to do with the textures and how they're applied. Despite my working at Autodesk, I don't know how to use Maya. The basic idea is that you want the alpha channel (the grayscale texture Mineways exports) to be used for cutout transparency - wherever this texture is black, the object should not be visible: 0 is fully transparent, 1 is opaque.
I know that Blender and Cinema4D have similar issues. The Mineways Blender tutorial talks about this for Blender, see step #9; I'm hoping there's some similar you can do in Maya. There's more about the Blender cutout problem here, showing images. Googling on "cutout texture", I found this thread - give it a look, maybe it'll help. If you do figure anything out, please do let me know so I can put it on the Mineways page. I did notice on Youtube, but it didn't look like (with my quick skim-through) he discusses cutout transparency.
Best of luck, I wish I could be of more help,
Eric
image:
http://i.imgur.com/XygJs.jpg
or if you want eric, i can make a full tutorial in maya for the mineways page
Excellent, and I'll have to remember to point people at mc2obj in the future. I'd love a full tutorial for the Mineways page, please - just email me what you write up.
BTW, by coincidence I tested 76% positive for MC addiction, too.
here is the link to the playlist:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL19DDBAB5C26254AD
Nice! It's funny, I found this video independently today by searching YouTube and said to myself, "hey, there was that guy on the forum who wanted to know just this, I'll go let him know" - oh, it's the same person.
Great tutorial, by the way, it answers the major questions I get asked: transparency, and how to set "nearest" texture filtering. I've added a link to it from my documentation page.
Here's a tiny taste:
Improvements: The lower depth is now autoadjusted for every new selection, and autoadjustment can be turned off. VRML rendering output is now grouped by material, for a bit more Cinema 4D support. VRML now exports to solid color and single color formats, for Ponoko support - many thanks to Ariock for and Ponoko for their help. VRML files now write out squares instead of triangles, reducing ZIP file size by about 20%. VRML files are now generated by default again, for previewing (generating just the ZIP is good for utter newbies, but a pain for everyone else). Various format bug fixes, including making rich color and floating object debugging mode work again. Unknown block ID check added, to future-proof Mineways and warn users of unknown block types. Week24 beta block additions are unofficially supported, though I'm ignoring the cocoa plant, and block of emerald is semi-supported (it conflicts with the old chest lid texture location - grrr).
Images for the day (from the Flickr pool, where there are a few new things - post more!):
In somewhat-related news, the fantastic Eihort map viewer has been updated to Anvil. Read about it here, download it here. It works on PC/Mac/Linux. It's now open source, and I've been adding a few block types to it myself. This is my favorite Minecraft tool of them all: zoom around the realistic map in 3D, view areas huge distances away, play with the day/night cycle, and many other features. Here's a screenshot of Vokselia, a few thousand meters into the distance:
One Eihort tip: hold down a shift key while moving to rocket around, control key to crawl.
Individual blocks: For rendering, you may want to have every block in the scene be a separate object. In this way you could have a character mine blocks, a creeper or TNT explode them, etc. By checking this box, every block is a separate object and so can be deleted, created, animated, etc., as you desire. This considerably increases file size, so use it only if you need it. If you run into memory/performance problems and have some small area you want to modify, export just that volume using this option, then export the rest of the scene with it off. You can use careful trimming, a color scheme, or simply removing the blocks using Minecraft itself, to avoid exporting the same blocks twice. You may want to turn off "Center Model" so that each export uses the same coordinates. Note that this option affects VRML export for printing, though is usually A Bad Idea, as the model is formed of individual blocks. (thanks to Ryan Miller for the idea of individual block export.)
If you want to export any particular block, use File | Open and select the "[Block Test World]" - this is an internally-generated "world" of blocks, with each block type listed from west to east in block ID order, and with variants shown from north to south. To select a single block, find it, select it, then hit "[" to move the bottom level up by one, so selecting only the block itself and not the surrounding grass.
Here's a view of a tiny piece of [Block Test World] exported to OBJ and viewed with G3D:
In other news, Eihort now has animation keyframing so that you can set up tours through your world. This feature's evolving, an example of the initial release is here:
My next step with Mineways: probably nothing immediately. I'm hoping to add OBJ export to Eihort (now that it's open source), as it has better data for rendering.
Anyway, here's the official release notes: Many new blocks have been added for rendering and for printing. These blocks are exported by default for rendering, and can be exported for 3D printing, by using the “Export lesser blocks” option. This feature is experimental (fences and fence gates are highly likely to break off, for example), and works with Sculpteo but not Shapeways. See more details here. Flowers, mushrooms, tall grass, dead bush, saplings, and stems now are visible on the map and print as flattened decals (if you don't like this, disable using a color scheme).
You can export again instantly with the same options and filename by using Control-X (or the File menu item). This is useful when adjusting bounds, viewing, adjusting, viewing. File path is now retained for normal file export, also making adjusting easier. Material output has been simplified for OBJ, to improve import into Blender (though water now looks more boring in G3D - sorry; and just uncomment "illum" in the .mtl file). Absolute and relative OBJ have changed position on the file type selector, and 3D print firm names added when exporting for 3D printing. Changed default terrain.png to support all new Minecraft 1.3 blocks (note Emerald Block is shifted). Numerous fixes to [Block Test World] and block IDs added. Memory use has been considerably reduced, half or less of previous typical use.
Here's the list of blocks which now have correct geometry: slabs, stairs, fences and gates, farmland, signs, doors (but not for 3D print - too thin), pressure plates, buttons, snow, trapdoors, end portal frames, cocoa plants, and cake.
The Mac version will be available sometime after Sunday night.
Before:
After: