Hey everybody, So I'm fairly new to this particular server, but used to be quite an avid builder for one that went down about five years ago. Having joined Differentcraft about two weeks ago now I started work on a bit of a callback to the type of stuff I used to build. During all this I ended up taking a lot of screenshots. I'll add to this thread as the build progresses For now though; this is what has been build so far It all started with the planning and building of the stained glass window in the back. This was about two evenings of pixel art and one for building. In turn the walls (each took 2 hours to build, a few more to gather stone) and roof (gather clay to make terracotta was a pain, took a few days) were build to fit the stained glass not the other way around. Next up was the detailing of the front of the church. This consisted of a few parts Instead of chronological order I'll run through them top to bottom The top of the church features a rain drop motif (or at least that is what I like to call it) just under the yellow roof as a lining, this is often seen on real churches (do note the side pillars are still W.I.P) and it features two small statues, each is made out of quarts which is a pain to mine. The left one is suppose to be a saint type character who would have fallen off in to legend within the church itself and would have been rumoured to be a great mage (of course none of that was true) and the one on the right was yet another saint, however this one started off as just a nomad, but to his rumours there might have been more truth. Both these saints are place high on the building because of their saintly status, this brings them closer to the sun and thus the heavens of the common church religion. Next up is the large stained glass window, which currently still has an error. I forgot to build one layer right in the middle due to which it now looks a bit more like it is eye shaped rather than nice circles, but oh well. It is something I'll fix once I am happy with everything else since this is not a priority. The yellow and orange stained glass was chosen to represent the sun, one of the holy symbols of the church. Each of the side curvy bits are supposed to look like structural supports, looking at them now I might end up sticking some stairs for smoother transitions on them Next up was something I wasn't sure about at first but now one of my favourite features on the front. The banner depicting the holy sword once used to slay the dragon of old. (this is a depiction repeated throughout the church, previously also seen being wielded by the heroine in the stained glass window) I especially like how the banner looks really nicely held up by the massive beam behind it which is in turn held up by the church wall. Looks great right where it is. Lastly on the front we have two more small statues. Each one of these depicts a knight of the holy order of the church. Each once favoured their own weapon as they accompanied the two saints and heroine on their journey's long ago. Today they still guard the entrance to the holy domain of the church. And the progress so far on the front all in one picture; (though it does have some of the other local buildings in the way but such is life) Next up I spent a day or so designing a form of lantern for the inside of the church. My criteria we're they had to look like they belonged in a building of this medieval type era I am going for and I really wanted to use fire. At first I had a design with lava I hated, but I ended up doing a full redesign which turned out quite nicely if I say so myself. Somewhere along the way I also spent a good three hours putting actual windows in the windows and lowering them since I had build a walkway underneatht he current roof which was making their heigh look a bit funky. Oh and I added a stroke of redstone light along the bottom of the building (though I might replace this with something I like more, still unsure right now) And a better look at the design itself without the fancy shading; Trapdoors work great for a small design like this Next up, we've seen her before! That's right, another depiction of our heroine. This time as a massive quarts statue. This took a good week from grinding for a fortune III pickaxe and finding out higher than that no longer exists on the server (comfirmed by the mods during this week of work) because it once broke the economy AND gathering all the damn quarts. Now the one good thing to come out of this part of the build is... I cheated, massively. It is a quarts outer shell and if I would have told you it was solid quarts you would have probably believed me, but the truth is it is a shell of pretty quarts filled with dirt. I had a ton laying about and saves me countless more hours of work. The general workflow for this bit was as follows; I spent a day finding 3D models I liked and ripping them from video games, I then more or less kitbashed my way in to a nice 3D model that I liked the look of, feminine face, chunky armour, right pose. I then exported this as an .obj file and used a voxel converter program called voxelizer to turn this 3D model of mine in to a voxel object. Luckily voxelizer allowed me to export this to a .schematic. I stuck this schematic in to a creative minecraft world of my own with worldEdit. I then cleaned up the rough edges and did all the stair detailing to make it look a lot nicer at this sort of mid-size scale (not a small statue like the others but not a colossus either). I also added the sword at this stage which was designed based off the same sword seen on the stained glass art and the banner out front. Once I had done all that (think 8 hours of work) I spent a good week or so gathering quarts and actually building the thing on the server itself. Only to realise I should have really put it one further to the right, but oh well. Overall I'm fairly happy with it although I don't think I'll do statues again out of quarts, not of this size anyways. And no, I am not taking the entire thing down just to rebuild it one block further to the left so the walkthrough from the entrance is a bit nicer. So far this is all I have done, I'll be adding to this post every time I feel I've made significant progress. Feel free to come check it out when I'm on the server and any feedback is always welcome!
