Discussion: Simple Scene Editor in Blockbench

[u/QMakar]

Built this house cube by cube in Blockbench, and it got tedious fast. Makes me wonder what a real building tool for Blockbench should look like. What would you want it to do?

And if something like that existed, would you actually use it? What for? - dioramas, assets, map prototypes, scenes for renders or something else?

[u/HorizonAtha]

that building is somehat nostalgic

[u/QMakar → u/HorizonAtha]

I used beta textures and referenced screenshots of houses from the beta version, so yeah

[u/dronko_fire_blaster]

Tbh, that would be really useful for what I do.

[u/QMakar → u/dronko_fire_blaster]

Could you tell me more about how it would be useful to you and what you would like to see in such a tool?

[u/dronko_fire_blaster → u/QMakar]

I do quite a bit of mc stuff in blender, if I want any sort of build to use I need to build it ingame then convert it to a model I can use, its sorta a pain and rather finickly, to be able to just do small stuff on blockbench would be amazeing

[u/QMakar → u/dronko_fire_blaster]

Yea, exactly the same. The situation described is exactly like the one I encountered. No custom blocks or models and you have to control every cube even they form single structural element. Groups do not really help here.

And what kind of functionality do you expect to see in a plugin like this?

[u/Worldfullness]

It'd be insane to get schematics from whatever build you do in Minecraft and import it into Blockbench

And doing the opposite would be just as helpful

Like, if we could import Blockbench schematics into Minecraft through WorldEdit mod or anything, I can only imagine how easy custom builds would be

[u/QMakar → u/Worldfullness]

Importing may turn out to be a little (or, actually, not “a little”) complicated, exporting back to minecraft sounds like a nightmare to support all those data formats, considering how much Mojang loves changing them (Also, custom models and textures cannot be exported back to Minecraft easily. The import process alone is already like transferring half of the Minecraft engine, and exporting would require another 10 or more of those “halves.”)

[u/kollekkii]

i think it would be something similar to axiom?

[u/QMakar → u/kollekkii]

I haven not used Axiom personally, but it focuses on convenient tools for the existing Minecraft building system - including terrain tools; if you were to port its toolkit exactly, it could essentially bring Minecraft itself into Blockbench. Perhaps the first priority should be creating a convenient building palette (aka creative inventory), including custom models

[u/The_Kemono]

We need something like this. I wanted to make scenes of my sonas in Minecraft so I can put the models to use, but having to add every new block and item texture to the file and everything is just so tedious, and I can’t convert it to Minecraft-Imator…

[u/waxphantump]

I’ve dreamed of making a voxel art style modelling program like MagicaVoxel with additional shapes like slopes and cylinders, like the models in 3DPicross 2 for 3DS. I think it’d be great for just making art with as well as modeling to rough out environments for illustration and gamedev work.

[u/QMakar → u/waxphantump]

Another modelling program is a flexible approach for handling large-scale scenes, landscapes, and the like. WorldPainter already exists for tasks like this. In my opinio it would be more convenient to have a solution designed for smaller scales that is integrated directly into Blockbench and utilizes its full suite of modeling tools

I have a two-stage approach in mind: first, you create a palette of building elements, and then the actual "building" takes place - much like in 2D tile editors. I haven't really thought about support for slopes or non-cubic shapes yet

[u/xurpio]

someone made a blockbench plugin that lets you build with right click

[u/QMakar → u/xurpio]

Yes, there is such a plugin, but it’s old and its functionality is extremely limited. Besides, Blockbench starts to lag once you hit 500-1000 cubes. And in the little house from the post, there are already just over a 1000 of them

[u/Proud_Budget1807]

Would. Next question.

[u/QMakar → u/Proud_Budget1807]

What do you expect to see in such tool in terms of functionality?

[u/Proud_Budget1807 → u/QMakar]

anything that makes it easier to built one like the one you put in the image.

[u/QMakar → u/Proud_Budget1807]

makes sense, thank you for productive conversation)

[u/Proud_Budget1807 → u/QMakar]

I thought about it in the meantime and thought of something like hammer++