Ive decided to begin a project of massive proportions. Since my best skill is terraforming, I am now bent on using what little world edit I have to make an amazing landscape. Im taking a leaf out of Annod's book, and will be documenting it as I work on it. Ill start by uploading a few pics of the small model I made to represent the primary features I want to include. I also set up the model as a public warp. /warp rift. I'd appreciate comments, compliments, complaints, and suggestions left on the bored there.
I will. There will be a massive empty cavern inside the main mountain. Will need someone, or multiple people perhaps, to build a castle inside once I finish the mountain.
Ok. Day 2, the work I did before I went to work. XD I started with a mountain on the far side of the peninsula. My goal was to make the outline for the most prominant feature in my build first. This gives me a reference point as I construct the remaining areas. This was a generated mountain already in the server. Well, i figured it a good place to start. So I began to build up around it, make it thicker. But eventually i realized that it was nowhere near big enough, and with the mountain needing to be hollow, i might as well just remove this and build a new one....so I did. It was only after I had the main shape outlined that I noticed something I didn't like....I need to expand the sides of the mountains and make it at least slightly more gradual. I wanted sheer cliffs, but this doesn't look quite right. With a little help from an architect whose name shall remain anonymous unless he comes out and admits it, i managed to somewhat smooth out the sides. One of the difficulties with working with world edit is just that world edit doesn't have a good smooth brush, so your either stuck with a very lumpy mountain side, or your mountain side is filled with random holes. This is the crater where the dead volcano once erupted. Its only a rough hole for now, but the entire mountain has been hollowed out completely, allowing alot of building space inside. I will eventually begin work on some ruins inside it, but that will have to wait until im done with the landscape. From this angle, I realized that another issue was that there was simply not enough of a slope where the lava supposedly flowed. I need a much more gradual slope leading up to the crater. This is all but the rough work of the structure of the mountain. Once i finally have the shape how I want it, I will need to recruit an admin or architect to come in with their voxelsniper and do a dirt, then grass overlay brush around the exterior of the mountain. The interior will be cobblestone, obsidian, stone, and a few small tunnels leading to the main cavern beneath it, which will be the main chamber of the volcano. It already extends a bit underground, but it will go much deeper soon. Thats all for now folks. Thanks for reading!
Ok. Day 3 of the rift build. While it seems like I got nothing done, it feels like a whole lot more. I had a few visits, mostly from admins with voxelsniper to help me clear out that pesky ocean I had to expand into. Without the ability to overlay dirt onto the mountain, I was at a loss for decorative aspects of this dead volcano. But I did manage to almost double the size of the beast by expanding about 75% of her sides to more realistic proportions. Above, in my last post, you can see where I took a side shot of the mountain. I learned from my mistake and wont take another night shot. Instead, I took a shot from a similar angle, but after the mountain had been expanded. As well, I also made sure that it was a day shot. Now this wasn't the only picture I shot, but it is, for some reason, the only one that showed up in the screenshots folder for minecraft, so this is the only one im posting for today. I smoothed out the interior floor and most of the exterior of the mountain. But I still need someone with the illustrious Voxelsniper to do both my overlaying on top of the mountain and the smoothing of the cliff faces and the interior walls and ceiling. World edit is simply not capable of those, I'm afraid.
Wow!! It is certainly getting bigger. Much bigger than when I visited. Not an admin but I did come see it. Enjoying seeing your progress.
Finally, I got around to doing day 4. I say day 4, even though its like 3 weeks into the build only because this is only the 4th day ive had a chance to really work on it. Since I'm on hold for the mountain until someone with Voxelsniper comes along to smooth the cliff faces, I decided to tackle the rift. I started by clearing a massive trench across the desert. It was so big, in fact, that it wont load on the Dynmap and I dont have a good enough PC to attempt a top down view. Maybe Siout or someone else with a superior PC could. At any rate, I imeadtly came across a problem. Mines. And lots of them. Mines and rifts within my bigger rift were getting in my way. So I cleaned it all up. It took me a long long time, but I wound up removing all traces of mines, then came across another problem. I had planned on using the gravity brush with WE since i don't have access to Voxelsniper, but the gravity brush is blocked. So I had to improvise. Eventually, I settled with a different way to make the entire rift effected by gravity. I used the sand brush [//brush sphere sand 5] in combination with a complex mask brush [//mask stone,coalore,ironore,wood,fence,dirt,gravel,sandstone] and turned the whole thing into one gravity effected sand pit. Then i went around with the WE smooth brush and cleaned it up. And yes, that is an incredibly quick giant aqueduct, meant only to show the general shape of the one that will be replacing it in the near future. Anyways, I then went about replacing the bottom of the new ravine with stone, a simple enough action to be sure. Then i did the lava. Now since i cant set lava by hand, I had to use WE. so for the next hour, i carefully coaxed the shape of the lava streams from the land around it, forming several pools and streams of lava sitting in the bottom of the rift. The next picture is where I started to show one spot as a time lapsing reference. The free standing flames you see above were a part of the stone setting process. When I set the stone, the brush was a combination brush [//brush sphere 96%stone,2%cobble,2%netherrack] with a simple mask [//mask sand] This allowed Netherrack to be set randomly around the base. The thought behind that was that where lava meets the surface, even stone near it can catch fire, set ablaze by the intensity of the lava itself. But that wasn't enough for me. I knew that when lava hardened, it formed a stone called obsidian, a glass like stone almost always left behind. And yes, I'm conveniently forgetting about the pumice rock. Somewhat satisfied, but now keeping an eye on it in case I thought of another improvement to the method, I decided to work on the walls of the rift itself. The base of the wall closest to the lava had a brush similar to the initial stone brush I had mentioned earlier, just without the netherrack. The reason being is that pockets of improperly formed or agitated stone near volcanic activity would cause the stone itself to stick out somewhat from nearby stone. This is reflected in the cobblestone in the rift, meant to look like cracked or malformed stone. But another geological feature was bothering me. The way stone is layered. I toyed around with a few different ideas, but finally settled on using Sandstone. Once all the walls were stone, i set about making the layers of stone as obvious as they would be in real life. Finally satisfied for the night, I left the rift like this. It was far more then just one little section, as you have seen, but in fact, a massive rift. I did the entire thing in this way and the overall work took me around 6-7 hours. For now, I am satisfied, but also exhausted. So I shall nitpick through it in the morning and probably find a million little faults upon which I can sick my OCD like a rabid dog. heh heh.....get it.....a million faults...... Goodnight all! ^_^
This is fascinating to read! Dodo did you see my note about the 8000 limit? And do you know you can do //paste -a and paste massive objects after removing the air? Just wanted to make sure you knew as Siout only just told e about that. I want to do more of what you are doing now Just learned //mask a couple of days ago from Siout. Thanks for posting your progress.
XD No problem anno. But you have a good chance on getting architect purely off of building skill. Save your foray into Terraforming for then, because then you can use the Voxel Sniper. While I am a good builder, my main skills are in using tools and in terraforming. Im very good with worldedit and voxel sniper simply because they function better with my mindset then "block by block by block by block by block by block by block by......"
next time your on I'll lend my voxel and as far as the pic get optifine and extreame render distance. It kills my fps down to like 9 but it makes a sweet picture
I cant run Optifine for more then 4 or 5 minutes. Yeah, its that bad. XD I have to play unmodded minecraft if I dont want to constantly get Disconnected. Also cant use HD texture packs for extended periods. Until I upgrade my rig, I do all my work in default Minecraft. And yes, i tested it. Optifine actually lowers my FPS. Hows that for twisted? On my old laptop, it increased abilities, but on this computer, it increases capability, but dramatically cuts back play time. at any rate, i'll try to put more work in on the rift tonight unless I need to finish furnishing the house for your project Siout. Going through FyreUK, I learned that they dont normally furnish interiors. XD Most of their houses have grass floors.
yeah but we need them to be furnished as can will be doing a cinematic video at the end and whe knows where he will go. aslo it sets a good example for the lower ranks
Fascinating Dodo and are you sure you can't build?? I want to see your house for Siout. And I have so much to learn.. I feel like a noob sigh.. lol In time..
Jobs are killing me! T_T I get 2 days off this week, and both are after christmas. And both are only because I had to call them in because Im moving and need the time to pack up and move and unpack. Im leaving one of the jobs in mid to late january, so ill have my life back by then. heh heh....funny.....getting my life back and i plan on playing more minecraft....perhaps im not really getting it back, just sinking it into something more fun.
other job layed me off. The one I intended to quit. Regardless, Ill be on regularly again soon. When I have the energy to concentrate on being creative again. lol