Mineways: 3D Prints of Minecraft Objects
Well, now's your chance.
Eric Haines from Autodesk (the makers of 3D rendering software, no less) has just released his Mineways program to the world. Mineways allows you to select various blocks from within the game, trim them up, and send them to 3D printing service, Shapeways.
The process is extremely simple, and after a quick turn around, you can have any Minecraft scene, object, or mob rendered into a real life object of your very own.
Here's Minecraft:
Here's G3D's version, using a Mineways export:
In other news, I got my smoothed print from Sculpteo. Cute, but Sculpteo seems to have problems with handling, in that the color was missing from this and (especially) my other model.
Oh, and don't miss this, the display of the world's largest Minecraft 3D print (exported with Mineways).
Right, you cannot export a whole world, you have to make a selection. Right-click on the map, hold your mouse down, and drag out a rectangle to export. That area is what you'll export. You can resize the window if you want a larger area, and can even drag outside this window, or just adjust the coordinates in the export dialog itself.
Other news, for all (since this forum software doesn't let me make a separate post):
Shapeways redesigned their website. It's better overall, but they changed their default units from meters to millimeters when uploading.
So, another update. Version 2.13: changed Mineways to export in millimeters by default, rewrote the documentation for Shapeways export.
Version 2.14 is out: Vines not exporting for 3D printing when the "lesser" feature was on. Fixed.
I've had reports that the newer Mac version is having problems saving. If you have this problem, try out the (old, but workable) version 2.03, downloadable here. My next task is to work on this problem.
Here are two screenshots using the latest version, Minecraft on the top, G3D viewer (which gives the water a glow) on the bottom. The flower pots are quite cute up close.
Full notes:
bug fixes: fixed 3D printing color export for Sculpteo (OBJ) format viewed in SAP Viewer, fixed output of relative texture coordinates for OBJ export. Fixed color schemes so that old color schemes will autoupdate when used with newer worlds.Provided guidance to Mac users looking for their world directory (still trying to figure out how to make this happen automatically). Added Xzip/unzip in anticipation of someday reading texture packs directly for textures. Added Ender Chest, but only for default terrain.png. Thanks to Sterling Babcock for bug reports and the Ender Chest texture addition.
Here's a texture test, showing that almost all blocks now have true geometry:
Bug fixes: for cobblestone walls, pillars were not appearing on straight walls when objects were placed above the walls (thanks again to Sterling Babcock for the bug report). Also, in version 2.16 I tried to fix a problem for the Mac where it crashes for some users, possibly due to a memory use improvement introduced in version 2.09. I've turned this memory improvement back on in this version as it doesn't seem to matter for the crash. If you want to try out the 2.16 Mac version, download it here: http://realtimerendering.com/erich/minecraft/public/mineways/MinewaysMacV216.zip - if you have the crash problem and it helps you (or doesn't), let me know.
Water making cobblestone pillars appear. Before, note no pillars in the middle of the walls:
Just add water:
The whole release blurb: Output block size in statistics popup. Warn user if unknown block type is encountered. Add a "head block" placeholder (pumpkin) for now; it turns out to be hard to really add the new beta's head blocks. Bug fixes: fix the scale dialog (the radio boxes got separated from one another). Turn default options (connect blocks, delete floaters) back on when "lesser blocks" option is turned off. Attempt to find Minecraft worlds a bit better on the Mac (no promises...). Remove warning about floaters when "lesser blocks" is used.
In the meantime, for the Curse/Shapeways contest I made two pseudo-entries (the models aren't my work), to test the system. All entries to the contest are here (just my tests, so far). They're actually more fun to look at on Sculpteo, here and here.
In the meantime, here's a cool print from Sterling Babcock; more photos here. I've ordered a new and improved version he's made since then, should get it by the Faire.