User blog:Fingowin/Tips and tricks: Building in creative mode

Hello everyone!

Today I want to tell you something about "building in creatice mode". This article is supposed to help beginners with their bigger projects but may also include some interessting informations for more experienced builders. Feel free to give me some honest feedback about this blog. If this is usefull for a few people I'll countinue this kind of articles. Please note that this is not supposed to show the "only" or the "right" way to realize a project. I only show my personal way and try to give you an idea how you could start your own creative project.

To make the whole thing a bit easier, I've summarised the process in different steps and made a lot of screenshots to visualize the whole thing. So let's get startet!

Step 1: Planning
Before you start building you should make a more or less detailed plan of what you are going to build. While planning you should ask yourself some questions:

'''-What do I want to build? (for example a castle, a village, a mansion or a landscape?)'''

This should be self explaining. You should know what you want to build before you can start. So be creative ;)

-What do I want to use it for?

This is often forgotten but in my opinion it's one of the most important points in the planning process! It makes a huge difference if you need a building for an adventure map, a server spawn or your later survival game. You can't build house for a survival use without a crafting table but in a nice buildings this utility blocks can be annoying sometimes, so think about this first. Be sure what features you want to include in your building. this could also mean place for signs or something like that (maybe in a spawn.

-How much space do I need?

I always make a little plan painted on a checked paper to see how big my building is going to turn out. You don't have to plan them in the actual blocks but you should know if your building is going to be 100 or 20 blocks large. Otherwise you'll get problems during the next steps...

-What style am I going to use?

Even if it's not necessary during the planning process, It can be very helpful and most times you actualy think about this while you are choosing the kind of building you're going to work on but I would go a little further. Think about what materials could work together and how you want the building to look like. Do you want to have a massiv or a more elegant fortress or maybe a somehow primitv version?

-Where is the right location?

Most times you are propably going to build something of a civilization, so building on a river, a road makes your building seem more realistic but what I am talking about here is if you want to build on a hill, or a flat area, in the woods or a plain biome and so on. This is important if you are looking for a nice place and start with the second step!

Step 2: Terraforming
Terraforming / the perfect location is an important point for every builder but especially for beginners this is a huge pain in the but. I remember me searching a nice location for hours and hours and I can remember how long it took me to edit the terrain - even in creative mode! This is why I recomend you to install the mod world edit (talk to the admins of your servers if they allow you to use it). With this mod you can edit huge areas in a lot less time than with the normal mc methods. In the beginning your terrains may look stupid but with some practice and some knwoledge how to work with the mod, you'll get good results soon! I will not cover the use of world edit in detail her. If you want me to, I'll make a "first steps" tutorial later.

To start your terraforming, you should remove every annoying block in the area. This means trees, flowers, grass and water. Especially when playing with the lotr mod an world edit you need to remove the flora. World edit will not "smooth" the lotr grass. This means where ever grass is growing in middle earth you'll have ugly holes in you're area when using world edit.

Then you should start building up very simple structures. Most times you are going to build hills and valleys, so starting with a giant stone block or a big hole's always good! With world edit you can create this block in a few seconds by using an axe and a command....

Now you can build around these blocks. start from the top and work around the structure. If you use wordl edit, sou can use the so called "spheres" to do this. These are balls of any material, which you can place where ever you want.

I often create a shell with these spheres because with this method I can focus on the shape of the mounatin/valley anddon't have to worry about the inside. If you choose this way to, you should fill the holes with something. There you can use sand or gravel very good if you have world edit installed because it will flew down and fill every hole. When everythings filled you can easily turn them to the material of your choice. This method can also help you creating the snowed top of a hill or to smooth an area.

The next step is smoothing everything. You can either use a tool (from world edit) or do it by hand. During this process you are going to make the whole thing look like an actual landscape. Please try to make your created structures fit with the already exisiting landscape. For example make lakes you builded through look realitic again, smooth the shift to another hill etc.

Please note: If you want to build somethign big on a hill you don't need to create the top!

On the screenshot you can see a hill on the server "Helden von Mittelerde". I created it by using world edit. You can clearly see that I removed every plant and that I didn't build up the top where the castle will be build on. The black wool is from the next step...

Step 3: Building up an orientation
When you build big things I often get problems with my orientation... how wide do I have to go from here? how High am I? Do I have to move one block out?

You can easily prevent these problems if you build up a basic structures just like the big block in step 2. I use different kinds of wool for it. This cubes can also help you to show if your planned size is good or not (in this case I planned the upper levels to tall). Another advantage of this is that you ccan build into the wall. This means you have snap points where you can place the blocks and don't have to build up a pillar where you can stick the block on all the time.

If you haven't made a plan with actual sizes, you can use the broadly grades. You can adjust them when you know how you are exactly going  to build the walls

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Step 4: Building the walls
Now you can start building the walls and all the other components of your building. I personally start from the bottom because you get a better idea of the building and you can adjust things easier. I also don't build around the building without a plan. Start with one wall and take your time to find a nice design for it. Then build it around the walls. If you've finished that you can add more details to it and make some variations. Please don't forget world edit if you installed it. You can use it to build up large walls very quick! If you don't know what's important to make your walls and celilings look better, search on you tube. There you can find thousands of tutorials about that topic, so I will not cover this in detail. In the Slideshow you can see how my building developed.

Step 5: Detailing
When the shell construction is finished you can renature the area with grass, flowers, tress and small creexs.... Paths and lanterns are a good adition to make the sourrunding of your building look lively. Try to detail your building with crates, tools and other stuff which is laying aorund when people are living in a house. Don't make everything look too tidy. When it's more random it looks more realistic! I will not go more in depth about this. If you want to I will make a blog about decorating and roomes too.

If you want to you can now detail the walls some more too (for example the tower on the third floor). Use windows, stairs and banners to make it look better. Maybe you also want to add some more variations and a nice doorway etc.

In the pictures you can see a galery I added because the back of the buidling didn't fit very well because I adjusted the walls, so the sices didn't fit anymore. I didn't detail my castle yet because it's a quest hot spot on the "Helden von Mittelerde" server and there will be added more buildings.



That's it! I hope I covered some interesting things for you! Please comment below and have fun building epic stuff!

Lg Fingowin