One of the most talented Minecraft sculptors has revealed some of his tricks and methods for creating hauntingly beautiful designs. Even though it's been nearly a decade since Minecraft was released the game has continued to be incredibly popular, and even holds a comfortable lead over Rockstar Games' massively successful Grand Theft Auto V as the best-selling video game of all time.
Such long-running popularity means that Minecraft has seen all kinds of communities grow up around itself, and one of the most intriguing (and the most profitable) are the highly-detailed Minecraft sculptors and city creators. Players can actually buy massive pre-built Minecraft cities online if they don't want to spend the time making one for themselves, but other in-game designers eschew the city format of building and instead use the game to create complex, beautiful sculptures.
One such popular Minecraft sculptor is Ushio Tokura, who PC Gamer recently spoke to about his many, many amazing Minecraft creations. Tokura explained a little bit of his process when starting a new project in Minecraft, saying that he treats the game "more as an editor tool than a survival game." Tokura uses "tools such as Worldedit and Voxel Sniper" to assist him in "placing large masses of blacks at a time as well as copying and pasting specific regions." He also states that the first-person view of Minecraft is helpful because it "allows the player to move around in unique ways that allow for hyper-detail in the smallest of places." Tokura is a member of the Gazamo Network, which he says is "focused on creative building" and helped him to "understand the 'ins and outs' of creative building." Check out one of Gazamo Network's projects below via their YouTube channel:
Tokura also states that he frequently zooms in and out in order to "make sure everything is in proportion," which "not only helps me build quicker and plan more efficiently but most importantly it keeps my mind on the bigger picture so I don't lose track of my goals." According to PC Gamer, Tokura likens the process of making sculptures in Minecraft to making a cake, where a person first begins "with a sponge base, and add all of your layers and flourishes from there," as opposed to "putting all of the ingredients in a bowl and mixing." There is also a benefit to keeping lots of ingredients on hand, and Tokura says that he has "a library of ideas and techniques" at the ready so that he can move on to a new sculpture quickly without "having to reinvent a new process for each project."
While it's unlikely anyone would be able to simply pick up Minecraft and immediately begin creating works of art as detailed as Tokura's, spending time practicing with tools like Worldedit and Voxel Sniper, as well as joining up with a community of like-minded individuals, seems like as good a place as any to start. Players can only wonder what these amazing creations will look like as Minecraft continues to grow and evolve, because if there's one thing which could make these insanely detailed sculptures even better, it's ray tracing.
Source: PC Gamer, Gazamo Network/YouTube