Oops, i messed up while typing and it wouldnt let my do pictures on edit, but here they are
Medieval house
Odd shaped house using circles
My attempt at doing an observatory
This is my baby, this house has taken me forever to build even with worldedit, and im almost done
The deal you see coming out of the top of the house is the spiral staircase you see inside, and I'm planning on turning that into a large tree coming out and make some sort of a treehouse/small village in it.
These are the parts of the house that I am currently willing to show off until it is done and I am able to make a video about it and show all of it's secrets, and since I love redstone every floor has a trick to it.
Note: the buidling you see on the side of the house is a horse barn, and I did not make that, I found it. Everything else I built.
The Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
Location:
Monster under your bed
Join Date:
11/20/2011
Posts:
105
Location:
Monster under the bed
Minecraft:
Offmycheese
Member Details
First tip I can give is practice. You could start out making a simple-shaped castle, then make a more-detailed one, then just keep improving on the next one you make. It's what I do with all of my desert cities. I hope one day to make a desert-themed metropolis similar to Caldeum in Diablo III, or the Dahlgur Oasis. It takes alot of time, but in the end, the amount of effort you put into one build will pay off equal to that amount of effort you gave. For example, if you only put a little effort into a build, it won't look that impressive, but put days, weeks, or even months into a build and you can have a masterpiece capable of so many things. The perfect example of this is the famous Project 1845 build based off the chinese city of Bejing back in...well...1845! It's only 2-3% complete but when it's done it'll be a masterful 1:1 scale build used for education. Think big, think creatively. Use your imagination, give all the effort you can! Anyone can do it if they really put their heart into it.
So what do you guys think of my attempts? I know they're not amazing, but do you see anything where I did decently? And where do I nee to improve?
Awesome for the last build! Only tip I can give for that is less square-shaped. That's a common beginner mistake with builds. Take advantage of stairs and slabs and their properties to give it more shape variety. Other than that I love it!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
A very generic and bland signature because I can't decide what to write here. I also hate my profile name. Refer to me as Cheese, my Steam name.
Here's a build I did in survival, like everyone else said you should definately build in smaller pieces; here's the smaller pieces of this build.
If you do go for a partner I suggest you find one that allows you to be dominant and feed you ideas otherwise your building tastes might clash. I generally build alone, another thing is math. To be honest a lot of builds I want to make fail because I don't originally make them large enough. Other useful tips are to understand block properties and lighting so your creation is lit properly (lighting is very important as a build will look completely different depending on where you choose to light) and also try finding builds you like and copying them, but don't steal peoples whole builds just take the concepts that they used and you liked (for example if you think someone did a cool design with stairs then try adding that to your build). Stairs and slabs are your best friend for details when you want to keep parts of your build small. Math is also very helpful, for example if you use Pythagorium's theorem then you can figure out how many diagonal blocks will appear equal in distance to horizontal blocks; for example 2 diagonal blocks have almost the same length as 3 horizontal (if this is over your head don't worry about it, you can eyeball it too but using math is a cool trick to pick up eventually).
I'll leave you with Pythagorium's theorem at the very least:
In a square or rectangle: a^2+b^2=c^2
Where a=1st side, b=2nd side, and c=hypotenuse (or the diagonal distance from one corner to another)
If you can apply mathematics like this you can generate large builds that look good within hours.
I play Survival multiplayer for almost all my play time and do a lot of building, but sometimes I'll hop onto creative singleplayer just to try something out to make sure the materials look good together. Other times I'll take a screenshot of the land and draw a rough design in MS Paint to kind of get the scale right. Other times I'll look at pictures of real buildings or multiple pictures of other people's Minecraft builds and take my favorite parts from each of them and combine them into one.
It's all about design. If you have a bad design, you will most likely have a bad build. If you have a good design, that fits nicely and looks natural, then even if you just built a box it will still look pretty nice. You might be wondering what I mean by design. I'm talking about putting in little aesthetics just to please the eyes. Being good at building can be natural god given talent. Or you can learn it. One thing is for sure though. Your gonna be complete and utter crap at building if you don't practice and experiment with what you can do. The greatest build on minecraft is one that has never been used before. If you can find a design that no one has used before (doubtful), then your build will be and look a lot nicer.
Inspiration and Innovation..
2 words I go bye when I build. Well, and theres the fact I am a T1 on the Mithrintia server (Its been down recently)... And I got inspiration there, so yeah. I recommend going on servers and I go to PlanetMinecraft to get inspiration.
I mostly build intuitively, putting down blocks and then deleting them until I like the way something looks. Also, I learned a very interesting style that makes everything look so much more natural which basically utilizes several different kinds of blocks to imply wearing of the surface. Like making a road out of mostly gravel and then putting a few blocks of stone, stone brick, and stairs in the ground so it looks like it's all broken up and worn. You can also do this with walls of buildings. It's best to try and imagine things in a logical way, like when you build a city there are things a city needs to maintain itself: sewer, clean water, food, shelter, etc. So you'd need to build farms and markets and wells and undergound sewers and all that. Intricate buildings kind of just...come out of me. I keep building and adding rooms and make them seem like they fit and I stick with a simple theme of 2-3 types of colors I use to build the structure.
Did you add towers to that yet? (rolo's gripe, not mine!)
Anyway, I would like to give advice but I suck at building; which is why I upload blogs and post here instead *sigh*
*schnogot, Pffttt, whatever*
On topic - Location makes or breakes a build, regardless of size or shape. Put mediocre house on a flatworld and nobody will care. Place same house on a mountain side in a clever and natural way and you increase the aesthetic value because the human eye tends to wonder around.
A megabuild does not have to be a single gigasmic building - it can be several smaller structures connected in an attractive way that incorporates into the surrounding landscape.
Personally I'm against most megabuilds because they are too big. If I cant render it in-game, it's too big. They are difficult to impossible to interact with in-game too, especially when used as spawn. Unless they were specifically made for renders/pictures and other kinds of eyecandy.
Larger = more room for detail and smoother curves is true, as the poster said. I think there is such a thing as too much detail also. At some point, a build is going to become cluttered and exaggerated with stuff. Some builds are huge and complex with attractive shapes - but it also looks like a giant steve threw up on it because it's covered with slabs, stairs, ironbars, fence and other small details.
Empty space! The shape of space between blocks can be just as beautiful or more so than the actual physical block arrangements themselves - especially true when using light sources and shadowboxing. People build dragons all the time, but have you ever seen a dragon shape made out of empty space? Only the outline of said dragon exists, the rest is air and light.
I think people assume that creativity is something you either have or don't. But everyone has creativity--it's built into our psyche thanks to evolution. Problem is many of us don't really use it very often, so we don't know we have it.
If you feel like you're lacking in the creativity department, I recommend going on You Tube and finding lots of tutorials that appeal to you and make them yourself. Try to go for variety in both builds and the people whose tutorials you use. Before you know it you'll start thinking to yourself, "I don't really like it that way--what if I do this..." And there you are.
Most people who get called "creative" are just people who've messed around long enough to know what they like and don't like and so now they know how to express their personality through their creativity. That's all it is. So the key is not to get discouraged and think it's beyond you. Just keep trying things.
Also keep in mind that while mega-builds are very impressive, you don't need to make big builds to show off your ideas and personality. It is really about what makes you happy and makes you want to keep building. I find smaller builds often are just as challenging, and usually more satisfying as I can complete them within the free time I have. It's why I like to stick to what I think of as "complexes"--neighborhoods, road/transportation systems, cross country courses for my horses, and so on. Things that are lots of small builds that add up to a larger whole, so I can feel like "OK, I've got this, this and that done and when I have the time, I can add more to it." It's a mega-build in a sense, but at least I have some finished builds within it that I can look at and enjoy, instead of one gigantic unfinished project. Some people are into that, but I'm not.
You really only have to treat it like you are building lots of little tiny builds just all put together. The reason people feel like they can't build these types of builds is because they look at it from like its one massive thing and not just a ton of tiny things
It's a interesting question I personally just thought small wouldn't cut it for me and I needed to squeeze as much detail style and creativity in one build. Like this one I made that in still doing
I have also been teaching for weeks to my building team and they are definitely improving also on note from all that experiences learned nothing is more important than creativity and architectural knowledge ex. Arches and circles
DAMN! this is really cool.. I can't do anything like that yet I build alone and also time gets to me..
It is simple. I mean really, really simple.
Not practice needed. Just your imagination and your creativity.
It takes sometime. Sometimes, to make a huge building project to consume less time, you can make your own server and invite someone (Your friend or etc.). Should be a good idea!
Medieval house
These are the parts of the house that I am currently willing to show off until it is done and I am able to make a video about it and show all of it's secrets, and since I love redstone every floor has a trick to it.
Note: the buidling you see on the side of the house is a horse barn, and I did not make that, I found it. Everything else I built.
A very generic and bland signature because I can't decide what to write here. I also hate my profile name. Refer to me as Cheese, my Steam name.
Here's a build I did in survival, like everyone else said you should definately build in smaller pieces; here's the smaller pieces of this build.
If you do go for a partner I suggest you find one that allows you to be dominant and feed you ideas otherwise your building tastes might clash. I generally build alone, another thing is math. To be honest a lot of builds I want to make fail because I don't originally make them large enough. Other useful tips are to understand block properties and lighting so your creation is lit properly (lighting is very important as a build will look completely different depending on where you choose to light) and also try finding builds you like and copying them, but don't steal peoples whole builds just take the concepts that they used and you liked (for example if you think someone did a cool design with stairs then try adding that to your build). Stairs and slabs are your best friend for details when you want to keep parts of your build small. Math is also very helpful, for example if you use Pythagorium's theorem then you can figure out how many diagonal blocks will appear equal in distance to horizontal blocks; for example 2 diagonal blocks have almost the same length as 3 horizontal (if this is over your head don't worry about it, you can eyeball it too but using math is a cool trick to pick up eventually).
I'll leave you with Pythagorium's theorem at the very least:
In a square or rectangle: a^2+b^2=c^2
Where a=1st side, b=2nd side, and c=hypotenuse (or the diagonal distance from one corner to another)
If you can apply mathematics like this you can generate large builds that look good within hours.
2 words I go bye when I build. Well, and theres the fact I am a T1 on the Mithrintia server (Its been down recently)... And I got inspiration there, so yeah. I recommend going on servers and I go to PlanetMinecraft to get inspiration.
http://ohgaming.org
whoa, Cranker, you visit this place too?
Did you add towers to that yet? (rolo's gripe, not mine!)
Anyway, I would like to give advice but I suck at building; which is why I upload blogs and post here instead *sigh*
*schnogot, Pffttt, whatever*
On topic - Location makes or breakes a build, regardless of size or shape. Put mediocre house on a flatworld and nobody will care. Place same house on a mountain side in a clever and natural way and you increase the aesthetic value because the human eye tends to wonder around.
A megabuild does not have to be a single gigasmic building - it can be several smaller structures connected in an attractive way that incorporates into the surrounding landscape.
Personally I'm against most megabuilds because they are too big. If I cant render it in-game, it's too big. They are difficult to impossible to interact with in-game too, especially when used as spawn. Unless they were specifically made for renders/pictures and other kinds of eyecandy.
Larger = more room for detail and smoother curves is true, as the poster said. I think there is such a thing as too much detail also. At some point, a build is going to become cluttered and exaggerated with stuff. Some builds are huge and complex with attractive shapes - but it also looks like a giant steve threw up on it because it's covered with slabs, stairs, ironbars, fence and other small details.
Empty space! The shape of space between blocks can be just as beautiful or more so than the actual physical block arrangements themselves - especially true when using light sources and shadowboxing. People build dragons all the time, but have you ever seen a dragon shape made out of empty space? Only the outline of said dragon exists, the rest is air and light.
If you feel like you're lacking in the creativity department, I recommend going on You Tube and finding lots of tutorials that appeal to you and make them yourself. Try to go for variety in both builds and the people whose tutorials you use. Before you know it you'll start thinking to yourself, "I don't really like it that way--what if I do this..." And there you are.
Most people who get called "creative" are just people who've messed around long enough to know what they like and don't like and so now they know how to express their personality through their creativity. That's all it is. So the key is not to get discouraged and think it's beyond you. Just keep trying things.
Also keep in mind that while mega-builds are very impressive, you don't need to make big builds to show off your ideas and personality. It is really about what makes you happy and makes you want to keep building. I find smaller builds often are just as challenging, and usually more satisfying as I can complete them within the free time I have. It's why I like to stick to what I think of as "complexes"--neighborhoods, road/transportation systems, cross country courses for my horses, and so on. Things that are lots of small builds that add up to a larger whole, so I can feel like "OK, I've got this, this and that done and when I have the time, I can add more to it." It's a mega-build in a sense, but at least I have some finished builds within it that I can look at and enjoy, instead of one gigantic unfinished project. Some people are into that, but I'm not.
Formerly known as ORabbit around these parts.
Not practice needed. Just your imagination and your creativity.
It takes sometime. Sometimes, to make a huge building project to consume less time, you can make your own server and invite someone (Your friend or etc.). Should be a good idea!
That's my opinion, tho.
-Andy